I wanted Wave 3 to feel like an album I could put beside the first two and understand how it got there. Heavier in places. Faster in places. Slower, brighter and more openly pop in others. There had to be room for all of that.

It is the third part of the ME & The Robots trilogy, and the most deliberate about which songs belong together. More was written than could ever fit on this record. Getting to the final selection meant letting go of songs I loved, including some that might have been stronger on their own. They just didn’t belong here.

Wave 3 is now available to pre-order on purple vinyl, CD and digital through the official shop. But before the formats and release details, I wanted to explain what this chapter means to me.

Where the first wave began

Wave 1 came from a very electronic place. There was a lot of Owl City in that starting point: the possibility of making something melodic and inviting out of sounds that felt slightly unreal.

I wanted it to feel odd. Strange, futuristic, influenced by Japanese animation, but with something broken in it too. A world that was colourful and full of possibility without quite working the way it was supposed to.

The subjects mattered as much as the sound. I wanted songs about the things that rarely seemed to get songs written about them. Small obsessions. Imaginary worlds. The stuff that can sound trivial until it happens to mean everything to you. That was part of the reason for making this music in the first place.

A little less robotic

Wave 2 brought those ideas into sharper focus. It was more polished, a little less robotic, with more teenage angst finding its way through.

The strange little world was still there, but the feelings inside it were becoming more direct. I think of it as the point where the sound started to grow into itself. The electronic side and the louder, more restless side could sit together more comfortably.

By Wave 3, I wanted to give that combination more freedom. I didn’t want one subject or one style to become a rule that every song had to obey.

Heavier, faster—and poppier

Wave 3 feels more mature to me. That doesn’t mean leaving the odd subjects behind, or deciding that growing up requires everything to become serious. It means being more certain about what each song needs.

Some of this record is heavier and faster than what came before. Other parts slow down and lean further into pop. I wanted the melodies to have room, and I wanted the bigger moments to feel big. This is a pop record. I’m comfortable saying that.

Moondust is one of the clearest examples of the space I wanted to explore: electronic, expansive, a kind of space-pop anthem. It takes one part of the ME & The Robots sound and lets it travel further.

Then there is Early 00s, which feels right back at the roots. Having those songs on the same record matters to me. One can look outwards while another returns to something familiar. They can still belong to the same world.

Choosing the record

The hardest part was working out what to keep. There were lots more songs written for Wave 3, and I wanted the best of the best. But choosing an album turned out to be more complicated than choosing the songs I liked most.

A song could be good—even better in some ways than another—and still pull the record somewhere it didn’t need to go. Leaving it out didn’t make it a bad song. It meant paying attention to the whole thing.

I wanted a really cohesive cut of the music: enough variety to move between heavier, faster, slower and poppier moments, with a reason for those moments to be together. Something that carries the first two records forward and feels complete in its own right.

That is what I hope Wave 3 sounds like. Everything that came before it, with more room to become itself.

Pre-order Wave 3

All three editions include 13 tracks, including the bonus track One More Episode. Pre-orders are available directly from the official ME & The Robots shop:

  • Purple vinyl — £27. The album on purple vinyl, with its illustrated sleeve. Limited to 300 copies.
  • CD — £12.99. A digipak with a continuous landscape inside and a 12-page lyric booklet, ready for a place beside Wave 1 and Wave 2. Limited to 300 copies.
  • Digital edition — £7.99. All 13 tracks for your own music library, delivered as a download on release. Audio format details will be confirmed with the release announcement.

These are the current pre-order prices. The music shop also has bundle options if you would like more than one format.

Explore the full Wave 3 tracklist, lyrics and album details.

Pre-save Wave 3 on Playloudr to keep the album close as the release approaches.

When is it coming out?

The Wave 3 release date is still to be announced. The digital album will be delivered on release; vinyl and CD orders are expected to dispatch for the album release, with the confirmed timing to follow. Pre-orders are paid in full at checkout. Ordering now does not provide an immediate album download or immediate physical dispatch.

Every paid Wave 3 pre-order also includes Wave 3, an exclusive digital card for ME & The Robots Collector. A separate email explains how to collect it. Use the same email address in Collector as at checkout; the bonus is limited to one card per Collector account across all editions and bundles. The card is available ahead of the album.

Until the full record arrives, Early 00s, Moondust and Collecting Monsters offer three ways into it. Thank you for listening, and for making room for another chapter.