London post punk trio Black Doldrums announce their third studio album, Repetition Compulsion, arriving November 13th, 2026 through Fuzz Club. Its first single, Repetition, is a mesmeric and emotive examination of the unconscious patterns that govern love, behaviour and human connection.
Built almost entirely around a single riff, the song turns repetition into both subject and compositional method. Its sepulchral momentum, driving rhythm and dual vocals create a feeling of being trapped inside a recurring thought.
At the album’s emotional centre is the creative and personal partnership between founding members Kevin Gibbard and Sophie Landers. As Gibbard explains: “The songs are either about Sophie, for Sophie, or inspired by her.”
On the first single, he unfolds: “The song came from an idea to challenge ourselves to write something around one riff and something dirge-like. It also fit the theme of the album and the topic of repetition by literally experimenting with repetition in the musical sense. The opening line – “is your mind split in two” – is something taken from our conversations on our many long walks around London where Sophie was talking about the psychological term splitting. It seemed to fit the feel of the song and theme of the album so much so it now opens up both the album and our live shows. I consider it very much Sophie’s song because she was the source of inspiration and that’s why we have her backing vocals fairly prominent to create a dual vocal effect. I also had the after-thought to have Sophie mime the first line in the video which is actually her line anyway.”
Repetition Compulsion completes the band’s interconnected “State of Mind Trilogy,” following 2022’s Dead Awake and 2024’s In Limerence. Taking its title from the concept explored by Freud, the eleven-track record considers our tendency to recreate familiar emotional situations, destructive behaviours and inherited cycles. These ideas extend from intimate relationships into collective memory, politics and mental wellbeing, asking whether the patterns left by the past can ever truly be broken.
ZR