With their first single in three years, Ordinary Love, released at the back end of 2025, we caught up with Bristol's Elder Island to chat about the release, the space they gave themselves to create, remixes, and more

Date published: 14th Jan 2026

“We didn’t want to rush things. We wanted to do it properly, the way we wanted to do it.”

Three years away is a long stretch for any band, but for Katy Sergeant, Luke Thornton, and David Havard of Bristol’s renowned indie electronica outfit Elder Island, it wasn’t time spent drifting. It was time they chose to take, time they hadn’t really afforded themselves before, time to be truly intentional and give ideas a space to breathe.

“We’ve just been hunkering down really, and making music,” said Luke Thornton, “We’ve had a bit of time off, but we’ve been collaborating, getting our heads together, and trying to figure out new stuff.”

“Getting our heads together is a really good way to put it,” added vocalist Katy Sargent, “I feel like before we were chasing our tails, so we wanted to stop and take stock, and do it properly this time.”

 

Official music video for Ordinary Love, directed by Nic Kane 

 

At the back end of 2025, we finally heard the spoils of such space. 'Ordinary Love', their first release in three years, is a hypnotic, dance-led glimpse into the world Elder Island have been quietly crafting throughout their time away.

Evolving around a central arpeggio, whilst Sargent’s vocals float atop with opiate menace, it was one the band “always knew was a gooden” and actually the first they mixed and mastered, with most of the track's spine coming from one original session.

”It was just that arpeggiator bleeping around for a while,” says David Havard. “But that allowed us a platform to explore. Because it was more dance-led, we were using synthesisers a lot, and once we had some of the chord progressions and bass sounds built from that backbone beat, we just settled into a nice, locking groove.”

“A lot of our writing approach always uses that, not formula, but method. It’s our workflow that we use to generate ideas, get the ball rolling and develop the basic parts, which then gives us something to work off and inspire the next stage.”

Somewhere in the background of those sessions sat a loose constellation of reference points: the physical thud of Overmono’s drum programming, the soft-focus glide of Air’s Moon Safari, the funk of William Onyeabor, even a Kylie deep cut drifting through the room. Not as templates - “I don’t think there's anyone specific on this album,” notes Thornton - but as textural touchpoints that ebbed in and out across the process.

 

 

'Ordinary Love' was one the band admit they knew was a “good idea” that had a real “identity.” An identity only sharpened when Sargent’s vocals began to take shape. As with much of Elder Island’s sonics, the vocal form of the track began instinctively, with the meaning catching up.

Fragments arrived early, with Sargent “just riffing” in sessions, words and phrases surfacing impulsively in the room before they’ve properly settled. Hooks follow in that same half-formed state, lines muttered and felt rather than fixed; Havard laughs, “you can’t always tell what Katy’s singing when she’s riffing around. It’s muffled, but you can hear the hook and the melody line there.” 

Other ideas come from further back, pulled from memory and notebooks, meaning that with 'Ordinary Love', the central line - “free me of desire, I just want 'Ordinary Love'”- was there from the start, with Sargent teasing a theme out rather than writing anew.

Yet, even within that process, Sargent and the band's hypnotic musicianship shine through. 

“Often, the way I put them together is as if we’re playing together,” she says. “I’ve got quite a lot of loopers all stacked up in the studio. So I can loop to one thing and then bank it on a different looper.

“I can bring it in and out of different sections, and then play different lines in front of each other and mix them in. That can sometimes be quite an interesting way to create new melodies and new matches with different vocal lines”

Somewhere within that process, the song’s meaning surfaced for Sargent too: “conquering desires, and choosing the right decision in love with your head and your heart. Not just lusting after things that aren’t maybe achievable.”

“Sounds quite big when you say it like that,” she laughs.

 

“Conquering desires, and choosing the right decision in love with your head and your heart. Not just lusting after things that aren’t maybe achievable.”

 

In the past, 'Ordinary Love'’s completion may have marked a near-imminent release for the band. But - especially given this track was finished back in 2024 - their newfound ethos meant that rather than rush a return on the strength of one song, the band chose to wait until everything else they’d been working on felt aligned.

