In the studio with Kasabian: ‘We never thought we’d see success again’

Kasabian’s Serge Pizzorno Trades Midnight Benders for a Structured Morning Routine — and a Ninth Album Built for Singing Back

Ninoda.com – After nearly two decades of building one of Britain’s most recognisable electronic-rock soundscapes, Kasabian frontman Serge Pizzorno has arrived at a creative philosophy that would have been unrecognisable to the band’s early-2000s incarnation. His ninth studio album, Act III, lands ten days after a BBC studio preview session conducted in the middle of Leicestershire farmland, where Pizzorno has replaced the sleepless, inspiration-chasing excess of his youth with a tightly scheduled four-to-five-hour daily work block. The shift, he insists, has made the music better — and more singable.

“A little bit of hunger is good for you. Keeps you going.”

That line, delivered over a cup of tea in a kitchen decorated with a distorted Count Duckula painting and a vintage apothecary cabinet, sets the tone for a conversation about discipline, melody, and what happens when a rock musician’s teenage sons keep staring at their phones.

The Studio: A Black Cube Guarded by a Gorilla

Reaching the recording space requires driving deep into rural Leicestershire to a gated property where Pizzorno’s wife Amy and two “unruly” dogs greet visitors. A framed photograph of the band’s recent Finsbury Park concert sits wrapped in bubble wrap at the foot of the staircase. Beyond the kitchen, past a scatter of discarded Nerf guns and through a second gate, lies a walled garden containing the studio itself: an austere black cube jutting into open countryside, flanked by a giant gorilla sculpture.

Pizzorno built the structure so he could work whenever inspiration struck, without commuting to a commercial facility. On days when no spark arrives, a basketball court sits just outside the garden wall. Inside, eccentric vintage synthesizers — many of which appear on Act III — crowd the room alongside wall art that doubles as acoustic dampening. A fridge holds milk for tea. A pharmacist’s sign, illuminated, reads “The Sergery,” a pun stretched to its limits in 2025 when Pizzorno received an honorary doctorate in music. In one corner, a gong waits in silence. Four bobblehead Kasabian dolls, rescued from the band’s Call music video, nod in unison as new material cues up.

The rules of the room are strict. Snacks are banned. Phones are banned. A film — typically something by David Lynch — may play on a screen in the background while Pizzorno tinkers with synths and guitars. No lunch break. Four or five hours, then done.

“That can be great. It adds to the atmosphere of a record. But for the last three albums, I’ve pretty much led a structured life, and I’m really digging it.”

He is referring to the old method: the “French poet life” of his early career, when he would stay awake for three consecutive days, chasing inspiration at the outer limits of human endurance. That era produced some of Kasabian’s most ferocious material, but Pizzorno now regards the structured approach as superior for sustained creative output.

Soulmate, Say You (Closer), and the Eagles Problem

The preview session opens with Soulmate, a funny and affectionate tribute to Amy powered by a peacocking guitar riff. Next comes Say You (Closer), whose message of together-ness brims with gorgeous three-part harmonies. It is, by Pizzorno’s own admission, the closest Kasabian have ever come to sounding like The Eagles — and the prospect of recreating those harmonies live is giving him genuine jitters.

“There are moments where it does sound like the Eagles, and there are moments where it sounds like three pissed up people in a pub. What I’m going to do, hopefully, is get the crowd to do that bit.”

Audience participation has become a defining feature of Kasabian’s live shows, and Pizzorno sees the harmonic passages as an invitation for thousands of voices to fill in the gaps. The album’s stated focus on what he calls “Tunes You Can Sing™” is entirely deliberate.

“I feel like it’s not a very melodic time in music. So I was personally yearning for hooks and verses that are as powerful as choruses. Like an Elton John song where the melody just breaks your heart.”

Hippie Sunshine: A Handbrake Turn in the Middle of a Tech Critique

The single Hippie Sunshine pushes the melodic ambition further. Its lairy, chanted chorus is suddenly interrupted by a twinkling piano breakdown — a structural gambit Pizzorno compares to 1960s records like Good Vibrations and Baron Saturday, where the middle section is essentially a handbrake turn that disorients the listener before snapping back.

“The first few times you hear it, you’re like, ‘Oh, that’s weird’. Then you get used to it, and it becomes the exciting bit, the part everyone waits for.”

But the musical contrasts serve a lyrical purpose beyond showmanship. The verses of Hippie Sunshine are a pointed critique of soulless tech oligarchs whose algorithms now dictate daily rhythms. Pizzorno seethes that “the heroes are running on empty,” while the bridge delivers a sober awakening in which the elite suddenly realise: “I’m a stone-cold killer.”

“We find ourselves, somehow, at the whim of people whose intentions we don’t really understand. They’re playing around with culture, and we don’t really know why, or where it’s going to end.”

He sees the downstream effects in his own teenage sons. Shouting “get off your phone” earns no attention, he notes. But a song that embeds the critique inside a catchy, singable structure — one that a teenager might hum without realising what it’s saying — carries the message further than any lecture. The structured life, it turns out, produces not just discipline but a sharper, more targeted voice.