The Great Calm, the third album for Belgian post-punk outift Whispering Sons, is set entirely in winter.

On the International Pop Underground, Whispering Sons vocalist Fenne Kuppens talks to Anthony Carew about the making The Great Calm, explaining how the first song she wrote for the record, Cold City, suggested the whole to come.

"When I was writing [Cold City], I had these clear images of a winter landscape," Kuppens offers, "and then I just took it to the whole record. It felt like winter, like something frozen in time."

The album's opening song, Standstill, suggests this 'frozen in time' theme by making its wintry city landscape evoke the past; Kuppens singing things like "behind every bend another memory rearing its ugly head" and "it seems I'm lost in time and I still can't face any of it".

"There's always a certain place that I just want to get away from," says Kuppens. "It's in all of the songs: 'I don't want to be here', 'I've got to get out of this place', 'I'm leaving it all behind'; stuff like that. I'm not sure if it's a place, or if it's a state of mind that I want to get rid of."

Feature image: Lucinde Wahlen