PHANTOM SONGS & the other end of the world

In 2010 we wanted to spend more time working on a new album. So we toured less ... a side effect being that we spent less time sitting around airports, or careering through breathtaking landscapes on our way to a gig... and then of course it is a nice (almost new) sensation to hang out at home, see friends, and enjoy Berlin. We did travel a little though, Idar-Oberstein, Erkner, Worms, Palermo, Hitchin (near London), Aranda de Duero, Marcoussis (near Paris) and Saarbrücken among the places we played at... and (you'll be expecting this) it is fun to be on the road, and so we will be doing more of it this year!

We started recording PHANTOM SONGS in February (we didn't have the title yet, nor did we know where we would be going), and we kept at it all year. Using our own small studio for the first time to experiment with sounds, and voicing without having to rush... our producer Klaus Wagner (who has been working with us for years), and our guest producer JD Foster from New York encouraging us to tread new, hitherto untrodden paths. Sometimes simple details grew to unknown dimensions, that took weeks, and even months to sort out... new worlds revealed themselves, and new horizons to get lost over ... and in the end 13 songs emerged, that tie together what music, and lyrics! mean to us. It stays intense!

So... in 2011 we will be traveling more again. Our tours take us all over (France, the UK, the US, China, Israel, Jordan), and now "down under"... where this year we had the privilege to play WOMAD in Australia and New Zealand.

It's almost overwhelming how our repertoire (with quite a few songs in German) is received abroad. The atmosphere, the "how" seems so much more important... the reactions we get are fantastic; "we didn't know that you people from Berlin are like THIS"... well, what did you think?