Track By Track: Liminal Project’s ‘Liminal Project’

So far this decade, darkwave trio, Liminal Project, have been one of the constant acts in Liverpool’s esoteric underground scene.

Exponents of dark moodscapes that hit with force, having bolstered any live show they have been a part of since 2022, today Liminal Project’s hard work finally pays off as they unveil their long-awaited self-titled debut LP.

Written by singer Roxane Bigot, bassist Michael Coates and guitarist Zoe Nixon, the Ashley Milward-produced Liminal Project sees the band mirror the intensity of their live show to tape. It’s a facet where a lot of bands fall short, but not Liminal Project. These songs, just as vibrant from the vaults as they are in a live setting.

The evocative one two-punch of Liminarite and Un Nuit De Enfer, spearheaded by Coates’ feverish basslines, while Bigot’s stirring vocal performance on the likes of Crab Hunter, Track D and Goose is part narcotic, part spectre emerging through fog.

Intersecting darkwave with the drive of Tinderbox-era Siouxsie and The Banshees (The Walker, Maree Salee and Linus), Liminal Project round out 2025 emphatically with their debut long-player. In some ways, it marks an end to the band’s first chapter; Nixon having left the band and replaced by Laura Shea on bass with Coates switching to guitar, and it’s this shift that will be interesting in the version 2.0 of the band and where they travel to next.  

Earlier this week, Bigot and Coates shared some thoughts on this, as well as giving us a run down of each song on Liminal Project, the influences behind it, and more.

S13: Before we delve into the new album, I want to ask about your past influences. Can you remember the first piece of music that really moved you, and do you think that moment has carried through to the music you make today?

Roxane Bigot: “The first music that moved me was definitely by Annie Lenox, especially her album Diva, which my parents used to listen to a lot. I remember standing on a stool in my bedroom around age eight, singing to Eurythmics and pretending I was her. For my seventh or eight birthday I got an amazing gift from my parents, a small CD player. They gave me access to a part of their collection, and I remember my favourite albums being those by Blur, Eurythmics, The Divine Comedy, Tina Turner, The Beatles, Sinead O’Connor, Air, Kate Bush and ABBA. I listened to these ‘til they were so scratched every song jumped.”

Michael Coates: “I remember The Beatles being the first band that caught my attention as a child, and I was obsessed! They are still my favourite band, are The Beatles an influence on the music I make for Liminal Project, though? No not at all.”

S13: Your self-titled debut album is finally out. Can you tell us the about the writing process behind it?

RB: “Mikey and I met back in 2022, and soon after started making music together. Typically, Mikey writes the bass and guitar lines, while I write my lyrics like poems. We then meet up in the studio and record the instrumental, then I mold my lyrics to it, which strangely works almost every time! If a song I’ve written doesn’t fit the instrumental, we keep it aside for another project rather than butchering it.

“As for the inspiration behind the songs, Mikey has his own which he puts into notes and I have my own themes woven into the lyrics, so a song that might be quite sad or romantic to him might simply be about a walk on the beach to me!”

MC: “Yeah for each song on this album, I would write a bass line, and structure a song using just the bass, then I would write some guitar parts to accompany it, however Zoe wrote the guitar parts on the tracks Midnight Blue, Track D and Linus. Then we will take the song ideas to my friends Ash Lerczak’s (Double Echo, Zombina and the Skeletones) house, and then with his help record them and turn them into full instrumental tracks. After a track is complete Roxy adds lyrics. Ash co-produced, mixed and mastered all the tracks on this album. It has been great to work with him; he is a true genius.”

S13: Liminarite and Midnight Blue are the two tracks that have been out for a couple of years, and they provide the bookends to the record. Was that intentional or did it just happen this way?

MC: “It was intentional. Liminarité is usually the opening song of our set and Midnight Blue has often been our closing track. I think it also fits very nicely.”

