I remember sitting outside a venue somewhere in Italy a bunch of years back, my trusty Caparison Apple Horn Orange guitar in lap, waiting for everything getting ready for soundcheck. This somewhat annoying riff popped up from out of nowhere and I couldn't stop playing it. It had a cool, energetic drive. (I am deeply fascinated by the creative process; where is the stuff actually coming from?) This was the embryo to Freak of the Week, one of the tunes from Cooking with Pagans, the new Freak Kitchen record and the soundtrack to an astounding, animated 2D video in the works.

When writing songs I never ever think about keys, tonality, time, e t c, I just go for my gut feeling. What sounds good is good. Later on I realized the Freak of the Week riff was in the time signature of 11/4, was partly based on the somewhat harsh Indian raga Pantuvarali (also named Kamavardani), had loads of counterpoint non commonly used in metal music as well as quite nasty chord changes. Still, the trick is to fuse all these elements and make it accessible to everyone. We do not want to be smart ass musicians that are complicated for the sake of it. We want to have fun and rock out like any other band. And we do. But with a twist.

One day I had an e-mail from the stunning Juanjo Guarnido, author of the Blacksad books and top notch, former Disney animator. As an ignorant bastard I didn't have a clue who he was but was utterly flabbergasted by his work. I called Chris, our mighty fine bass player, who completely freaked out and enlightened my limited intellect about Juanjo. I asked maestro Guarnido if he would like to do the artwork for Cooking with Pagans and he was delighted to (actually, I think this was the purpose of his e-mail since he was a long time Freak Kitchen fan!) What he did could easily be described as, by far, our best cover to date. We are happy to the bone about it!

Juanjo didn't stop there however. He was always quite frustrated how his sophisticated animations would end up in a poor way on the big screen. Once in a lifetime he wanted to get it right and proposed to do an animated video to a tune from record. I proposed Freak of the Week which now had manifested into an actual song. He loved it.

Said and done. A Kickstarter took off and raised no less than a 152,000$ (animation is insanely expensive, drawing frame by frame in old school, wonderful 2D), much thanks to Guarnido spanking his comic book world buddies to cough up original art to donate to the project. The footage is quite insane and we are just thrilled and honoured to be part of the ride. The video will premiere at Comic Con in New York in October. A book is being written about this painstaking project as well, containing storyboards and art from the video and more.

� and it all started with myself noodling on the guitar while waiting for soundcheck somewhere in Italy. Life is weird and wonderful.