CHOROPHOBIA means fear of dancing, something that Dutch duo Weval admit to suffering from when they were younger. But it’s an anxiety that Harm Coolen and Merijn Scholte Albers conquered for the release of their fourth album, the follow-up to 2023’s Remember. “We said to each other, ‘Let’s make a dance record,’” Scholte Albers tells Apple Music. “Before, we’d never dared do it and always made ‘listening’ records. But we got a lot of energy from the idea and the creative process became way more fluid.” It’s definitely a dance record, with 11 tracks that veer from “MOVEMENT”, which evokes the spirit of 3 am at a 1990 rave, to the synth-heavy hypnotiser “HEAD FIRST”, before smashing everyone’s resolve to sit down with the KILIMANJARO-featuring wig-out “OPEN UP THAT DOOR”. “We were always afraid of making a dance tune, and we wanted to see if we could change up the process,” says Coolen. “All our previous records were made with unlimited time and we loved that, but instead of looking at a track for three years, working on it almost every month to see if it gets any better, we found an urgency in our writing. For the first record [2016’s Weval], we only had one synthesiser and now we have so many tools and friends and vocalists to reach out to.” The sense of urgency was, in part, brought about by Scholte Albers’ packed schedule. While making the album, he was also writing, directing and scoring his first feature film, Straf, which he describes as “dark, but full-on comedy”. As if that wasn’t enough, they directed the video for “OPEN UP THAT DOOR” themselves. “I think that week was super crazy because we had to finish the record on Monday, produce the music video, and shoot it on Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday, we played fabric in London,” says Scholte Albers. Read on and don’t be afraid to dance as Weval take you through each track on CHOROPHOBIA. “CHOROPHOBIA” Merijn Scholte Albers: “I think we finished 90 per cent of the record, or maybe we thought it was 100 per cent finished, and I played these chords on the piano just for fun. We thought it would be nice to have an element of the fear in the record, and then Harm plugged in the mic and started singing with this crazy granulator machine, with super weird delays.” Harm Coolen: “We’re admitting that we’re a little bit afraid of dancing, so we wanted to lean into that fear. It was funny that multiple people noticed the sound at the end and said, ‘Did you sample “Toxic” from Britney Spears?’ Sometimes, you think nobody listens to our own little nerdy stuff, and then suddenly people notice all those little details.” MSA: “Let’s make it clear: We didn’t sample Britney Spears.” “MOVING ON” MSA: “This was one of the first tracks when we realised we wanted to make the more cheerful, outgoing dance stuff. We talked about the BPM being an average of 125. I played this track in the slower tempo and then we sped it up and it sounded so funky. And Harm started singing on it. It was such a fun process and I think you can also hear that. There are so many elements because we were like, ‘Oh, this is also nice. This is also nice.’ We had this whole studio built, but those parts are from my phone. We put it in the analogue synths and then it sounds super rich and layered. But it all started with just a phone app. That’s a nice thing with the record: It’s really cheap stuff combined with rich analogue synths.” “MOVEMENT” MSA: “This track has a bassline which we took from a very old track of ours, ‘The Most’, and then it was played live. So we pitched it and re-edited it, but then we played it in clubs with only the bassline, with the kick drum underneath, and it always worked because it’s such a happy beat. I love how the drum sounds—I’m proud of the snappiness of it. Sometimes, you create a drum track and then you still have to polish it. But I also discovered that if you choose the right samples, you don’t have to mix the hell out of it.” HC: “Because we’d been playing it in the DJ sets, we realised we should finish it—and not in a subtle, calm way. We kept that energy. So this was a good example where the people on the dance floor told us to put it on the record.” “JUST FRIENDS” HC: “This was a funny one. I was pretty busy running the ship on the days when Merijn was shooting his movie and I’d make music in the evenings. Instead of approaching it like work, I treated it like playing a video game. I had this habit of spending evenings on the couch, starting new songs with no pressure. And I started this little idea of playing with the chords, but it was 11 pm and I wanted to go to bed. My phone wasn’t around and I almost left it, but I grabbed it and the first thing I subconsciously sing is the lyrics of this song. We used the little recordings from that iPhone and dubbed them with a proper mic. The next day, Merijn said, ‘Oh, you made something super nice.’ And I said, ‘Huh? Is that so?’” “HEAD FIRST” (feat. Nsanshi) MSA: “We had this really funny session with KILIMANJARO because he arrived at the studio and he brought his brother, Michael [the artist/producer Nsanshi]. Harm immediately gave them two mics and was blasting instrumental tracks, and they were going for it. We recorded three hours of crazy stuff and there was this small bit of a fun, shouting thing from his brother. Because we’ve never made tracks with those kind of vocals, we immediately got super energetic.” HC: “When Josh [KILIMANJARO] and Michael came over, it was like they were playing a sport together. Michael gave all the energy and we said, ‘Cool. Let’s take this and build something around it.’” “DOPAMINE” MSA: “This one started when I finished all the shooting days for the movie and I was exhausted, so I took some time off, but then I felt the itch to go to the studio because I didn’t make music for a long time.” HC: “A long time—that’s a month for you. I think when Merijn started this initial idea, we did more DJ sets again and we felt that wild energy during them. But it’s such a nice form of wildness. We were reinventing what we wanted to do in our DJ sets because we tend to love super chill, mellow music. Then we had the idea of bringing more of that bold wildness into our studio process. ‘DOPAMINE’ has such a dry-sounding hook, it has a sort of comedy element to it.” MSA: “I saw Jamie xx playing it in a big stadium, and that’s super nice that a track like that goes to a lot of places outside of our life and DJ shows.” “THIS IS…” HC: “This is such a fun little ingredient to kick off the second round. The first time I flipped the vinyl, I didn’t know which side I chose because I didn’t look at it, but I heard the beginning of ‘CHOROPHOBIA’ and I was like, ‘Oh yes. This is the B-side.’” “BETTER” MSA: “When we’d finished the demo for ‘BETTER’, we thought it was a super joyful, groovy, dancey, disco-y vibe, so we said, ‘Let’s go for it.’ I always saw it as one of the tracks that really fits on this concept, without knowing that we were going to make ‘DOPAMINE’, ‘HEAD FIRST’ and all this other stuff.” HC: “This was a good example of us wanting to get out of our comfort zone and write with other people, which was exciting. I went to [singer-songwriter] Richard Orofino’s apartment in New York and we wrote for two hours straight. It’s cool to learn so much about writing with other people. Merijn and me are used to going so deep into the rabbit holes, which I love, but it was cool to be with a stranger saying, ‘Let’s try to make a song after an hour.’ Merijn took that demo to the US and remixed it into this more funky—and better—track we have now.” “OPEN UP THAT DOOR” (feat. KILIMANJARO) MSA: “This was some of the most fun we had in the studio with KILIMANJARO and it’s also inspired by DJing. I think he actually sang this hook on ‘DOPAMINE’, but we loved it so much and we thought it was such a fun vocal to play around with that we made it into a new track. It had the gibberish kind of singing from his brother underneath the whole track, which was so groovy and fun to hear.” HC: “We always wanted to make a music video and with this song, KILIMANJARO’s delivery and the lyrics, we came up with the idea. What if it’s about the fact that you’re afraid of dancing? The character has an extroverted side when he’s talking and then suddenly it becomes a dance party and he has a problem. We collaborated with a friend of ours, Bear Damen, who made videos for James Blake and [Benny Sings with] Mac DeMarco. For us, it was a full-circle moment to make this little film, and it was so heavy in terms of time because Merijn still had his movie to finish, but we’re really glad we did it.” “MERCATOR” MSA: “This track is an ode to the place where we had all these house parties in Mercator Square, Amsterdam. We play it live at every show now, so that’s a sign that it works on the dance floor and we get so much back from the audience when the kick and the snare drops. It’s a bit more on the emotional side, but that’s why we started making music—when we went to clubs ourselves more than 10 years ago, we experienced the feeling of having goosebumps while dancing.” HC: “Mercator Square was a hub where all our friends just could ring the door and step in. We wrote a part of this record based on this picture of a friend of ours preparing for a house party. He’s DJing in a silly setup, with one hand on a bag of chips and the other on this old-school computer mouse selecting songs.” “FREE” HC: “This track also started on that couch and I wrote it with my phone. I thought the initial vocal lines sounded a bit R&B-ish, but a bit cheesy with my voice. The lyrics aren’t the most abstract, but it didn’t really work with my vocals so we asked Megan de Klerk, who’s a friend of ours, to give it a try. We had her input on the vocals as well as the lyrics and ended up with more of that ’90s feel. The reference for it was that song from The Beach, All Saints’ ‘Pure Shores’. You can’t bring everybody on tour, but I’m up for getting a new spin and trying it with Megan on stage where we can. I’d 100 per cent love to dive into this again.”