these are musical postcards from different points in time and space. some have been written four years ago but only mailed this summer. others have been sent right from the other side of the world while I was there.
all of them tell little stories of journeys and experiences, and if you put them together in the right order, maybe they will make some sense to you.
proceed to eftb website
#7 Songs from the Dust
go to release-page written and recorded march-may 2013 in southern california
The journey.
I watch the campfire crackle as the sun fades. A rock on a mountain is my home, a small sheltered place where I cut avocados in half and burn things I need to get rid of along with those dry twigs and branches. Some melodies sprout on lush lawns in the park, remember them, record them half asleep in the blue dreamy haze in the evening.
One moment she's a stranger at a downtown traffic light. And in the next I'm drowning in a twisted life's long story, being poured into my ear so boldly and yet trustfully sincere, that I don't dare to run, although I never asked about her foster parents, nor about her alcoholic husband, her despair.
Out there in the desert I find dust and heat and horseflies. The wind out here, when coming as a gentle, cooling breeze, can bring relief from all that makes the place unbearable - but also be unbearable itself, tear camps apart, press dust into the tents and trailers, there's no way to block it when you have no house.
But living under the sky for two months and a half, you'll get used to all that. And learn to cherish that the ground is firm and that the wind is cooling. That there is water there, replenishing your strength, and people, and a fire burning when it's cold at night. The desert's your home. And it makes for a powerful teacher.
Slab City, May 2013
go to release-page written and recorded march-may 2013 in southern california
The journey.
I watch the campfire crackle as the sun fades. A rock on a mountain is my home, a small sheltered place where I cut avocados in half and burn things I need to get rid of along with those dry twigs and branches. Some melodies sprout on lush lawns in the park, remember them, record them half asleep in the blue dreamy haze in the evening.
One moment she's a stranger at a downtown traffic light. And in the next I'm drowning in a twisted life's long story, being poured into my ear so boldly and yet trustfully sincere, that I don't dare to run, although I never asked about her foster parents, nor about her alcoholic husband, her despair.
Out there in the desert I find dust and heat and horseflies. The wind out here, when coming as a gentle, cooling breeze, can bring relief from all that makes the place unbearable - but also be unbearable itself, tear camps apart, press dust into the tents and trailers, there's no way to block it when you have no house.
But living under the sky for two months and a half, you'll get used to all that. And learn to cherish that the ground is firm and that the wind is cooling. That there is water there, replenishing your strength, and people, and a fire burning when it's cold at night. The desert's your home. And it makes for a powerful teacher.
Slab City, May 2013
#6 Deconstruction Site
go to release-page anticipating departure from cologne, 2009-2011
Cologne.
The city I was born in, I grew up in. Like a spouse to whom I had been promised before I was born and ended up being married to for over twenty years. My love to her has never been questioned. And only lately I begin to realize it had never been my choice.
This is my home. I couldn't be more tired of it. Couldn't be more tired of sounding calm and sweet. A roughness needs to be released. And chewed and put into perspectives. Construction sites cover the city's face like open wounds, and it's time to rub salt in them.
Yet home is not just the place, it is also the people, my friends that I found in recent years and began to love dearly.. Now these songs attempt to unite both, merge recordings of my actual, physical surroundings, my city, my house, my heartbeat, with the subtle presence of my friends whose instruments I borrow and play, one for each track.
Home's impossibe to deal with. You're wrapped tightly in its embrace, can't shrug it off easily. And yet at times there's nothing more desirable than to cut loose from it for good.
You can't, you won't. You'll always bear a trace of your connection like a scar, like a second belly button. Deal with it. And disassemble, deconstruct and analyze your paths and where they'll lead you, remember where you are.
Cologne, Summer & Fall 2009
Thanks to Fabian for the violin. to Nicole for the trumpet. to Judith who doesn't know I used her drums. to Milan for the ipad. to Ian for the mandolin. to Christiane for my tenor recorder.
go to release-page anticipating departure from cologne, 2009-2011
Cologne.
The city I was born in, I grew up in. Like a spouse to whom I had been promised before I was born and ended up being married to for over twenty years. My love to her has never been questioned. And only lately I begin to realize it had never been my choice.
