Harold van Lennep, Matilda Thompson and Andreas Ahrnberg first met at a writing session in Amsterdam in 2018. Little from that session made it into a finished record, but the connection lasted. Further sessions, writing camps and years of collaboration have now led to ANDØLD, a new trio whose debut single, ‘Dive’, also launches their label, ØBSCURE RECORDS.

Each arrives with a substantial history elsewhere in music. Belgian-Dutch producer van Lennep has released through Armada and Universal, with his single ‘Liberation’ passing 150 million streams. Swedish artist and songwriter Thompson has written for Pitbull, Becky G, Red Velvet and The Boyz. Ahrnberg’s work spans pop and more experimental music, with credits including Red Velvet, Super Junior, Jonghyun and GERD, alongside a Platinum-certified Swedish Eurovision entry and placements with Netflix.

Their combined experience could have made a debut feel weighed down by expectations. Instead, ANDØLD gave them room to work without a destination in mind.

“You can become a little numb to how much music is constantly being released and everything that’s happening around it. With ANDØLD, there was something really freeing about switching that off for a moment. We remember one session where we just opened a window, sat down at a piano that probably hadn’t been tuned in years, and started playing. The lines almost wrote themselves. There was no real agenda, no trying to make it fit anything.”

That approach has stayed with them. After years spent writing, producing and releasing music in different settings, the three found they could trust their experience without feeling obliged to prove it in every session. The result is melodic electronic music informed by their backgrounds in house, pop songwriting and music beyond either field.

‘Dive’ draws from deep and progressive house, indie dance and pop. Its emotional centre is a vocal from Thompson and fellow Swedish singer Marlene Strand, recorded together in unison into the same microphone. Captured largely in single takes, their voices blend so closely that they seem at times to form a third voice. Around them, the electronic production gradually grows in scale, giving the song room to work both as a private listen and at the end of a night out.

We have to express ourselves here whether it’s +25 or -25 degrees.

It might have been tempting to return to the vocal with more takes and a cleaner recording. ANDØLD felt they had already found what the track needed. “Actually no, we just hit that feeling straight away and never looked back haha. It was very liberating, we knew we could never up that feeling of that raw one take vocal.”

The melancholy running through ‘Dive’ is something the group recognise in music from Sweden and the wider Nordic region. For them, it comes less from a particular production method than from living through starkly different seasons and finding ways to express both sides of that experience.

“We have to express ourselves here whether it’s +25 or -25 degrees. Musically, we naturally end up reflecting our surroundings, just like an artist in LA might reflect theirs. The difference is that ours isn’t just summer and sunshine. It’s darkness, cold winters and these long stretches of the year that you just have to get through somehow. The contrast finds its way into the music. We’re in the dark, but we’re still dancing. Robyn really nailed getting that crying on the dancefloor feeling on the map.”

The trio’s individual routes into music also leave plenty of space for ideas from outside house. Ahrnberg grew up listening to the records played by his father and uncle, taking in 70s rock and hip-hop alongside artists such as Eric Prydz and deadmau5. That mix still shapes his instinct to follow a sound without worrying too much about where it belongs.

“My father and uncle had such a big impact on my taste of music growing up that I inevitably drew inspiration from it when starting my music career. It was weird as I had the same taste as a 55 year old man instead of my peers. I think you can still hear that in the way I make records now. I’ve never really cared that much about where something is supposed to come from.”

Thompson’s relationship with the songs is different. Having written in rooms where a track might eventually reach a K-pop group, an international pop artist or an electronic project, she finds it easier to write when she imagines someone else singing the result. Keeping a song for herself is rare.

“I actually struggle a lot with writing for myself, every line and melody has so much tension that I tend to forget the bigger picture of the song. You ask yourself, can I say this, can I sing this? So funny enough I always write with the mindset that it’s for somebody else and very, very rarely I feel that I want to keep it for me. But for the songs that ANDØLD is about to release it was very clear that it was our songs to release.”

Van Lennep has had to reconsider a different kind of pressure. His early single ‘Liberation’ reached a vast audience, although he says its success initially passed him by: he was not using Spotify during its first few years and only learned about its streaming figures from a housemate. For a time, the performance of his next releases troubled him. That comparison no longer determines whether he wants to put music out.

“If a song brings joy to at least one person, it’s a song worth releasing, and given that I usually enjoy my own songs…I think they’re worth releasing! The number of streams and all these other metrics are just a plus from there onwards.”

ANDØLD has grown through more than conventional studio sessions. The trio have hosted writing camps in places including Bruges and Tuscany, bringing artists together to work while leaving room for friendships and new collaborations to develop beyond the scheduled sessions. They see those connections as part of what makes the music possible.

“A lot of great music gets written at these camps, but honestly, the value goes beyond the songs themselves. The effect they can have on people is massive. So many have become close friends, started dating, gone on to work together and even created entirely new projects haha.”

That experience of building projects with other people feeds into ØBSCURE RECORDS. The label gives ANDØLD a home, with plans for a wider roster and future releases. The trio say they had looked for the right place to release their music and could not find one that felt entirely suited to them. They also wanted to create a different kind of space within a dance music industry they still experience as male-dominated.

If the next song takes us somewhere completely different, that’s all good

Their years in songwriting shaped one decision from the outset: every writer releasing on ØBSCURE will receive a percentage of the master, as well as their publishing share. For a team whose careers have taken them through writing rooms, production, A&R and artist development, that principle is part of the label’s foundation.

“We all come from songwriting, so the way writers are treated was naturally something we thought about from the beginning. People like RAYE and Justin Tranter have been really vocal about writers getting a fairer piece of what they help create, and that really resonated with us. So from day one, we knew we wanted every writer on our label ØBSCURE to get a percentage of the master, not just their publishing share.”

‘Dive’ establishes the project and the label at the same time, but ANDØLD are wary of allowing a first release to define everything that follows. They have seen how quickly a sound can harden into a formula once it connects with an audience.

“We never want to sit down and say “let’s make another Dive” or feel like an ANDØLD song has to have a certain tempo, sound or structure. The whole project started from trusting our intuition and following whatever feels exciting in the room. If the next song takes us somewhere completely different, that’s all good.”

‘Dive’ is released on 25 September 2026 via ØBSCURE RECORDS.