There are bands that carefully construct their sound, polish the edges and make sure everything lands exactly where it is supposed to. Then there are bands like Polarized, where the interesting stuff seems to happen when things stop working as planned.

Based in The Hague, Polarized are Stephan Kaffa (guitar, bass and vocals), Manfred Gstrein (drums) and Maurice Schillemans (guitar and bass), three musicians whose histories overlap through years of playing in bands, watching bands and generally refusing to stay in one musical lane for too long. Their debut album, Subject: Object, is finally arriving on 2nd October, on vinyl, cassette and streaming platforms. It is a record that has been a long time coming and, according to Stephan, an even longer pregnancy.

The band’s history goes back much further than the record itself. Stephan and Maurice have known each other since high school, playing together in various bands before Polarized eventually took shape. Manfred entered the picture through the wider Hague music scene, where the three crossed paths at gigs and performances. “We all loved that band and became friends,” Stephan recalls of seeing Manfred’s former band I Drive A UFO. But Polarized’s route to its current line-up wasn’t exactly straightforward. “We’ve had a long kinda Spinal Tap history of members leaving/combusting,” he says, before explaining how Manfred eventually became the obvious choice when they needed a drummer.

All three are Hague natives, and their relationship with the city is complicated. The Hague carries a reputation as a rock city, but Stephan sees a place where the mythology sometimes outweighs the reality. “It’s a weird city,” he says. “There’s a lot of music being made (good and bad) but i don’t think there’s a real scene.” That sense of something missing is partly rooted in the disappearance of the small underground venues that once gave the city its character. Manfred remembers SCSI cell in particular, a tiny venue where some genuinely adventurous music could be experienced at dangerously close quarters. “I miss the days of SCSI cell in the Hague, the best noise bands played in that tiny tiny place,” he says, remembering performances by Oxes, Deerhoof and Paper Chase. For a band like Polarized, those kinds of spaces matter. Not because they provide a career path, but because they create the conditions for weird ideas to become real ones.

The band’s members have travelled through post-rock, noise, avant-garde, electronica, punk and experimental music, with previous projects including I Drive A UFO, Droppings, Fine China Superbone, Soft Posh, Carbon Music and Black Door Mine. Stephan also operates an ambient/noise project under the name Momentum Lost, while Manfred has collaborated with Kevin Branstetter of Trumans Water on the album Enter and plays in the more pop-oriented Future Hearts with his brother Leo.

Manfred’s musical world stretches from Aids Wolf, Arab on Radar and US Maple to Trumans Water, Deerhoof, The Fall and Captain Beefheart. Greg Saunier of Deerhoof has been particularly important to his approach to drums, especially the unpredictability of improvisation. His guiding principle is simple: “I like adventurous music, it has to tickle my brain otherwise i get bored easily.”

Stephan’s list is similarly uncooperative, jumping from Arvo Pärt to Imperial Triumphant, Autechre to The Carpenters, and Xiu Xiu to cLOUDDEAD. Maurice throws Wiegedood, King Diamond, Squarepusher, Sonic Youth, Unwound, Blonde Redhead and FACS into the mix. There is no obvious formula there. And that’s probably the point.

Polarized’s songwriting has evolved considerably. In the beginning, Stephan would often construct complete demos before bringing them to the band, while Maurice might arrive with a hook that Stephan would develop into a full arrangement. More recently, the process has become far more collective. “Someone would come up with a riff/hook and we’d start putting everything together in our rehearsal space/studio,” Stephan explains.

The same instinct can be heard in their new single, “She Said So”. The song originally existed in a completely different form. It wasn’t working. Rather than forcing it into submission, the band eventually abandoned the version they had and found something else. “At a certain point during practice we were fed up with it not working and somehow stumbled upon the version it has become” .

Lyrically, “She Said So” explores the uncomfortable territory of knowing you’re being lied to while still wanting to believe the person doing the lying. It’s a familiar human contradiction: suspicion fighting against hope.The accompanying video also reaches back into the band’s history, partly based on an old idea Stephan and Manfred had during their time in Droppings.

The band hopes to play as much as possible over the coming months, whether that means touring properly, taking support slots or simply turning up wherever someone will have them. There are already ambitions to start recording new music again.

The Hague may not have the underground infrastructure it once had. Small venues have disappeared, and the idea of a coherent local scene remains questionable. But the musicians haven’t disappeared. They are still making records, still forming bands, still trading ideas and still trying to make something that sounds unlike everything else.

Subject: Object arrives 2 October on vinyl, cassette and digital platforms. Recorded by the band themselves and mixed and mastered by Greg Saunier of Deerhoof, it represents the end of one long process and, if the band gets its way, the beginning of another.

Celebrate the release at the grey Space: Release Party Extravaganza: Subject: Object by Polarized – The Grey Space in the Middle – Space for fundamental creativity

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