RB: “Mikey came up with the order for the tracks to be arranged in, and I thought it really fitting. I actually never noticed this, but I guess it feels natural to order them that way.”

S13: Was Un Nuit De Enfer inspired by the film?

RB: “By Une Nuit d’Enfer I assume you mean From Dusk Till Dawn from 1996?”

S13: Yeah.

RB: “I absolutely adore this movie, I’ve seen it more times than I can remember! But I had no idea this was its French title, it didn’t inspire the song, although I guess its themes are fitting to the mood of the song. ‘Une nuit d’enfer’ is just a corny French expression, literally ‘a hell of a night’, nothing else to it.”

S13: The Walker got me thinking about how you construct your songs. Do you all bring separate parts into the studio or is it more organic than that?

RB: “As I was detailing earlier, we usually do bring separate parts to the studio rather than write together. The things I write are often personal, and detailed, not really spurs of the moment. It’s really hard to come up with interesting writing in a room with people jamming around me. However, I like listening to guitar or bass lines Mikey and Laura have come up with and start thinking about which of my poems would fit the melody and atmosphere. We often listen to their demos in the car on the way to gigs, it’s a more relaxed and creative space than a windowless practice room after a day’s work.”

S13: Dan Les Colines translates roughly to being “In the hills”. Along with Maree Salee, these songs seem to focus on surroundings that are quite a world away from the frontiers that most would associate with darkwave. What were the ideas behind these songs?

RB: “Dans Les Collines is a bit of a play on words, it’s quite a sexual song, the song is quick like a fling.

“Marée Salée on the other hand is very matter of fact, and so much more drawn out. It’s probably my favourite song on the album! It’s inspired by my favourite beach in my home town, called La Fresnay. From this beach you can see a castle on the opposite coast far in the distance, Le Fort La Latte. The song starts with a very literal description of my surroundings on the beach, and ends with an almost mythical feel, the bird of revenge.”

S13: If feels like Car Song has a bit of an “in-joke” kind of vibe about it. True or way off the mark?

RB: “Funnily enough it is a bit of a joke, or more like a reference. When Mikey played the instrumental demo to me, my first thought was ‘The Key to Her Ferrari, Thomas Dolby!’ I love this song so much, it has such a ‘car’ feel to it I can’t describe it, excellent vibes. None of my poems would fit the melody, so different from the rest of our songs, and it was quite a frustrating process trying to practice it before recording. Eventually I decided to try writing something in the moment (for once) and we ended up with this song about a car crash, essentially. It didn’t have a name, and became the car song, as a nod to Thomas Dolby.”

MC: (Laughs) “That is kind of true for another reason as well. It’s a song that’s been around for a while and I have always loved it. I remember writing it after feeling very creative after our UK tour with Bootblacks in 2022. Zoe unfortunately hated it, so we didn’t play it often, and it nearly went on the scrap heap all together. It took a little while for Roxy to come around to liking it. I think she loves it now? So it’s one that I’m very happy to have on the album because I have had to advocate and push for it. It’s also a track which I think reflects a part of mine and Roxane’s personalities which the other tracks don’t.”

S13: Can you tell us the story behind Crab Hunter?

RB: “Crab Hunter was another difficult song to write, the instrumental reminded me a lot of the soundtrack from To Live and Die in LA by Wang Chung, besides not having much in common technically speaking. 

“So I wanted the song to be just as good as the soundtrack, and have a movie feel to it. I would change all my lyrics at the last minute in the bus between work and the recording studio, until the last few sessions when we really had to think about wrapping things up. We had this lingering thought that Crab Hunter sounded like the name of a racehorse, and so I went with that. The words Crab Hunter were a bit of a stem, an inside joke of which I can’t remember the origin. There were so many drafts to this song, I’m sure the next album will hold some more horse-inspired tracks.”

MC: “As for the name origin, Ash named the instrumental demo Crab Hunter and the name stuck. It definitely does sound like a racing horse name.”

