A Look in Between – behind the curtains of „Wüstenberg“

‘Mark Knopfler asked me to tell you something,’ said our producer Jörn Schlüter when he returned to the wood-panelled control room of the venerable Studio Nord in Bremen. ‘You should pay more attention to the transitions in the songs.’

Everyone in the studio laughed.

It was already our third day in the historic recording room of Studio Nord. Surrounded by legendary vintage equipment, we could feel the history of this special place in every fibre of our being. Since the studio was founded in 1966, many stars had immortalised international hits on tape here.

Now we were recording our debut album, The King's Gambit, here. All morning, Jörn had been urging us to pay special attention to the transitions in the songs during recording. But Jörn is not only our producer, he has also been writing for Rolling Stone for more than 20 years – and had briefly left the recording session on this sunny Wednesday in April to interview guitar legend Mark Knopfler.

The interview was now over, Jörn was back – and we were amused by the idea of receiving instructions from a rock icon. But then Jörn's voice came through our studio headphones, slightly distorted from a mobile phone speaker. In English, he said, ‘I'm in the studio with a band right now, and I keep telling them how important good transitions are in songs.’

And suddenly Mark Knopfler said – practically to us, who were waiting to record the next take – ‘Oh man, it's ALL about the transitions.’

This sentence has echoed in my head over and over again in the past few days. It's been six months since those impressive recordings at Studio Nord, the first CDs have been pressed, the records are slowly cooling down – and for us as a band, it's still ‘all about the transitions’. Perhaps even more so than ever.

Because after countless rehearsals and hundreds, no, thousands of hours of work behind the scenes, Wüstenberg and ‘The King's Gambit’ are finally no longer waiting eagerly behind the curtain, but are taking to the stage.

The title track of our debut album has been out for two weeks now, and the enthusiastic reactions we have received so far fill us with great gratitude. And there could not have been a more fitting song for Wüstenberg's debut. When Franz had finished writing ‘The King's Gambit’, it slowly dawned on him how his new band should sound. A song like the starting point of a journey, a musical North Star. When we first met as a seven-piece band for rehearsals in December 2024, ‘The King's Gambit’ was the first song we played together.

‘Wüstenberg’ was born.

Since then, ‘The King's Gambit’ has been our opener for every rehearsal and soundcheck. And even as I write these lines, the mighty beat of ‘The King's Gambit’ is pounding in the background – setting the mood for another ‘transition’, the transition to the stage, and our support tour, which begins today: The folk rock legends ‘Fiddler's Green’ have invited us to be special guests on their 35th anniversary tour, and we are deeply grateful for this opportunity: 17 concerts in Germany and Switzerland in front of almost 20,000 people are no small feat for a band whose debut album is yet to be released.

By the time the next edition of ‘A Look in Between’ comes out, we'll already be on tour. The first concerts will have been played, the first shirts sweated through, the first violin bow hairs broken. We'll have already met some of you – and you'll have met us.We're looking forward to what's coming. To the Fiddler's. To you. And, to quote ‘The King's Gambit’: ‘the days to come’. Until then, just remember: it’s ALL about the transitions.

Torben