In support of their upcoming tour and triple album World War Trio, NYC’s Sci-Fi Middle Eastern Fusion ensemble Consider the Source are premiering the lead off single, “Put Another Rock in That Bag pt. 1,” available free to download on their page,.

Trio, Source’s first studio release in four years, represents a massive undertaking. While they’re known for improvisation in exotic modes with mind-bending virtuosity, the first disc of World War Trio, due this Halloween, is an exquisitely progressive compositional opus divided into six imaginative movements, rounding out at just under thirty minutes. It’s far from Vivaldi, but definitely more of a classically oriented piece. Part one alone is impressive, and covers lots of high-energy ground. The second and third discs, to be released in autumn 2015, are more along the lines of the “traditional” Consider the Source sound. But there are also surprises, including their first acoustic studio recordings since their very earliest efforts.

There are many aspects of this huge record to be excited about, not the least of which is a section written by Jan Zehrfeldt, leader of Munich, Germany’s Jazz-Metal powerhouse Panzerballett with whom CTS developed a rapport overseas which has apparently grown into an international creative relationship. Drummer Jeff Mann recently shared his perspective on the band’s latest moves.

With band’s success on the East Coast, Midwest and overseas, are you going to do a West Coast tour?

Yes. It’s not planned but we’re going to do a West Coast tour in time. Basically we’ve been doing the East Coast down to Florida and over to Texas. Then we started including Ohio and getting out to Chicago more regularly. We just did our first run to Colorado, so we’re expanding each time and getting closer and closer to the coast.

What’s new about your kit? Your last one was part of the Indiegogo campaign to fund the new record, right?

There was one that we sold in the fundraiser towards the album, what I’m playing now is just a nice kit I used to have. But I’m planning on getting a new one by the double album release.

And is it true that you play with some broken cymbals?

Sure. It’s a thing a lot of drummers have been doing lately, taking broken cymbals and putting two of them together pretty tightly to get a nice quick short sound. I had two I was doing that with that got pretty trashed so I had to get rid of them. So I got a different set of broken ones, and now I added a third one because a lot of the pieces were chipping off and it needed a little more meat to it. So it’s three broken cymbals on top each other, which [laughs] is probably the new thing. Triple stack.

What can you tell me about the new record?

The first disc on the triple album is a twenty-five minute song called “Put Another Rock in That Bag.” It’s a very obscure Louis C.K. reference. It’s in six parts, and the lead off single is the first. We’re playing a Halloween show in Albany [at Parish Public House with Mr. F] where we’ll debut the performance of the first disc and it will come out that week. It’s going to be really good.

What’s the writing process been like for World War Trio ?

The process for this album is basically, well I joined the band and most of these songs were already written. Over a year ago they started showing me the songs. We had a house in Massachusetts that we were able to stay at and set up and have to ourselves. We took five weeks off, and every week from Thursday to Sunday we went there, set up and just played music. We’d go shopping the first day to get food for the whole weekend and we’d just get there and just play, work, cook, and not have to leave for anything. We did that for five weeks in a row and that was the first time they basically showed me the songs. Some of them were done or close to done, and some of them were less complete – just a huge batch of stuff they had been working on for years. We had to get it out so we could keep working on new stuff, hence the three discs. It’s kind of like cleaning out the cupboard. You’ve got to get it all out. And you know, half of it’s never been [rehearsed] live before; you know half the songs at least weren’t finished yet. So it was a lot of work to finish and prepare those, but now we’ve got a huge batch of stuff that’s ready and who knows what’s next?