This is my home. I couldn't be more tired of it. Couldn't be more tired of sounding calm and sweet. A roughness needs to be released. And chewed and put into perspectives. Construction sites cover the city's face like open wounds, and it's time to rub salt in them.
Yet home is not just the place, it is also the people, my friends that I found in recent years and began to love dearly.. Now these songs attempt to unite both, merge recordings of my actual, physical surroundings, my city, my house, my heartbeat, with the subtle presence of my friends whose instruments I borrow and play, one for each track.
Home's impossibe to deal with. You're wrapped tightly in its embrace, can't shrug it off easily. And yet at times there's nothing more desirable than to cut loose from it for good.
You can't, you won't. You'll always bear a trace of your connection like a scar, like a second belly button. Deal with it. And disassemble, deconstruct and analyze your paths and where they'll lead you, remember where you are.
Cologne, Summer & Fall 2009
Thanks to Fabian for the violin. to Nicole for the trumpet. to Judith who doesn't know I used her drums. to Milan for the ipad. to Ian for the mandolin. to Christiane for my tenor recorder.
#5 Songs for the Sleepless
go to release-page written and recorded summer 2012 at home in berlin
This summer.
No other I remember has ever been as vibrant and brisk with life. And there is hardly any better place to experience a summer than the glorious city of Berlin. There's the balmy evening air over the Landwehrkanal, bike rides through alleys and parks. There are breakfasts among neighbors under chestnut trees and talks between strangers on trains through the country. There are sleepless work nights and relaxed bar evenings, won and wasted time.
You'll take naps in the park between long work shifts and after journeys, sing lullabies to friends who are in pain and fall asleep with their hand clung to yours, you'll rediscover and appreciate old and find new ones and for the first time feel truly embedded and held by that increasingly dense net of people around you. You have nothing left to hide and everything revealed will be in good hands. And you start writing songs not for yourself but others, as you learn that they can be not only diaries but medicine, if applied with care to the right ears in good moments.
There is a new magic to friendships, to music, to life. There's a sense of new beginnings, of truly being at home. And if there weren't all those little proves of your existence prior to this date you'd swear you just had been invented. This very summer. In Berlin.
Berlin, summer 2012
Hugs go to Matt and Arne who were my biggest muses in those months. To Karla who's one of the greatest gifts of all time. And thanks to the entire Berlin family.
go to release-page written and recorded summer 2012 at home in berlin
This summer.
No other I remember has ever been as vibrant and brisk with life. And there is hardly any better place to experience a summer than the glorious city of Berlin. There's the balmy evening air over the Landwehrkanal, bike rides through alleys and parks. There are breakfasts among neighbors under chestnut trees and talks between strangers on trains through the country. There are sleepless work nights and relaxed bar evenings, won and wasted time.
You'll take naps in the park between long work shifts and after journeys, sing lullabies to friends who are in pain and fall asleep with their hand clung to yours, you'll rediscover and appreciate old and find new ones and for the first time feel truly embedded and held by that increasingly dense net of people around you. You have nothing left to hide and everything revealed will be in good hands. And you start writing songs not for yourself but others, as you learn that they can be not only diaries but medicine, if applied with care to the right ears in good moments.
There is a new magic to friendships, to music, to life. There's a sense of new beginnings, of truly being at home. And if there weren't all those little proves of your existence prior to this date you'd swear you just had been invented. This very summer. In Berlin.
Berlin, summer 2012
Hugs go to Matt and Arne who were my biggest muses in those months. To Karla who's one of the greatest gifts of all time. And thanks to the entire Berlin family.
#4 Songs for a Soft Heart
go to release-page written and recorded early 2011 in a virtual place between cologne and california
The desert. The vast lands.
In fact I am already back home in the city, and yet the silence of those Californian wastelands doesn't cease to resonate in me. I walk through Germany's dull winter days, still dragging a faint notion of those vivid, flawless skies along, and still pretend to feel the dusty heat as I am wrapped up and my scarf is sparkling with the frozen drips of condensed breath.
And there is more I can't let go of yet.
And days get heavy as the new year rolls in, dark and dull and full of disappointment. I am weak and aching, turn into a ghost of retrospection, tired of dragging on the yearning for a far place and lost love like a dead limb. Fail to drown my woes in black ink and in chlorine water. Curled up into a ball and waiting to implode.
