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BIG UNIVERSE
feat Hollydish
Originally the idea for this song came to me
when I saw the movie
BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD
(I highly recommend it to you
in case you haven't seen it).
The song is based off of a quote from the movie, it’s when the little girl with the curly hair goes:
When it all goes quiet behind my eyes, I see everything that made me lying around in invisible pieces. When I look too hard, it goes away. And when it all goes quiet, I see they are right here. I see that I'm a little piece in a big, big universe. And that makes things right. When I die, the scientists of the future, they're gonna find it all. They gonna know, once there was a Hushpuppy, and she live with her daddy in the Bathtub.
BIG UNIVERSE is a song about death -yet it’s a positive song! How great is that?
It’s meant to promote that other side of death -
the one we tend to overlook:
CELEBRATION!
I know it is not always easy - but personally whenever someone close to me passed away it helped me a lot to focus not only on the grief and sadness that comes with it which is usually so powerful - almost impossible to avoid but instead focus on the part that celebrates and praises the life of that being and all the good that comes with it.
Hollydish for instance wrote her verse inspired by the loss of my mother who lived a very tormented and difficult life psychologically on this earth and when she played an early version of BIG UNIVERSE at her mom’s funeral she said: I wanted to celebrate her freedom from her pain .
It’s amazing how this simple change in perspective can transform our emotions into something that can reach all the way down to the bottom of our souls.
This song is about that. The Universe and the interconnection of all things.
In solitude, WE will understand and respect the love that has left us.
mixed by Federico Malandrino
mastered by Matty Trump.
EVERYTHING IS GONNA BE ALRIGHT
feat Manifest ONE
EVERYTHING IS GONNA BE ALRIGHT is a song I recorded about a year ago together with a whole bunch of talented musicians.
When I went to LA in april last year to work with my other band QUEST ONE I asked Manifest ONE if he wanted to contribute to this song by adding a rap-verse and within hours he had his part down and we recorded it right there on the spot!
This song is dedicated to all the people out there still believing in the good - the ones that are struggling but are not willing to give up!
this song is meant to give hope to the peope who have come a long way to find peace.
war is something terrible and its time we expose those who are behind it.
not the puppet-on-a-string politicians but the ones in the shadow benefiting from people dying.
For the ones who believe that light is more powerful than darkness.
We’re all in this together and it’s time we manifest our own reality.
In it for the LOVE.
mixed by Federico Malandrino
mastered by Matty Trump.
HEARTBEAT
I wrote this song in 2013 sitting on native-american land in colorado -
I was visiting some dear friends and because a tour got cancelled I had a lot of free time toto sit and think about life which resulted in this song.
It’s the only song I wrote during that time and it’s very dear to my heart.
the story wraps around a very powerful encounter between two human beings.
each time they meet it feels like the earth is shaking-
a connection so powerful it’s hard to be put in words.
that’s why I wrote this song.
my friend Federico changed the arrangement during the mixdown phase and turned it into this beautiful string-based symphony with powerful japanese
Taiko-drums in the chorus to underline the power of the words with powerful music!
this is a song about Life, Love & Death. enjoy!
co-produced & mixed by Federico Malandrino
mastered by Matty Trump
CLOUDS IN MY COFFEE
this song deals with a serious topic: ADDICTION
I am quite prone to being addicted to a lot of things ( habits, substances as well as relationships..)-
now while I have successfully managed to win battles against some others still linger-
coffee is one of them!
what a powerful spirit!
what a ritual & so much romance involved…
a drug so powerful - some people won’t even admit to it even being a drug which I believe always a strong sign of how powerful it really is (btw marihuana does the same to people and so does alcohol )
in another attempt to live a more healthy life free of substance abuse and get back to the peace of mind i once had when I was substance free ( can’t believe it’s already been 3 years…) I will soon take a trip to a far away place to hopefully regain the strength to fight off those demons.
story to be continued..
on the music:
I wrote the song two years ago and have since played it here in there in concerts as well as on the street! it all started to come together when my super-gifted amazing guitar-playing friend Gregorio Manenti joined the team and added his magic to the song- especially the arpeggios in the hook still give me a feeling of eternity.
mixed by Federico Malandrino
mastered by Matty Trump
e-guitar Gregorio Manenti
drums by Lars Plogschties
fretless bass by Sebastian Brand!
HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS
It all started in ROME about three years ago.
Now that's usually where roads end but in this case
it’s the other way around.
