Amber & the Moon
Chapter I.I
For me, 'Howling' embodies the ghostly presence of a recurring dream that makes you sink into a trance-like rigidity. This feeling mirrors the confrontation and inner struggle of one’s own demons, which ultimately need to be embraced and accepted as part of ourselves, in order to remove their numbing effect.
Lyrics
There are whispers in the tree
And they‘re calling me
Oh they‘re calling,
Calling me back again
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The falling rain sounds like a melody,
A melody, that’s long been gone
An almost forgotten one
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All the sirens and the demons
They‘re teasing me
The promise of their chains to release me free
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The snake and the devil
They‘re pleasing me
But I left them
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Howling
I left them howling
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I‘m riding on the back of an elephant It guides me, to the tempted land
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Golden fields of sweet sweet lies
They scratch their hands
While I’m passing by
A shadow in his own light
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All the sirens and the demons
They‘re teasing me
The promise of their chains to release me free
The snake and the devil
They‘re pleasing me
But I left them
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Howling I left them
howling
But I left them.
Chapter I.II
‚Howling‘ is one of the oldest tracks I’ve ever written and it also marks the beginning of this wonderful journey. Funny enough, we started the album journey with ‚Howling’ - a song that turned out to be our little ‚experiment‘. It was a puzzle that solved itself over the process of recording a variety of sounds: be it the wind chime in my bedroom, the old harmonium in the studio, the percussion group, or the analog synthesizers - somehow the song itself decided where we were heading to.
It all started in January, when Ben Schadow, our fantastic producer, and I decided to record the first bits of the upcoming album and its debut single ‚Howling‘ in an old cabin at the stormy North Sea. For almost two weeks, we isolated ourselves from the outer world to record guitars and my vocals there. We ended up installing a cozy recording setup in our living room that we could use at any time of day or night:
When we returned to Hamburg, we directly went into the Chefrock Studios to record drums, percussions, Jonathan’s bass, and lovely vocal harmonies. In the studio, our good friend and sound engineer Sara joined us - and we’re also very happy to have her on board for the coming album recordings.
And this is the wonderful harmonium that we used for the drone sounds in the outro of Howling...can you hear it?
Chapter I.III
The lyric video to ‘Howling’ can be seen as the entrance to a place that is yet undiscovered. Like a snake shedding its skin, the story will be told over time, with each new element revealing a newfound truth about its former meaning.
I met Elias, the director of ‘Howling’, one year ago when I first asked him to shoot a music video with me. In spring 2021, without ever meeting in person, we wrote the script for our first music video ‘El Dorado’ together and instantly knew that this marks the beginning of a special and creative alliance.
Exactly one year later, I developed a concept for a music video trilogy which is part of my upcoming debut album. To me, it was obvious that Elias and his fantastic film crew were the ideal fit for this extremely large and creative task - and once again, I was lucky enough to work with them.
We shot the lyric video in the snowy forests of Bavaria earlier this year. Here are some behind the scenes shots of wonderful people doing a brilliant job:
Press play to see how the video was filmed...
(Joshi, Elias, Fritz)
(Loreena and Sophie)
(Oscar)
This is Joshi..
In case you're wondering who edited the video so well :)
It’s a very rare gift to find people who not only believe in your vision as much as you do but also put so much work and valuable input into it. Thanks to all of you, I’m beyond grateful for every single one of you.
© Photos by Lilith Kempffmeyer
Chapter IV
Ben is not only the mastermind behind the production of our music, he’s also a gifted painter. At the end of 2021, I told him about a visual concept that I was following and asked him if he can imagine helping me bring my ideas to life.
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One thing you need to know about Ben is that he’s really bad at turning down requests - so I guess this was my chance… He told me that he’d gained some experience in painting with coal and oil pastel crayons over the years, but he’s never painted with colors before.
Since Ben was new to colors, he initially planned to prepare himself weeks before the actual painting. But in the end, caught up in the musical production process, there was no time left and Ben draw the final artwork within just one day. Which is crazy. But he did it and I couldn’t be happier and more proud of the result.
This was the painting process of one day:
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I don’t want to give too much away, but this won’t be the last piece of art Ben will create for Amber & the Moon.
This artwork lays the foundation of an entire story.
In which everything is connected.
Do you want to follow the journey of somber beauty?
