It’s been about 10 years that I seriously started writing songs. To this day there are about a dozen songs that made it to some kind of stage of recording at home. Most of them are rudimentarily saved as raw material in some form of 0’s and 1’s. Many more ideas haven’t even made it that far. Those who did are named something like song 1, song 2, song 3… You get the idea.
Today, there are about 5 songs out of all of these ideas, who made it to a stage where they could seriously be considered to be released in a studio version. And so, after about 10 years and many tries to do it on our own (failing miserably), with these 5 songs we went to Nik to record them. Nik lives in Würzburg and has built a small studio for himself called Nikolaus Recordings. The goal of that weekend was to record what we have written so far: acoustic guitar, voice & drums. Additionally we wanted to gather some ideas to complete the songs, like bass lines, piano moments and so forth.
The Songs
The five songs we recorded in the studio are all songs that we have played countless times on the streets and at weddings, so we knew very well what kind of sentiment we wanted to express with the songs and what their emotional value and energy are. They are all collections of personal experiences and hopefully promote on a broader level the value of sharing deeply personal experiences, struggles, challenges and blissful moments with other human beings. They are supposed to be an exercise in empathy for us and listeners. Even though it will take some time to finally hear them in their full length, let’s give a quick run through their topics as a small appetizer.
Song 1 (working title: Explore!): This song was originally written in 2017 when I came back from a month long trip through Europe with a good friend of mine. It’s a song to encourage all of us to learn and explore both our world and surroundings, but also a call to action not to forget to travel inward as well and to explore what it means to be yourself. Most of my life so far I’ve struggled to answer the question who I am. In those situations I’ve always tried to explain with things that I like or don’t like who I am, not understanding that to express who I am also means to authentically explain how I feel, how I react to my sense contacts and my mind and body experiences. It’s an interplay of all of those things and not merely to express on a rather superficial level who I am.
**Song 4 **(working title: Runaway): This will be the oldest song on the record. I started writing this one back in 2013 with Aileen. Originally I wanted to express my habit of running away from my own subconscious and the insecurities, challenges and traumas it brings to the surface from time to time. It’s a song that expresses my restlessness and lack and longing of having a place I can truly call home. It is something I still struggle with and have to learn. At the same time, it turned out that Aileen and I never finished the song. I think it is because we both were really easy to excite with good ideas but had trouble to finish something we’d started. Therefore this song is turning out to be just as much about what I feel about this experience with Aileen as it is about my own running away from my own inner challenges.
Song 5 (working title: Lifeline): This one is Hovo’s favorite, and I must say that it is becoming mine too. I believe I started writing on this song in 2017 or 2018. I got a bit disappointed and depressed about the way a dating experience went down. Reflecting on this experience, it was a really normal and uneventful experience with a girl that I’d met only a couple of times. However, it brought to the surface something that I tend to conceil from myself: my insecurity around letting other people into my world coupled with my deep desire of feeling safety and comfort (I couldn’t find a better translation for the German word “Geborgenheit”, which is much more profound in its sentiment than what the english translation offers, I find). I think both are something that many people are challenged with in our fast paced society these days. At the same time the song really expresses something very inherent to my personality: my ability to excite not only myself, but also pull other people with me.
Song 6 (working title: Soulsearch): This one is perhaps my favorite of them all. There are actually two versions of this song, but we decided for the more fast paced version, as it really has a smooth liquid DnB vibe. In it I really wanted to express my own (and others) ambivalence to live by my principles and really take care about my own moral compass. It is an exercise in not only living by my moral compass but also to show it publicly and in all aspects of my everyday life.
Wedding song (working title: Unity): This song was originally written specially for the wedding of my brother Brady in 2018. Back then he had asked me to play something at his wedding, just before his wife and he would exchange rings. Tasked with finding a song that would be suitable, I went back and forth with both of them to find the right cover song for their wedding. After they couldn’t decide on a song that they both liked, I decided to write a song myself, specially for them. Back then I was living in Bordeaux, France. One night, when I was sitting there on the couch, completely baked, fiddling around on my guitar in Open D tuning, the idea came to me. Within one evening I had found the basic guitar play and message I wanted to get across: a message of unity and love between two people. The response both from Brady and Maria and all other people I showed it to was very positive, and so this song will also find its way onto the EP, under a somewhat less obvious name.
Vinz and Hovo (Left to Right) = Fat Face
Fat Face
Why the hell are you calling yourself Fat Face?
I always found it tedious to look for cool sounding band names and I find that many bands have such random names, or probably never cared to look up where the naming comes from. In our case I wanted something that would be funny, personal, short and something that people would easily remember.
Fat Face actually goes back to 2015 when I was on an internship in Norwich with the local Green Party. One afternoon we went to Build a Bear, a store where you can buy stuffed animals. I saw this really cute monkey sitting on the shelf and really thought that it would make a great addition to my life. So I stuffed the monkey myself and had to give it a name in the registry of the store before checkout. Not knowing what I should call him, I just looked at him and thought to myself that he had a cute fat face. And so I named him fat face, which later totally made sense to me to use to perform music under. By the way: Fat Face is still with me to this day and I sure hope that he will be on the cover of our EP in the end.
So we gon’ hear this music soon or what?
It will take a couple more months to release the music. We will now retreat back to find more ideas to enrich the songs with. We’re thinking brass, strings, bass and electronic elements to complete the mix. If all goes well the album should be released sometime towards summer 2023. So you’ll have to wait a bit more. But in order not to leave you hanging, I put some of the music that didn’t make it to the studio on Soundcloud for you to get an idea of what kind of music you might expect. But just be aware that this is very raw and incomplete material. If you get inspired by it, reach out to me and maybe we can work on it together!?
What you can hear here are Song 1 Delta, a really old old old version of the current Song 1 that will be released in the EP. Actually this song sounds nothing like what you will hear with the EP soon anymore. Song 4 is the original version of the current song 4, even featuring Aileens voice! On the EP the song will sound familiar compared to what you can hear in the raw material. Song 7 is a song that I wrote while finishing high school. It was an expression of how fed up I was with school and frequently escaped into music at that time. The song friends was a song I’d long wanted to write because I felt like I needed a way to cope with the many good byes I had to say whenever I was moving from place to place.