Joep Beving shares spellbinding new single "Venus" and hopes his album will resonate with people

"Venus" is the third piece to be shared from Beving's forthcoming Henosis album, after last month's "Unus mundus" and January's "Into The Dark Blue".

The compelling new single is one of 22 tracks featured on his upcoming record, which marks the final chapter in a trilogy, after 2017's Prehension and 2015's Solipsism.

Beving's new offering presents a more orchestral sound with more strings, introducing his piano later. Check it out below, and find out more about his Henosis record in our Q+A below that.

BEST FIT: Your new record is the final in the trilogy - did you always have the intention of making a trilogy?

Joep Beving: No. That idea came to me when working on Prehension. I was looking at the relation between the music I was writing at the time and my previous release Solipsism. I noticed it was more distant, more zoomed out and that gave me the idea to zoom out even more on the third. Creating a trilogy from the intimacy of Solipsism to the more vastness or oneness of Henosis.

Henosis has 22 tracks - did you write all the songs before putting the album together or was it a project that grew while putting it together?

Unlike with the first two albums, for Henosis I had a pre-conceived idea of what I was looking for, and started to write with different ideas in mind to try and express this. At one point I had some 26 demos and was struggling with converting these into an album. One day we had a session with Christian Badzura, my A&R label manager. He said, "give me an hour". He put all the demos in an order that made sense to all of us. We cancelled four demos and continued to work on the rest, making it a lengthy journey into space, with a beginning and an end.

What is the biggest thing you learnt about yourself or your music while making this record?

That you have to trust the process. You can quickly overthink things. The whole point is to understand that everything you do is part of the creation process and that you should try to not think too much.

Henosis is quite experimental and sees you introduce more synths and strings - when did you first get into synths? Was there anything, or any band in particular that made you want to explore those sounds?

I have always been into synths. Bought my first synth (juno-60) at the age of 16. The warmth and the texture and the idea that you can sculpt sound and morph it to create a sense of flowing or floating has always attracted me. As for influences, I think there are too many to mention. But I have been listening to Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Popol Vuh quite a bit in the past. More current day heros would include Greg Haines and Ben Lukas Boysen to just name a few.

Was the recording process behind the album quite intimate or did you have a big team?

Both. The writing process has been mostly me by myself and sometimes I was joined by Gijs van Klooster, who is the producer of the record and with whom I share a studio. Three tracks on the album were conceived together with Maarten Vos. For the recording and production the team has been somewhat bigger. I have worked together with Berlin-based Max Knoth for the orchestration of the orchestra pieces, Lorenz Dangel conducted the Babelsberg Film Orchestra. And then there was the close collaboration with Brussels-based Echo Collective on some of the pieces that were recorded in Brussels and with Cappella Amsterdam that we recorded at Wisseloord in Hilversum. Gijs has been with me throughout the whole journey. So yeah, it involved a bit more than just a piano and a couple of mics.

Now you’ve finished the album, is there anything you wish you could go back and change or do you treat it like a closed book?

Haha, that's a cheeky question especially since the record isn't out yet. I think most artists will tell you that the work is never finished. There's always things you can and maybe could do different. But it needs to be finished and out into the world at some point. And like with trusting the process, you just have to let go at some point. When it's good, it's good.

What are you most looking forward to this year?

Of course I really hope that the new music will resonate with people. I hope that they will want to invest the time to listen through the whole thing from beginning to end and that their investment will be rewarding. If this is the case it will be amazing to perform the pieces with all the great musicians that are with me on this project. That's what I am looking forward to most. It's exciting and a little daunting at the same time I have to be honest.