That decision came with its own set of pressures, the kind that surface with any venture outside your comfort zone. “It’s funny,” Sargent says, “you think it’s going to be different, like you’ve got everything ready, and you can do this, and then you’re still like, AHH, you’re still flapping around trying to get things done. Like, oh, I forgot about all of these assets that we need.”

“It’s a double-edged sword,” Thornton adds, “It’s nice taking your time, and there's a lot of care and duty in it, but there’s also the thing of needing to work to afford to do this, especially in today's music climate.

“And you don’t want to stay away from fans too long, because you don’t want people to forget about you. 

“It’s a weird thing that, isn’t it?”

 

 

'Ordinary Love' acting as the jump point for this recalibration makes sense, particularly given the track’s emphasis on movement and momentum. Danceability has always sat somewhere in Elder Island’s DNA, but here it feels deliberately leaned into, and has the intoxicating air of a band having fun.

Havard explains that much of what the band have been working towards recently shares a similar drive - “Everything has been about energy, colour, playful, fun” - with 'Ordinary Love' emerging as the clearest distillation of it.

“It’s definitely the core backbone focus,” he says. “Especially when trying to work on live stuff now and trying to develop the live show. It’s been the track that we’ve used as the marker to figure out how you programme all the rest of the tracks as well.

 

“When this one works live, we'll use that as the basis for how we programme the rest.”

 

Those live shows, long a cornerstone of Elder Island’s reputation, look set to tilt further toward the party, too. While the band’s softer, more hypnotic moments aren’t going anywhere, 'Ordinary Love' has provided space for an injection of groove and physicality into the set. 

“Every time we go out and do a show, there’s a rethink of what equipment we’re using,” says Havard. “Putting 'Ordinary Love' into the set brings that dance element and energy. What can be achieved visually with lighting syncs and the possibilities there are really fun."

More broadly, the approach is one of “rebuild and regrow”: starting small, growing steadily, and letting the spectacle expand alongside the rooms they play.

“More extensions of the set, more mixable moments,” Havard explains. “Keeping it quite raw electronic music in that kind of way.”

Those mixable moments are where Elder Island have always thrived. Tracks bleeding into one another, reshaped in motion, infused into new forms.

“It’s better for the audience and for us,” says Sargent. “If you fuse songs together, you create this weird limbo state, and it’s always sounded so interesting to us.”

 

 

That same instinct - songs as things to be bent, stretched, and reimagined - is crystallised in Elder Island’s relationship with remixes. Less a bolt-on, more an extension of how they’ve always moved between worlds, and a vital cog in their album cycles.

“I guess we’ve always grown up with electronic music influences as well,” says Havard. “Coming from both the indie world and the electronic world, we really learnt and educated ourselves with quite a lot of music when we were at uni.”

It was a time when remix culture wasn’t a novelty but a language in itself. “That was when electro was massive, and Erol Alkan was remixing every track possible,” he laughs. “So we’ve kind of grown up with remixes being a big part of that culture. It always felt like a good way to find a different version of a track and put it out.”

That mindset has never really left them. “In some ways, we almost remix our own tracks when we’re playing them live,” Havard says. “So having different artists, people you respect, people you’re into, put their own spin on it just feels natural.”

Sometimes, a little too natural.

“There’s definitely some in our collection where the remix is almost better than the original track,” he admits.

“Ahhh, Dave!” Sargent shoots back, laughing.

As for who they’ve been speaking to about reworking 'Ordinary Love', that remains firmly under wraps for now. But be assured, they're “compiling a wish list.”

 

“There’s definitely some in our collection where the remix is almost better than the original track"

 

For now, that patience remains central, not just for the band, but for listeners finally getting a first taste of something quietly cooked up over the last three years. A notion Sargent relates to: “Even just releasing 'Ordinary Love' has felt really exciting.”

Still, the single isn’t being framed as a grand reset, but as the right moment to start moving again. “We wanted to think about everything before putting music out,” Thornton explains. “That’s why we released it now.”

“It’s a little baby step before jumping. In 2026, we’ll be doing a lot more.”

 

 

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