When Your Recording Session is Interrupted by a Flood

It is now officially one week until the release of my new double album, Three Suites, out on Endectomorph Music. The record features Santiago Leibson on piano/celeste, Eivind Opsvik on bass, myself on drums/percussion/composition, and Tyshawn Sorey in the producer chair. I’m very excited to finally share this music with you, and I thought it might be fun leading up to the release to share some behind-the-scenes stories about the album.

I wrote this music between 2019-2023. We finally got into the recording studio on September 28th and 29th, 2023. Everything went great on the 28th - couldn’t have been happier as a bandleader. After I got home that night and had a second to catch my breath, I saw that we had a flash flood warning overnight.

I texted Tyshawn something akin to, "Hey man, the weather tomorrow looks really bad. Should we have a contingency plan if we can't get to the studio?"

He hit me back almost immediately: "No. It'll be fine! The Weather Channel always overreacts about this stuff!"

… Anyone who lives in NYC knows where this is going. And will almost certainly remember the day I’m talking about.

The rain started overnight, and by about 2:00 AM it had turned into a historic flash flood. The entire city effectively shut down. The subways stopped, buses were down, the highways were flooded. The infrastructure essentially gave up.

Luckily, Eivind and I have cars - granted mine is a Honda Civic hatchback and not necessarily designed for all-terrain situations - so we were only crippled by traffic and side roads. I think we both were able to get from South Brooklyn to The Bunker in about an hour and a half.

Santi and Tyshawn had a bit of a different situation on their hands.

I woke up to a hysterical text from Tyshawn - definitely a "famous last words" situation. Once we figured the situation out, he let me know the cheapest cab he could find was almost $300 and it would take him three hours to get there. I told him that was fine, I’d cover the cab, and I’d see him when he got there.

Next came a panicked phone call from Santi. He’d been desperately trying every alternative to get to the session for his entire morning. He tried multiple subway and bus lines - all were totally shut down. It was the same deal as Tyshawn: the cheapest cab he could find was several hundred dollars and it would take him at least two hours. I told him, “No problem! Get in the car,” and I’d see him soon.

***Side note - This is YOUR job as a bandleader: take care of your people!***

By the time we all made it to the studio we were hours behind schedule. Perhaps not the best situation when you’re trying to record ~2 hours of dense and involved music. On top of that, we were all soaked and exhausted from just trying to physically get to the building.

Surprisingly, I don’t remember freaking out or getting stressed - I don’t even remember questioning whether we would finish the album. I think due to the whole “Act of God” nature of the event, I found it kind of funny? I mean, what else am I supposed to do? By the time we all got to the studio, all we could do was laugh. The whole situation was ridiculous.

Once the recording started, we all noticed a weird side-effect of the morning’s insanity: we stopped focusing on how challenging the music was.

Technically, this music is incredibly demanding - lots of dense interlocking parts, time-signature changes, and reading. But the flood offered some great perspective. In my mind, if we managed to get to the studio through a historic disaster, who cares if we play the tuplet in measure 147 correctly? All that internal anxiety I had been carrying - feeling exposed on mallet percussion, balancing my focus between composition and performance - just vanished.

A huge part of this was also mitigated by having Tyshawn in the control room (having a second set of ears during a recording is a blessing, let alone his ears). But honestly, on that second day, the flood just killed any remaining mental pollution. Compared to navigating a flooded Brooklyn, playing the music felt easy.

The lunch break that day was an epic hang. We were all delirious from the session as well as the commute. Thinking about it now, I wonder when the next time all four of us will be in the same room again - let alone in a place that would allow us to have a quiet conversation. That camaraderie, that sense of "well, we got through THAT, now let's play," shifted the whole vibe of the session. The music we recorded after the flood has a different energy. It’s less "in its head." It feels more settled.

Obligatory studio photo

I usually find that the more I remember about the nitty-gritty details of a session (once I’m playing), the less I like the record. I feel like that generally means I was too in my head during the recording. For Three Suites, I don’t remember much of the actual recording process (which I guess is a good thing?), but I have an incredibly vivid memory of this whole experience. It was wonderful - I really think the insanity of the flood led to an overall better album.

The record is out next Friday, January 23rd, 2026 on Endectomorph Music. It’s been a long road to get this music out into the world, and I’m incredibly excited to finally share it. If you have a moment, please consider buying and taking a listen.

You can pre-order the double CD or digital download on Bandcamp below.

https://colinhinton.bandcamp.com/album/three-suites