The Laydown Road Recordings

Seven tracks of keyboard-led progressive rock, recorded where the band actually plays: Loftroom13, our rehearsal room and studio in Ludwigshafen, Germany.

There was no outside producer, no rented studio, no label. Christian Jakobi, Dominik Schuster, Christian Kurtz and Stefan Niedermeier wrote, played, recorded, mixed and produced the whole album themselves, in the room where the band came
together. What you hear is four people in one space, working out arrangements until they felt finished.

That approach shapes the sound. Dominik’s keyboards carry most of the harmonic weight, with Christian Kurtz’s guitars moving between texture and lead rather than dominating the arrangements. Stefan’s drumming leaves the long pieces room to breathe — „Babel“ runs past fourteen minutes without hurrying — and Christian Jakobi’s vocals sit inside the arrangement rather than on top of it. The result is closer to the atmospheric end of progressive rock than to its technical end.

Most of these songs grew out of ideas that individual band members had been carrying around for years; they were brought in from four different directions and reworked until they sounded more like a band than four individual musicians. „Ghosts“ is the exception and, for us, the heart of the album: it grew out of an idea Stefan had and was the first song the four of us built from the ground up together. It comes closest to how They Might Be Dogs sound today.

The same do-it-yourself approach runs through everything around the record. The video for „Phoenix“ was shot in the same room, in one continuous take, on a phone and a gimbal. The photographs, the artwork and the mixes all came out of the same four people.

Released March 2026, „The Laydown Road Recordings“ is available on Bandcamp and on all major streaming platforms.

Tracklist

1. Phoenix – 5:52
2. Break Free – 5:53
3. Blood Coloured Sky – 8:08
4. Ghosts – 10:28
5. Golden Boy – 4:46
6. Black Brush – 6:24
7. Babel – 14:12

Total running time: 55:43

Credits

All songs written and performed by:

• Christian Jakobi – vocals
• Dominik Schuster – keyboards, background vocals
• Stefan Niedermeier – drums
• Christian Kurtz – guitars, bass, background vocals

Recorded at Loftroom13 Studios, Ludwigshafen, Germany.
Produced by Dominik Schuster and Christian Kurtz
Mixed & Mastered by Dominik Schuster and Christian Kurtz
Photographs and artwork by Christian Kurtz

Listen and buy

• Bandcamp
• Spotify
• Apple Music