Deserts

EP / Oriental / Colourful / Experimental

A wild ride through far-eastern patterns, haunting soundscapes, looping choirs, wild violins and the ever-lasting question, where our future is headed.

night setting in, all around dust is swirling
burning sun, heat is scorching us,
soon the night will come and freeze our hopes

where are we headed? what’s our goal, leave us dreaded?
we’re outside, there are deserts here,
it’s our future, feed it, make it clear

start, feed it water, have no fear
start, do not falter, it will disappear!

01 Sunset (Prelude) - 4:14
02 Caravan (Interlude) - 3:11
03 Deserts (Postlude) - 5:03
feat. Julia Gäßler

Looming may it seem when in Deserts (Postlude), Julia sings of a group of people lost in the deserts. The deserts being the never-ending restrictions related to the Covid pandemic, the group of people being my thoughts, aimlessly wandering around, holding on to the last few landmarks to be made out.

While having written that song a while earlier already, the lyrics only came to be in the midst of the pandemic. Fortunately, I had met the talented members of the band EVIA just a few months prior, with Julia readily lending me her voice for this three-part musical adventure.

Initially only starting as a small idea of a spacey piano in the phrygian dominant scale, Deserts slowly became more and more complex, with the prelude and interlude only written afterwards, when Deserts itself was already almost done (structurally).

Using my at the time newly acquired Roland SE-02, I created a dark ambient sphere for the introduction to the far-eastern world the EP should take you. With shaking percussions and strings establishing a sharp motive, Sunset picks up pace when the guitar kicks in. Funnily enough, in order to imitate a more other-worldly guitar tone that is not common in western Europe, I recorded my electric guitar with a microphone (just the guitar, no amp), very close to the fretboard. This got rid of most of the low frequencies and made it sound so different. Live, I'm using an effects chain for getting the same effect.

Initially, the idea was for the EP only to consist of the Prequel and the Sequel, what Sunset and Deserts were named initially. Soon though, it became clear that I had a major problem: At around 75BPM, Sunset was way too fast for the double time 133BPM Deserts. I tried multiple ideas, some being abruptly changing the tempo at the end of Sunset, but all sounded frankly quite stupid.

So, I thought, what would happen if I just took the piano riff from the end of Sunset and extended it over several minutes, gradually slowing down the tempo? This is how the interlude, later dubbed "Caravan" came to be. There, I really just went nuts with all ideas I had of filling these 3 minutes with stuff in order to mask the gradual tempo change. Singing in a choir with myself? Check. Distorted echos having a field day in the mid range of my music? Nice. A trap beat with bass? Yeah baby!

Speaking of bass, I satisfied my obsession with big fat bass sounds once again, just after becoming needy again after the Continuum ending. I don't quite remember how many bass synths are running in parallel in Caravan, but for sure it's at least 3. Now, having accomplished the tempo change, we arrive at the real thing, Deserts.

Deserts itself undervent so many iterations, with the ending violin originally being part of the lyrics section. Initially, there weren't even lyrics at that spot, just an e-piano playing the melody. The song follows the lyrics I've mentioned already, and also embodies these in its development. While dangerous and dark at first, the song grows more bright and powerful towards the middle, actually pumping and becoming danceable towards the end. This relates to the message of "watering the deserts again", giving it life again, becoming bright and colourful again. Using the metaphor I mentioned at the beginning again, it expresses not losing hope, with the change being somewhere in the future. So the song is actually quite optimistic.

Because I like bell-like shapes in songs, meaning the song starting slow and leaving time for a proper introduction, and doing the same at the end, I referred to the actual Deserts riff again in the end, but with the sharpened 3rd in the motive now - it's now optimistic, brighter, a new version of the initial riff. My violin then rounds off this adventurous trip through all kinds of genres, moods and feelings with a soft and beautiful melody.