The last time we featured A Hawk and a Hacksaw (Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost) on KLOF was in 2018 with their album Forest Bathing. In his review of that album, Thomas Blake reminded readers that A Hawk And A Hacksaw’s music is “all about making connections between cultures”, adding that this was “one of the widest-ranging and most daring yet.” Those cultures have ranged from Northern Romania through the Balkans to Turkey. Several years on, they are returning with a new album: Volume 8 will be released on February 5, 2027, via Rocket Recordings.
The duo’s recent hiatus is because they’ve been focusing on other projects. For Jeremy, this has included his solo releases: Human Error and Albuquerque Radiophonic Workshop (as featured in our recent Mixtape), alongside work with incarcerated teens and refugee youth in Albuquerque; Heather has been working on her projects Agistri (on LM Duplication), Petrichor (Third Man), and Desert Flowers (Bada Bing). They kept playing weddings, learning tunes, and writing, but didn’t see the need to release music. However, as Jeremy notes, “A couple things happened in 2026 that made me want to document what we have been doing more formally and to go out and tour again”. Heather adds, “After all the war and atrocities that have been happening in Ukraine, Palestine, and Iran it felt we needed to say something through our music.”
Alongside the new album announcement, the duo are sharing their lead single Gayda, which features a “bagpipe melody often heard at Turkish and Kurdish/Armenian wedding ceremonies, arranged for distorted violin and tapan drum”.
Reflecting their desire not to be pigeonholed, Barnes reminds us that the origins of these tunes are far from straightforward; they span long periods of time, blurring the boundaries we know today.
“Many of the traditional songs we recorded, like ‘Gayda’ are incredibly old, probably pre-Christian and considered Kurdish or Turkish or Armenian depending on who you ask. Some of our influences have moved further back in time, but the geographic areas are the same.”
Watch them performing Gayda live:
Volume 8 released 5th February via Rocket Recordings (North America via Living Music Duplication)
Bandcamp | Rocket Recordings (DL/LP)