It so happend that I was fortunate enough to be able to take a trip to Rome to record some tracks with one of the amazing guitarists on this planet by the name of Roberto Angelini for the upcoming Quest ONE -album and inbetween sessions I remember sitting in a park in a suburb of Rome observing people (like I always to whenever I’m a big city) and what suprised me the most was the sheer amount of refugees from africa trying to get by by selling various items to the people on the street which often times resulted in ignorance or people looking away.
The same night me and girlfriend Inga started walking around the city and found the same refugees sleeping under bridges, benches and virtually every shelter they could find no matter how loud the 24-hour traffic was that passing by in a city that never sleeps.
That’s why originally the song was called
ROME IS WHERE THE HEART IS and later I changed the title to
HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS to allign with concept of
the HOME-trilogy I am currently working on.
About a year ago I secretly released the song under my Alias SKY LODGE and to my surprise without making any effort on the promotion-side it was voted into the 50 best Singer&Songwriter - Songs released on Itunes-US that month.
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I found out.
That’s when I decided to work on an entire album in english. The time had come.
Drums on this track are played by Henning Thomsen and recorded on Tape Matthias Herbst (who also mixed the song) and Thomas Görner’s beautiful Tonspur-studio, Bassline by Sebastian Brand and guitars and vocals by me.
Mastered by no other than Matty Trump.
SAN FRANCISCO
I don’t really remember when I wrote this song exactly - all I remember is it happened very quickly - that’s usually a good sign!
San Francisco has always been like a second home to me- I can clearly remember the first time I went there during my highschool exchange in 1999 thanks to Phil & Connie Shoff!
I was 17 years of age back then an pretty clueless but I can clearly remember how this city made me feel.. it was a sensation I had never experienced before- one of the most amazing natural highs in my life and to my surprise it kept giving me the exact sensation every time I came back.
So end of 2015 when my buddy Ashar of Quest One and I decided to take a road trip up north and eventually made it to SF we happened to walk into a music store on height street where I found this beautiful FENDER resonator guitar and fell in love with it right away - I couldn’t resist and had to buy it using up the money i needed for the rest of the trip which later on got me into some trouble worth another story but nevertheless the next day we decided to shoot a spontanious musicvideo - Ashar is a brilliant videographer and things came together quickly (once again)!
The song was recorded in a motel room in San Francisco the day I bought the guitar and then used as playblack for the video-shoot the next day!
mixed by MoJoh
mastered by MoJoh
HeY MAN-
IT'S GOOD TO BE LIVING
‘Hey Man - it’s good to be living‘ is one of the songs I’ve had a rough outline for that was sitting in my notebook for years when finally I decided it was time for it to be finished.
The main message behind it is quite simple: EMBRACE LIfE which comes from the same source as yesterday’s song BIG UNIVERSE - it’s best described in Freud’s very own words ‘the goal of all life is death’ - once we have accepted that there is nothing to be afraid of-
why not life our lives to the fullest.
Let our past and our future melt into one beautiful NOW!
that’s it!
The song’s arrangement and production is worth mentioning-
it all started in Lars Plogschties basement, where with the help of my incredible sound-engineer friend
Karsten Böttcher we laid down the basic structure consisting of drums (Lars Plogschties) and bass (played by no other than Sebastian Brand) guitar and vocals!
Later on in my homestudio I added a few other things of which the incredible nylon-string classical guitar played by Marcin Kowalski definitly was one of the highlights!
In the final stage of the production I gave the entire session to my old The mainStream-collaborator and buddy Federico Malandrino in Italy who carefully mixed the song which resulted in a beautiful sound-
it always amazes me how in order to achieve a sound like that nowadays you don’ t need much more than a laptop, a basement some mic and a good ear! back in the days a production like this would not have been possible without highend studio gear and facilities worth hundreds of thousands dollars.
We’re fortunate to live in an age that gives everybody the chance to create and release music.
It’s good to be alive in times like these.
mixed by Federico Malandrino
mastered by Matty Trump
LEAVE IT ALL BEHIND
A song I wrote to manifest my dreams.
The chanting choir in the after-chorus for instance is designed so that 20 000 people at madison square garden will be able to sing along.
The idea for the song came to me a few years back when I was in New York getting a tattoo - it was quite a spontaneous decision to get a line from one of my favorite songs
REAL LOVE (by David Gray) tattooed on my forearm- it goes:
..and something in the heart of me is telling me it’s time
to me the eye of destiny and leave it all behind…
the line always stuck in my head and now it’s also stuck on my body!
my song I wrote deals with letting go of the past which is not always easy as some of you might know from your own experience -
personally I have always had a hard time letting go of anything .
