Casper Clausen has spent almost two decades as the leader of the Denmark synth-rock band Efterklang, who put out a Danish language LP last year called Altid Sammen. He’s also been involved with the side project Liima. Today, Clausen is announcing his debut solo album, Better Way, which will be out at the beginning of next year. It was produced by Sonic Boom, aka Peter Kember, who put out a new album of his own earlier this year.

Clausen is kicking things off with the extended jam “Used To Think,” which starts its 9 minutes out with an insistent groove and doesn’t let up the whole way through. “‘Used to Think’ was one of the first songs I wrote for Better Way a couple of years ago,” he said in a statement. “I had a run of some small shows around Portugal testing the new songs I was working on at the time, and this one became one of my favourites, I really like the energy of it.” He continued:

It was also the song that made me reach out to the producer Sonic Boom. He ended up mixing / co-producing the entire album. There is some inspiration from his band Spacemen 3 luring around in there and he lives in Sintra, very close to Lisbon where I’ve been the past couple of years, so it all made sense. To me “Used to Think” is like a Kaleidoscope with interchangeable lenses, each section of the song, a different pallet of colours and shapes. Before I stopped thinking I thought, open up, share more and think less.

Listen below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Used To Think”
02 “Feel It Coming”
03 “Dark Heart”
04 “Snow White”
05 “Falling Apart Like You”
06 “Little Words”
07 “8 Bit Human”
08 “Ocean Wave”

Better Way is out 1/9 via City Slang. Pre-order it here.