Every artist reaches a moment when experimentation finally gives way to clarity, when the sound they’ve been chasing comes fully into focus. For Pipe Leak, that moment arrives with Eternal. Fresh off a Denver headline performance and his recent unforgettable play at Secret Dreams, he enters this next chapter with more momentum and a more defined creative identity than ever before. Built through an intentionally reversed writing process and grounded in the idea of parallel timelines shaped by our everyday choices, Eternal brings its atmosphere, artwork, production, and storytelling together as one cohesive world.
In this exclusive interview, Pipe Leak takes us inside the album’s making and its foundation to the breakthrough song that revealed its full direction. He also reflects on why Eternal feels like the true beginning of the project, the artistic value of albums in an increasingly singles-driven world, and what he hopes listeners uncover on a second, or third, journey through the record.
In Conversation with Pipe Leak
seradopa: With Eternal, it feels like every part of Pipe Leak, from the artwork and color palette to the visuals and music, has become more intentional and interconnected. What inspired you to build such a defined creative world around this record?
Pipe Leak: Earlier this year, I released my first album, everything.is.falling.apart.&.i’m.kind.of.OK.with.it. We worked heavily with grayscale, and the album came from a very specific point of view. Almost immediately after finishing it, the title, artwork, sound, and atmosphere for Eternal came to me. I knew right away that I was going to write it.
At the time, though, I had several releases backlogged and scheduled for the next four or five months. I needed to clean them up, finish the mixes, and prepare them for mastering, so I had to shelve Eternal. Even when I wasn’t actively writing it, it stayed in my head and kept resurfacing. Those months gave me time to create a clear game plan and talk through the artwork with Andy Meyer from DripLab.
By the time I started writing the record, I already knew how I wanted it to sound, look, and feel. Having such a defined vision made the writing process incredibly smooth and allowed me to bring everything together quickly.
seradopa: When you look at this era compared to your previous releases, what feels like the biggest evolution—not only in your sound, but in how you understand the Pipe Leak project as a whole?
Pipe Leak: The biggest word that comes to mind is atmosphere.
I’ve been working to build the atmosphere I’ve always heard in my head for this project, which I’ve learned is much harder than it sounds. There’s a lot of technical work involved in making an atmosphere sit behind the songs in the right way. Because of that, this album places a strong emphasis on creating a continuous feeling from beginning to end.
In the past, many of my releases came from learning and experimenting in real time. I would work on a particular skill or idea and then release the result. With this album, the process was much more intentional. It became, ‘I know how to do all these things now, so let’s bring them together and fully execute a cohesive vision and concept for the first time.’
I think this album sounds very different from everything else I’ve released, and that difference reflects the entire process behind it.
seradopa: What kind of story or emotional journey do you want Eternal to take listeners through, especially those encountering your world for the first time?
Pipe Leak: The album is built around the idea of congruent timelines and how the choices we make each day can shift us between them. All of these different lives exist parallel to our own, and at any point, we can hop into another timeline based on our decisions, the thoughts we allow into our minds, the people we surround ourselves with, or anything else that happens along the way.
The idea is that when you’re born, you’re dropped into one timeline. From there, you can move left or right with every choice and build an entirely different life for yourself. The album explores those different timelines as it unfolds—some really good and others really bad—and how our decisions lead us into each one.
That’s the story behind the album, and I’ll share a more complete written explanation on Bandcamp and SoundCloud when it releases.
seradopa: Did Eternal begin with one particular song, feeling, or concept that everything else grew around—or did the larger story reveal itself after you had already created several of the tracks?
Pipe Leak: The album actually began with just drums, which was an intentionally different approach for me. I built 15 complete drum tracks and bounced them down into breaks. Then I called the two-week process ‘drum camp.’ Where I made all the drums, organized them into separate projects, and then chose my six favorites.
With those six, the song structures were already in place. The drums were finished, so I only needed to build out the remaining elements. Once I wrote the first track, the keys I was working in helped me understand how the entire album would flow. They’re all relative to one another, which helped tie everything together.
It was almost like working in reverse, but it allowed the album to flow really naturally. The entire writing process, including the drums, only took about three and a half weeks because I already had the framework in place. It was really just me saying, ‘Let’s take a swing at this and see how it works.’
Thankfully, it worked.
seradopa: With several tracks from Eternal already out in the world, which unreleased song are you most excited for people to encounter, and what makes that track such an important part of the record?
Pipe Leak: Definitely the second song. It’s called “Transmissions,” and it’s pretty long at seven and a half minutes or so.
That song really exemplifies the next creative chapter I’m moving into, which focuses more on progressive, compositional styles. Instead of following an A section and a B section that repeat until the song ends, I’m exploring a more linear approach to songwriting.
Between the atmosphere, the drums, and the overall composition, it’s my favorite song on the album. It’s kind of my baby. “Transmissions” was the second track I wrote after the title track, and I still wasn’t sure whether the whole concept would work when I sat down to make it. Once I finished that song, I thought, ‘Okay, we’ve got it. There’s going to be an album here.’ That was the moment the entire picture came together.
seradopa: In an era where listeners are often encouraged to consume music one song at a time, you still believe in creating and releasing complete albums. What does the album format allow you to communicate that a collection of standalone singles cannot?
Pipe Leak: I think singles have their place, and I release them frequently, but an album represents a deeper level of care and vision to me. This project is very much a concept album, with one central idea connecting everything.
I kept coming back to the word ‘record.’ Then I started thinking about it as an artist actually taking a record of something. I don’t know if that’s where the term originated, but an album feels like a true snapshot of where an artist is at that moment. The pieces of music that have meant the most to me throughout my life have all been albums. There may be individual songs within them, but their meaning comes from experiencing the entire story together.
That feels very antithetical to how we consume everything now. An album is about 32 minutes long, and sitting down without distractions for that long can almost feel like a chore. But when you do, there’s something special about it. You connect with the music more deeply, experience a fuller story, and enter an entire space that someone created with intention.
Even if the album is no longer the most commercially viable format, I still believe it’s the most important one artistically.
seradopa: You’ve described records as snapshots of a particular moment in an artist’s life. What moment does Eternal preserve for you, and what was happening internally or externally that made you feel it needed to be captured?
Pipe Leak: When I finished this album, it was the first time I felt like I truly knew what I was doing. That’s the honest answer. I had a vision and executed it fully. In the past, I often felt like I was getting close, but I didn’t always have the skill set or perspective to bring everything together.
From the atmosphere and artwork to the story and technical production, this album feels complete. I can already listen back and find little things I might have done differently, but I’m genuinely settled with it. I’ve never released a project that I’ve felt completely settled with before.
That’s why I’ve described this album as a line of demarcation. To me, it feels like the project’s official beginning. Everything I released before was part of figuring things out and sharing that process with people. This is the first release where I can say, ‘This is me.’ I finally captured and preserved that vision the way I intended. The others came close, but never quite like this.
seradopa: Alright, last one: once someone reaches the final moments of Eternal, what do you hope stays with them after they leave the world you’ve created?
Pipe Leak: I hope people want to listen to it again because they feel like there’s more to explore. The album has a lot of twists and turns that I think make even more sense on the second or third listen.
More than anything, I hope people can tell how much I cared about the process. This is my honest work—I’m not trying to be something I’m not. It feels like a genuine representation of who I am as both an artist and a person.
I also hope it sparks some curiosity about what’s coming next and what came before, so listeners can hear how the project reached this point. Ultimately, I just hope they can feel how much I care about it, because I really do.
Listen to the brand new album Eternal by Pipe Leak below!
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