WINDS keyboardist Andy Winter has offered the following update on the recording process for the band's fourth effort:

"It has been a nice relaxing summer for all of us in WINDS, but we are now ready to pick up and finally complete this thing we have been working on for so long. The status at this point is that all the tracking is done, minus bass and piano, which will be finished in the next few months. Carl [August Tidemann] completed his guitar solos just before the summer, and everything else has been ready for a while, so it will not be long now before we are ready to do the mixing.

"I am meeting with potential engineers and studios later this month, and even though the location and crew to be used for the mix is not 100 percent decided as of yet, we still have a pretty good idea about who we are looking to go with. We plan to make a final decision fairly soon. It is also confirmed that the artwork for the upcoming album will once again be created by the ever-talented Travis Smith, and the upcoming album is also at this point looking to have the longest playing time of any of the individually released albums we have done so far. I am looking forward to completing this, as I know the other guys are as well."

As previously reported, WINDS — rounded out by singer Lars Eric Si (KHOLD), guitarist Carl August Tidemann (ARCTURUS) and Jan Axel Von Blomberg (ARCTURUS, MAYHEM) — has confirmed guest appearances from Dan Swanö (EDGE OF SANITY, NIGHTINGALE), Agnete M. Kirkevaag (MADDER MORTEM, FRANTIC BLEEP), Lars A. Nedland (BORKNAGAR, SOLEFALD), and Oystein Moe (ULVER, TRITONUS) for their upcoming album, the follow-up to 2004's "The Imaginary Direction of Time" (out on The End Records).