London-based electronic polymath Fil OK has announced a new album ‘The Steeple,’ set for release under his We’re in the Water alias via OK Music on 27th February.
‘The Steeple’ is the first instalment in an ambitious three-album musical trilogy which Fil will release across 2026 under the alter-ego We’re in the Water. Each of this year’s albums will feature 12 new tracks, with the entire 36 song cycle presented as both individual releases and eventually a unified body of work. The trio of new long-players draw on decades of DJ culture, club history (Fil was a co-founder of London’s highly influential Nag Nag Nag club night at the turn of the 21st century) and genre exploration, with a strong focus on songwriting within an expansive electronic framework. The three albums enjoy a strong narrative linking architecture, psychology, neurodiversity and spirituality.
Where Fil OK’s solo releases are rooted in progressive electronic club culture, We’re in the Water has always been a place to bring his unique style and eclecticism to the art of songwriting. Melody, harmony and structure take precedence, with sound design acting in service of the song rather than defining it. This soulful trilogy explores mind, body and soul, fusing in a larger conceptual space where architecture meets the metaphysical.
As he explains, “My releases as Fil OK stem from DJing. With We’re in the Water, the focus is songwriting – melody, harmony and structure. Style and sound are decoration around the song itself. There’s a lot you can do in three minutes.”
Emerging from Blackpool in the late-Nineties, Fil OK follows a lineage of influential fellow Blackpudlians including Chris Lowe (Pet Shop Boys), Robert Smith (The Cure) and Dave Ball (Soft Cell). After a formative period in Manchester, he relocated to London, where he co-founded the legendary Electroclash club Nag Nag Nag, DJing alongside Atomizer bandmate Jonny Slut and Canadian DJ Jojo de Freq.
Since then, he has remained a prolific presence in electronic music, continuing to DJ at his residencies in London and Berlin, while also regularly releasing new music via his own OK Music imprint, often with self-made videos and animations.
Fil is renowned for the breadth and depth of his musical sensibility which he now brings to this new 2026 trilogy, while finding startling new expression through the prism of neurodivergence, a subject close to his heart; “These songs reflect on where my head has been at all these years, not realising my brain was wired so differently. The lyrics are all deeply personal, idiosyncratic and also cathartic and therapeutic for me.”
Whether drawing on pop, classical, experimental, breakbeat, chill, dance, folk and everything in between, the project is unified by concise, focused compositions and lyrical songcraft. Tracks move between disparate worlds: from the strange minimal electro of Bullet In My Brain, to the tugging Cuban rhythms in Disappointment, to the orchestral colours reminiscent of Serge Gainsbourg in Motorbike.
The three new works planned for this year each interpret the lyrics and music of the songs literally as architectural spaces, placing them conceptually in these three grand, holy places of worship, celebration and contemplation.
February’s initial album ‘The Steeple’ imagines the mind as a steeple: a place of elevation and introspection. In its self-examination and evolution, it excavates and analyses old mental patterns to understand, transmute and heal them, always rising toward a higher state of consciousness.
We’re In The Water – ‘The Steeple’ album sleeve © OK Music 2026
We’re in the Water – ‘The Steeple’ album tracklisting;
Remember This?
Bullet In My Brain
Disappointment
Impaired
Motorbike
Compassionless
Nails
The Steeple
My Darkness
Cylinders
Our Honesty
The Map
The second instalment of Fil OK’s We’re in the Water trilogy, ‘The Belltower’, will be released in June 2026.
We’re in the Water’s album ‘The Steeple’ is out 27th February 2026 via OK Music and is available to pre-order/pre-save now via Bandcamp here