A very merry Yultide and a Happy New Year to all our fans out there - and thanks very much for your ongoing support: Hope to see you back again in 2009!



And as this is the end of the year, here are my favourite songs of 2008:

Bruce Springsteen - Dream Baby Dream
Duffy - Rockferry
Tindersticks - Boobar Come Back To Me
Kings of Leon: Sex On Fire
Silver Jews - Suffering Jukebox
Santogold - You'll Find A Way
The Ting Tings - That’s Not My Name
The Raveonettes - Yound And Beautiful
Vampire Weekend - M79
Glasvegas - Geraldine
Moby - Disco Lies
Bloc Party - Mercury
Dido - Grafton Street
Anne Clark - Full Moon
Amy MacDonald - This Is The Life
The Walkmen - In The New Year
Portishead - The Rip
David Byrne & Brian Eno - Home
Soko - I'll Kill Her

Just a few impressions from a beautiful full moon’s stroll that Ayuma and me did just a few days ago. The pictures were taken in our village and in a nearby little town called Herzogenaurach.

Spectrasonics, one of my favourite software companies, has recently released their new virtual instrument Omnisphere, which is really some kind of monster in a very positive way: It is the most inspiring and genuine software instrument I’ve ever come across, and within only a few days it has become almost indispensable for my musical work with Antichrisis.

Omnisphere comes with a vast core library of over 40 GB with thousands of sounds that can be tweaked, combined and manipulated in any way you want. The sounds are not just your average workstation core library sounds, instead some of them are entering spectacular new territories like f. e. the burning piano, which is - as you might have guessed - the sound of a piano being set on fire (which is exactly what those weirdos at Spectrasonics did to achive that special sound). Also the integrated arpeggiator is just brilliant and very easy to handle, the FX-Rack contains everyt bloody effect section you ever wanted and Omnisphere’s sound browser is simply one of a kind because it allows you to actually tag, sort and find the sounds that you’re looking for, which is something that no other virtual instrument has come up with so far.

You see, I’m really excited about Omnisphere and so I can only recommend it to every songwriter, producer or musician around. Check out Spectrasonics’ website for more information here.

By the way: G-Force have released a new version of their famous M-Tron, which is a very great and useful virtual instrument, too. It is my favourite “secret weapon“ for those moments, when most digital sounds are sounding a bit too clean: those old Mellotron soundbanks add exactly the kind of vintage dirt that will make your songs breathe!

Next thing I’m looking forward too is Camel Audio’s new synthesizer Alchemy: it’s not released yet, but the teasers on their website do sound amazing.

As promised a few weeks ago I just added two very early Antichrisis-tracks (demo versions of 'Nevermore' and 'Nightswan') from the archive. Strange stuff, indeed - but for more infos you’d better click here.

Ayuma and me had a really wonderful wedding in Nuremberg (strange enough it took place on Lammas with a New Moon and a Solar Eclipse - that’s what I call Good Omens!) with an amazing party the day after (thanks to all our friends and acquaintances for making our wedding party such a great and beautiful event) as well as a more than brilliant Honeymoon in the Swabian Highlands (special thanks to Franky’s in Tuebingen for providing a splendid and hilaious evening).

As soon as we’ve returned from our honeymoon I’ve started working on some new tracks: one of them is called ˮCrossing the Line“ and can be found on this website’s Music-section - hope you’ll like it (even if its lyrics don’t deal with the subject of marriage at all).

I've been pretty busy during the last weeks working on lots of new songs and preparing things for our wedding day. Yes, Ayuma and me are getting married on Lammas, and I'm really looking forward to the ceremony as well as to our wedding festivity the next day... and of course to making this noble woman, entrancing inamorata and faithful friend my wife!

I’ve also started digitalizing all my old tapes, which means that heaps of previously unreleased material still has to make its transition from ye good ole analogue tape to the digital shelves of my Mac. As soon as everything’s indexed, transformed into mp3 (Sorry for that, Harry: I know you would have preferred Ogg Vorbis for some strange reasons, although I think you just love to have audio data with a file extension that bears resemblance to the name of a mad Klingon high priest!) and thoroughly inspected in terms of aural tolerance, I’ll be putting a reasonable amount of Antichrisis’ early stuff on this website.

In the meantime I’ve received some very nice and interesting emails from Arseny from Moscow and Robert Negut from Bucharest which I haven’t replied to yet: Just a little more patience, guys - as soon as Ayuma and me have returned from our honeymoon, I’ll be returning to you, too.

I’ve also had a few requests for my current top ten which accidently turned into a bloated top sixteen - but that’s personal charting for you:

Soko - I’ll Kill Her
The Killers - When You Were Young
Royksopp: What Else Is there?
Silver Jews: Suffering Jukebox
Flooging Molly - Punch Drunk Grinning Soul
Attila the Stockbroker - And I Wont’ Run Away
The Raveonettes: The Christmas Song
Franz Ferdinand - Walk Away
Jens Lekman - Black Cab
Santogold: Say Aha
Midnight Choir - The Train
Bruce Springsteen - Long Walk Home
The Pack: King Of Kings
The Monks: He Went Down To The Sea
The Thermals: An Ear For Baby
The Mountain Goats: Hast Thou Considered The Tetrapod

And one last thing: Next month we’ll be proceeding with the recording sessions to 'The Legacy Remains' with Steffi, our new singer, so this long postponed album will be on its way, too.

The only answer to China's oppression of the Tibetean people would be:

1. Cessation of all trade relations between Europe and China
2. Boykott of the Olympic Games 2008 in Peking

It's time for any European politician to show which side we're on: either support a nation's struggle for self-determination and democracy, or forget about freedom and democracy in the name of market globalisation!

Please support campaigns for Free Tibet at http://www.freetibet.org/ or http://www.tibet.org/.

We've published a new track in our "Music" section: It's called "Ocean's too Wide", and it's from the pre-production of our forthcoming album "The Legacy Remains". For more infos click here.

Finally we've found a new female vocalist for Antichrisis: Her name is Steffi Breiting, and we are most delighted to have her in the band. Steffi is an experienced singer and has worked with a lot of bands, her latest project being "Moods of Ally" (see also http://www.myspace.com/moodsofally). Steffi's entry means that we will at last be able to proceed with the recording sessions of our forthcoming and long anticipated album "The Legacy Remains", hence I am confident that this album (which got delayed several times due to the changes in Antichrisis' line-up in the past) will see its definite release this year.

Endlich haben wir eine neue Sängerin für Antichrisis gefunden: Es ist Steffi Breiting, und wir sind hocherfreut, sie mit an Bord zu haben. Steffi ist eine erfahrene Sängerin, die bereits in vielen unterschiedlichen Projekten und Bands mitgewirkt hat, unter anderem auch bei "Moods of Ally" (mehr Informationen dazu unter http://www.myspace.com/moodsofally). Dank Steffi können wir die Aufnahmen zu unserem bevorstehenden Album "The Legacy Remains" endlich fortsetzen, weshalb ich auch zuversichtlich bin, daß dieses lang erwartete Album, dessen Veröffentlichung sich aufgrund der Besetzungswechsel in der Vergangenheit immer wieder verzögert hat, in diesem Jahr endlich fertiggestellt werden wird.