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Jan 08, 2025 By Mark Redfern Photography by Harrison Fishman

British experimental post-punk five-piece Squid are releasing a new album, Cowards, on February 7 via Warp. Now they have released its second single, “Building 650,” with an accompanying music video. Watch it below.

The band’s frontman Ollie Judge had this to say about the single in a press release: “‘Building 650’ is a song inspired by our first ever trip to Japan. We played the Summersonic festival in 2022, luckily we were booked to play two days after the COVID travel ban had been lifted, because of this we felt like some of the only tourists in Tokyo. On the plane I read In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murikami and watched Lost in Translation out of excitement and later decided to write lyrics about being an outsider visiting Japan, including a very particular type of loneliness one can feel visiting a country that is so different from their own. This loneliness feels exaggerated in Tokyo, on the surface it’s hectic and full of people but when you listen, it’s eerily quiet.”

Regular Squid collaborator Felix Geen made the song’s video, shooting it in Japan alongside local directors Daisuke Hasegawa and Kuya Tatsujo. Tatsujo had this to say about it: “For this script, I believed it was necessary to incorporate not only inspiration from the novel (In The Miso Soup) but also scenes from contemporary Japan. The wave of technology is overwhelming, and an intense sense of fear, driven by the need to interact with others, envelops the city. Amidst this, I think I was able to depict the young people struggling to live and the landscape of the city.”

Geen elaborates: “I feel that the whole video came together very nicely with the human touch added by Daisuke and Kuya. I got to have my fun with the expansive and deconstructed city shots, and it was all brought back down to earth and grounded by the raw and natural 8mm film work from them.”

Previously Squid released the album’s lead single, album opener “Crispy Skin,” via a music video. It was one of our Songs of the Week.

Cowards is Squid’s third album and the follow-up to 2023’s O Monolith and 2001’s debut album, Bright Green Field. Squid features Louis Borlase, Ollie Judge, Arthur Leadbetter, Laurie Nankivell, and Anton Pearson.

Cowards was recorded at Church Studios in Crouch End, London with Mercury prize winning producer Marta Salogni and Grace Banks. Longtime collaborator Dan Carey, who recorded the band’s first two albums, provided additional production. John McEntire (of Tortoise) mixed the album and Heba Kadry mastered it.

Of the new album, Borlase said in a previous press release: “We were thinking of an album of great songwriting. Simple ideas that resonate in a very different way to O Monolith, which was dense and complex.”

Judge added: “Touring fed into this record in a way that I didn’t initially realize. Every song has a specific place anchored to it, places that all five of us have visited together, like New York, Tokyo, and Eastern Europe.”

Read our 2021 interview with Squid.

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