Q&A with Long Fling

After a decade of friendship, touring apart, and countless shared experiences, Pip Blom and Willem Smit (frontman of Personal Trainer) have finally joined forces for their first — and only — album as a duo, Long Fling. The record is as much a love story as it is a musical collaboration, blending krautrock rhythms, motorik grooves, wiry guitars, and drum machine loops into warm, minimal, and quirky songs that feel entirely of the moment. Over the years, the pair navigated creative friction, learned each other’s language, and built a process grounded in patience, trust, and shared vision. Now, with the album out, we sat down to talk about the decade-long journey behind it.

1. Long Fling is the culmination of a decade-long creative and personal partnership. How did your relationship shape the writing and recording process compared to your solo projects?

I think making music with different people probably always shapes the writing and recording process in one way or another. I think it’s quite hard to put a finger on how it changed things exactly, but what I liked about it is that I feel like I know (or think I know) sounds Pip likes and want to find those sounds when we’re working together. These little searches for sounds are like a chain of side quests that gives direction to a day of working. Work in alone I’m stopped in my tracks by insecurity and not being sure what sound or idea to look for quite regularly.

2. Early sessions were reportedly full of tension and creative friction. How did you learn to navigate those challenges and develop a workflow that worked for both of you?

I guess by doing it a lot. Yeah we found it quite hard to let loose a bit, but we got way better just by trying.

3. The album blends krautrock rhythms, motorik grooves, wiry guitars, and drum machine loops. How did you approach combining your individual musical styles into a cohesive sound?

It’s not like Pip came in with a little box of krautrock and wiry guitars, I brought some drum machine loops and we sat down to have it be cohesive. We just wrote and recorded some songs. Maybe if we’d did want to do that it wouldn’t be super hard, as those descriptive words in our little bio could be applicable to early squid or something and we could just look how they did it.

4. This is the first and only album you’ve made as a duo. Did knowing it would be a one-off record influence how you approached the songwriting and production?

We didn’t decide ten years ago that we wanted to make a record, only quite recently, so we didn’t really think about it that way. I guess we were thinking about not playing a whole lot of shows while we were wrapping up the mixing in Belgium. When it comes to making more records it was quite clear to both of us that we probably couldn’t fit another one in our respective schedules for quite a bit after this one, so we figured we’d approach this project as kind of a chill blitz.

5. Balancing love, touring, and music is notoriously tricky. What lessons did you take from this collaboration about patience, trust, and creative compromise that other artists—or couples—might relate to?

If anything, it’s easier balancing the three when you’re together, and not miles apart.