The trio is leaving country and pop behind

The Band Perry — Kimberly, Reid and Neil Perry — are returning after a long hiatus but with a different sound than their country and pop past. Variety reports that the ex-country sibling trio are releasing Coordinates, their first batch of new music since 2013, on Friday (Sept 21st) with mega producer Rick Rubin at the helm. The five song EP will be available on their own Artrat imprint with the sound so “unapologetically electronic it makes their previous couple of unabashedly pop singles sound like vintage Carter Family sides by comparison.”

Artrat Records was created after the group severed ties with their original country label Republic Nashville/Big Machine in 2016 and then again with Interscope last year. The Interscope deal saw the band transitioning from country to pop but the album, My Bad Imagination, was never released. Rubin produced an album that Big Machine shelved nearly six years. In 2015, Heart+Beat was set to feature a variety of producers including RedOne and Diplo, but was also never released by Big Machine.

“We’re just so proud of everything that we’ve spent the last little while building,” Kimberly Perry tells Variety. “And I think the other pervasive feeling is freedom to put out music in the way that we’ve always desired to — not just the sound of it, but even the construction how to get it out quickly and directly to the folks whose ears we’re reaching for. I think so much of the dark period, if you will, was time spent constructively, and I really feel like everybody’s going to love it.”

Perry tells Variety that the new music they’ve created has been inspired by German electronic music as well blows in their professional careers — their departure from both labels, and personal lives — most notably her divorce to professional baseball player J.P. Arencibia. She also alludes that the band will release EPs instead of full length albums for the foreseeable future.

“We were listening to a lot of very minimal but big sounds, so there was a lot of German electronic music we were listening to,” Perry states. “Honestly, we dipped back into Yeezus by Kanye. Trent Reznor has this project that’s called How to Destroy Angels… and of course we’re big Mike Dean fans as well. We went and studied a lot of that music, and on the way to the studio in the morning, we would be playing very specific things to inspire the mood of the day. And so I think that the sound on the project is sort of like minimal brutalism — which, yes, was absolutely what we were feeling in our lives. It was like, yeah, there’s some brutal things happening, but we’re all just moving toward simplicity and impact.”

Over the past three years, the group has released transitional singles including “Live Forever,” which barely peaked inside the top 30, “Comeback Kid” and “Stay In The Dark.” Each of the singles had the band clearing all social media in preps for a new look. The same goes for the fourth time for the new EP with all members donning blonde locks.