S13: Track D really feels like you capture the essence of what the Liminal Project is all about. What do you remember about writing it?

MC: “I think that Track D definitely captures the essence of what Liminal Project was about from 2022 –2024. It’s probably my favourite song on the album as well.

“The ideas for Track D and Midnight Blue came about at the same time. Those two tracks were born from a jam session Zoe and I had at trailer park rehearsals studios which was our first rehearsal space. It was a cold and dingy place, but it was very inspiring for me at the same time. I loved that room.

“Zoe had some basic guitar ideas, and we just sat on the cold floor for a few hours one night as I hammered out some bass lines for them.

“I was able to have a lot of fun playing around with digital effect boxes, and baritone guitar for those tracks as well.”

RB: “Track D is another love song, this one really quite personal, although really vague in the wording. It’s filled with nostalgia.”

S13: Goose feels like you’re really into your groove. You’re almost at the heart of post-punk here. As you were writing the album, did you feel more confident as you approached the final stages of recording it?

MC: “I’m not sure if I felt confident whilst writing that song as I wrote the bass line for Goose after a really heavy week, on some Sunday at 8am in our RPM practice room after having no sleep for about two days. I played that bass line for hours, and it originally had some shit grungy and depressing lyrics to accompany it. I love that Roxy’s lyrics are about geese, it brings a much happier vibe to what could of been just another sad song.”

RB: “Goose was quite straight forward to record, I wrote the lyrics in one day in a café in Wavertree. I had a draft in my notes started when I saw some geese by the canal in Manchester, waiting to be picked up to go play a gig someplace else. It is literally an éloge to geese, such beautiful and smart animals! I really liked Mikey’s bass line on this, calm and groovy, like a goose walking.”

MC: “Yeah, it definitely sounds how its named, love that!”

S13: Linus is another with a strong post-punk aesthetic. Do you all remember what you were listening to when you were making the album?

RB: “The writing of the album spans more than two years, and a lot of music has passed through our ears during this time. But amongst the albums that really marked me in this time, I remember It’ll End in Tears by This Mortal Coil, Soon by Hana Stretton, Euphoria by Insides, and La Ragazza Dalla Pelle Di Luna by Piero Umiliani. There was also a lot of Buffy Sainte-Marie and Linda Perhacs. As always, I also listened to a lot of Chanson Française, mostly Michel Berger and Nicoletta.”

MC: “Loads of European post-punk Russian doomer, and American darkwave. I was heavily into bands like Ploho, Nürnberg, Twin Tribes and Blind Seagull when Liminal Project started. Also Soft Kill, who inspired me to buy the guitar pedals which creates my guitar tone on this album.”

S13: With QUARRY’s recent relocation, what are your thoughts on Liverpool’s underground scene at the moment, and where do you see yourselves in it?

RB: “The reopening of QUARRY has been the best thing to happen to the Liverpool underground scene this year. The work they have accomplished is phenomenal, and we are proud to get to play this historical venue again! The scene is really a close-knit community, and I hope we’ll get to keep playing along acts like Those Holy and Jezabel.”

MC: “Yeah, the underground scene in Liverpool is great, there are some real legends doing great things and people should get out and support it.”

S13: What’s 2026 have in-store for the band?

RB: “A lot of new writing, new atmospheres and directions! Laura joined the band a little over six months ago, and with the wrapping up of the album we haven’t been able to focus much on everything she brings to the band. She’s such a talented bass player, and she has already started composing demos for Liminal Project. I can’t wait to start recording all these new sounds, it’s truly going to be a sort of reinvention for us in 2026.”

MC: “2026 is going to be gigs and writing new music. We are heading to Sweden in March to play some shows. Many thanks to Cesar from Inåt Bakåt Records for releasing our record and inviting us over to Sweden.”

Liminal Project is out today via Inåt Bakåt Records. Purchase from Bandcamp.