UK prog duo Hats Off Gentlemen It's Adequate have released a brand new single, Copenhagen, which is available now from their bandcamp page.
The new single is the second release that will feature on the band's upcoming eighth studio album The Uncertainty Principle which the pair plan to release later this year. It follows the release of One Word That Means The World (Arkhipov), released in April.
In keeping with the historical theme of that single, Copenhagen has been inspired by the meeting between quantum physicist Niels Bohr and his friend and former student Werner Heisenberg in September 1941 in Copenhagen.
"The content of this conversation was disputed," explains Malcolm Galloway of the ideas behind the new song. "Heisenberg was a German scientist leading the Nazi state's atomic research programme. Bohr was a Danish scientist of Jewish heritage in an occupied country.
"There is no surviving documentation from the time about the content of the meeting. In 1956 Heisenberg wrote a letter to a journalist claiming that he intended to discuss moral concerns about nuclear weapons. Bohr denied this and claimed that Heisenberg was happy to work on the atomic bomb for Germany.
"Was Heisenberg trying to get Bohr's help in making an atomic weapon? Or was he seeking moral advice? Or absolution? Or trying to get information to the Allies? Did he even know himself what he was trying to achieve? Complicating this is the likelihood that either or both men may have been under surveillance, and may have been aware of this.
"The uncertainty around this meeting in Copenhagen between the architects of the Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics remains unresolved."
Copenhagen is back with the instrumental Safe When Handled As Directed, which does not feature on the upcoming album. The single is currently available on Bandcamp, and will be on other platforms next month.
