On their latest album Holocene, The Ocean dive deeper into prog rock while philosophising over the post-pandemic world. Mastermind Robin Staps tells Prog about its story – and the near-death experience that almost derailed everything.

Words: Matt Mills Portrait: Geoffrey Wallang

The Ocean are making waves with their new album, Holocene.

The first question of an interview is more often than not, “How are you doing?” It’s a pleasant little ice-breaker that’s started 99 per cent of conversations throughout history. However, when The Ocean leader Robin Staps sits down to talk with Prog over Zoom, we ask that opening question with more concern in our voice than usual.

In December 2022, barely four months before our chat, Staps had a near-death experience. His post-rock collective were enjoying a day off on a Puerto Rican beach during a South American tour, and the guitarist decided to finish the downtime with a sunset swim. Almost instantly, he was caught in a rip current and left powerless against the vicious waters for three hours. He’s convinced that, had the coastguard shown up just 10 minutes later than they did, he’d have drowned.

“I’ve been in rip currents before, in Australia: they’re usually very local, about 20 or 30 metres wide,” Staps tells us, now back home in Berlin without a scratch on him. “But I was in a 10kmwide bay, and this phenomenon was happening everywhere, basically. When the coastguard pulled me out of the water, they told me that it was their fourth mission that week. Two times they found the swimmer; two times they didn’t. That same week I survived, two other people died.”