It’s like an obsession sometimes.
now this can be a powerful tool when it comes to achieving things-
I just won’t give up until I reach my goals but it can also
be a weakness when it comes to not accepting certain things they way life presents them to me because I am too stubborn.
this song was beautifully mixed by federico malandrino who also added some beautiful side-arrangements to the song like
the glockenspiel in the chorus , the bassline and the beautiful backing harmonies sung by his wonderful lady Claudia Magg!
drums once again played by my favorite drummer Lars Plogschties! mastered by my man Matty Trump!
PS
There is a Quest ONE reggaeton/hiphop-version of this song out! You can find it on spotify as part of the 'stars' - EP!
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GOING HOME
To raise awareness for this magnificent planet we are so fortunate to call our home
I wrote & produced a song + video:
The video and song are of great importance to me and that’s why I decided to sit down and write a little back-story as to why that is:
First of all GOING HOME is the title song of my latest album and after already having released a total of five musicvideos for other songs off the album over the course of the past two years this video marks the final musicvideo before the release of the follow-up album COMING HOME.
The song GOING HOME is special in many ways - for the first time ever I am playing the hawaiian Weissenborn-Guitar on a song - an instrument you might recognize if you are familiar with artists such as Xavier Rudd and Ben Harper - personally I have completely fallen in love with the sound and depths of that guitar and from now on I wanna play it more often and eventually make it my main instrument.
The native american flute you hear in the arrangement is played by my close friend and companion, the incredibly gifted multi-instrumentalist Samir Shedid.
Regarding the arrangement that’s already it - besides my vocals. Keeping it simple. Keeping it real.
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Now on to the story behind the song:
The three albums GOING HOME, COMING HOME & HOME which together will ultimately
form the HOME-Album-Trilogy are all closely inspired by real events! Who would have thought, right?
About three years ago when I started working on the first album my buddy and former bandmate Manifest ONE of Quest ONE and I were driving up the Coast Highway 1 from LA to San Francisco where I was gonna meet the love of my life - a woman I had been madly in love with for years and whom I had the chance to be with after some heavy interventions from up above including magical signs left and right - angels speaking to us at night and dreams so vivid and lucid - they were hard to ignore.
As Mani and I were passing through one of the most beautiful parts of the scenic drive called BIG SUR
we decided to stop at what is said to be one of the most beautiful beaches in the world
called Pfeifer State Beach at Pfeifer National Park.
As we were getting out of the car amongst other people who also decided to stop there I saw a Park Ranger and walked over to him asking if there is any chance of us maybe spotting whales passing by on their way up north.
When I was a little kid I was obsessed with whales and dolphins and I had up to that day never seen a whale in real life and was hoping to get lucky which wouldn’t have surprised me because I don’t think I have ever felt so connected with life due to the circumstances and occurances in the previous month.
The ranger told me that we might get lucky and see humpback whales passing by very far out but the also added that this was very unlikely to happen.
So instead of taking the tourist route to the right to take show-off selfies and pictures of that magnificent beach we decided to go left to the far edge of the cliff where there were no other humans. After a good amount of climbing and getting scratched up by all kinds of plants and bushes we finally ended on a lovely rock that offered us a most stunning view over the ocean with nothing but the sound of the waves and a few birds chirping away for no particular reason.
Mani who had his camera on him was busy taking photos of the scenery and I was dreaming away thinking about the encounter later that day and how crazy life had been that month when all of a sudden I heard a familiar noise - and even though up to that date I had only heard it through the speaker of a television or computer - It was without a doubt the sound of a whale blowing air through the hole.
And the sound was close… I immediately looked down the edge of the cliff I was standing on and about 20meters down below aa female Humpback whale emerges from the water together with her newborn baby.
And they both looked me straight in the eye… and before I could say anything they were already gone again.. the whole moment was so brief, when Mani turned around to see what’s going on they were not there anymore.
He had also heard the same sound I heard but wasn’t quick enough to see these magical beings.
I was in awe.
Did these whales come so close to the coast just for me? They were literally swimming within meters in distance to the cliff.
Reflecting upon what had happened - I came to the conclusion that this must have been a true miracle - never before had I felt so at peace with myself and at one with the great spirit.
The song GOING HOME and the musicvideo you are about to see pays tribute to that moment in time which I will never ever forget and am eternally grateful for.
Mixed by MoJoh
Mastered by MoJoh