Then suddenly I find myself in someone's kitchen, playing a weird instrument he brought from South America, and as I leave I hear: hey, by the way, I brought this one for you. This might have been the greatest gift ever received; a scissor to cut loose my inner knot, evoke the memories of my journey and to cast that winter's demons into sound and song, just when I needed to.
Those demons have been hidden well and sleeping now for almost two years, but it is high time to release them. They're not scary anymore. .
Cologne/California, January 2011
Thanks to Brian for everything. Despite everything else. And thanks to Stefan for the Bandola, I really don't know what I would've done without it.
go to release-page written and recorded early 2011 in a virtual place between cologne and california
The desert. The vast lands.
In fact I am already back home in the city, and yet the silence of those Californian wastelands doesn't cease to resonate in me. I walk through Germany's dull winter days, still dragging a faint notion of those vivid, flawless skies along, and still pretend to feel the dusty heat as I am wrapped up and my scarf is sparkling with the frozen drips of condensed breath.
And there is more I can't let go of yet.
And days get heavy as the new year rolls in, dark and dull and full of disappointment. I am weak and aching, turn into a ghost of retrospection, tired of dragging on the yearning for a far place and lost love like a dead limb. Fail to drown my woes in black ink and in chlorine water. Curled up into a ball and waiting to implode.
Then suddenly I find myself in someone's kitchen, playing a weird instrument he brought from South America, and as I leave I hear: hey, by the way, I brought this one for you. This might have been the greatest gift ever received; a scissor to cut loose my inner knot, evoke the memories of my journey and to cast that winter's demons into sound and song, just when I needed to.
Those demons have been hidden well and sleeping now for almost two years, but it is high time to release them. They're not scary anymore. .
Cologne/California, January 2011
Thanks to Brian for everything. Despite everything else. And thanks to Stefan for the Bandola, I really don't know what I would've done without it.
#3 Songs for the Breathless
go to release-page a-capella songs written and recorded around 2010 in a bed in cologne
Cologne. A room.
Over time I collected quite a bunch of instruments. There are strings to be plucked and wooden sticks to blow air into, things to be hit and things to be shaken, millions of ways to set some kind of material into motion, to make another resonate with sound. If people ask me which was the first one I picked up, I tell them it was the recorder. But actually, if I want to be precise, there was another one before.
In fact, the first cords I ever made vibrate were right in my throat, the first body I made resonate my own. Before I could even think of ways to hold or play another instrument, I had already discovered I was equipped with one: a voice. It still took a long time to get to know it and befriend with it. You have to go through the unsettling, dissociating experience of hearing your recorded voice for the first time, and believe me, you won't like it. You have to face its flaws and maybe learn to use turn them into benefits.
Finally, at a time when the weight of my guitar would feel wrong in my hands and the strings of my banjo were only alienating, I sat down in a corner of my bed, stripped of all musical protheses, and decided to finally attempt to make as much use of my one very own instrument as possible.
Over some time, a little collection of purely a-capella songs evolved and is now being released into the world.
Cologne 2010 - Berlin 2012
go to release-page a-capella songs written and recorded around 2010 in a bed in cologne
Cologne. A room.
Over time I collected quite a bunch of instruments. There are strings to be plucked and wooden sticks to blow air into, things to be hit and things to be shaken, millions of ways to set some kind of material into motion, to make another resonate with sound. If people ask me which was the first one I picked up, I tell them it was the recorder. But actually, if I want to be precise, there was another one before.
In fact, the first cords I ever made vibrate were right in my throat, the first body I made resonate my own. Before I could even think of ways to hold or play another instrument, I had already discovered I was equipped with one: a voice. It still took a long time to get to know it and befriend with it. You have to go through the unsettling, dissociating experience of hearing your recorded voice for the first time, and believe me, you won't like it. You have to face its flaws and maybe learn to use turn them into benefits.
Finally, at a time when the weight of my guitar would feel wrong in my hands and the strings of my banjo were only alienating, I sat down in a corner of my bed, stripped of all musical protheses, and decided to finally attempt to make as much use of my one very own instrument as possible.
Over some time, a little collection of purely a-capella songs evolved and is now being released into the world.
Cologne 2010 - Berlin 2012
