Tape available from Neverwood Records: neverwood.bandcamp.com/album/nebel

Nebel ("fog") was created between February and May 2021. Unlike previous Ruinen albums, it does not have a single overarching theme. However, it is structured in a somewhat narrative fashion and deals loosely with themes of dreams/reality and nature/civilization.

1. Der Träumer (the dreamer): The title of this track is a nod to one of my favorite bands, Coil ("The Dreamer Is Still Asleep"), even if the music itself doesn't sound much like them. The basic melodies and chord progressions were written on guitar. The knocking sound at the end represents the dreamer waking up.

2. Blick zurück zur Stadt (a look back to the city): Most of Nebel was written during a time when I finally had the opportunity to leave the city and return to the countryside again after a long period of Covid lockdowns. This track represents the final look back as the last suburbs give way to fields. It contains a simple Kraftwerk-inspired synth melody, combined with more "natural"/rural sounding elements.

3. Rückkehr in die Berge (return to the mountains): This track started as an outtake from the sessions to my previous album, Stadtruinen. It eventually grew into something very different and I kept extending the second part with the blissful, layered chords. But the track really started taking its final shape when I listened back to an unfinished mix of it while walking up a mountain I hadn't walked up in a long time shortly after my return to the countryside. It seemed to fit the mood perfectly and all of a sudden, I just knew how to finish it. This is also how it got its title.

4. Altes Gemäuer (old walls): This one also started as an unfinished outtake from the Stadtruinen album. I only had some basic riffs that I had come up with on guitar and transcribed. Those were later fleshed out with more elements. It's meant to evoke exploring old castle ruins. The final part is probably the sweetest sounding thing I've written so far, but I couldn't resist offsetting it a bit by introducing some distortion and dissonance to the part preceding it.

5. Verloren im Nebel (lost in the fog): This was the first complete track written for the album. Funnily enough, I came up with the basic chord progression by toying around with a music app on my phone while sitting on a bench. Originally the whole album was meant to have a haunted dark ambient sound like this, but my relatively optimistic life circumstances at the time took it in a different direction, leaving this as the only vestige of the original vision. There's an unfinished mix of this track on my Soundcloud that I now think actually sounds better than the final version. Oh well, mistakes happen.

As always, fuck fascism.