Belfast duo CHALK's debut album 'Crystalpunk' is a ten-track surge of serrated guitars, industrial pulse and warehouse euphoria that wrestles with identity, inheritance and the strange business of growing up in the North of Ireland. It's big in sound and bigger in intent, pulsing with urgency – and crucially, possibility. Right now, though, they're in London, "working on some new music and rehearsing new tracks ahead of the tour next month. It's been a busy few weeks," they offer, "but we're excited to get everything ready for the live shows."

2026 has already kicked off at full tilt. As they put it, "It's been exciting to really nail down the new songs we wrote for the record and bring them to life in a live setting." Even the press cycle has become part of the process: "Talking through it has helped us understand the record as a whole a lot more ourselves."

Work on 'Crystalpunk' formally began last May, though the roots go further back. "We had been building up ideas for a few years before that," they explain. "When we finally started properly, there was already a foundation there." Six months of writing followed, squeezed between summer festivals and back-and-forth trips to their producer Chris's studio in Belfast, before a final week in Attica Audio in Donegal in September "to bring everything together."

The name arrived early and stuck. "Ross came up with the name Crystalpunk. When he said it, we sat with it for a while, and it started to make a lot of sense." It captured something instinctive: "There are those raw punk leanings alongside the electronic and techno influences." Coining the term felt liberating. "Giving the album that name almost felt like defining a genre for ourselves. It gave us a lot of freedom to go in different musical directions that we might not have felt as confident exploring otherwise."