The story behind “Event Horizon”

I like to read and to listen to background stories. Therefore, I decided to post the background of my current album “Event Horizon”. What is the meaning of the title? Is it a concept album? Do certain songs have an interesting background? Let’s have a deeper look into the backgrounds.

“Event Horizon” was not intended to be my third album

First things first. I am a big fan of concept albums, but this studio album was completely unplanned, until 80% of it was ready. After releasing “When the sun goes down” (2008) I wrote eight pop and rock songs. These were intended to be my third studio album called “In Autumn”. My plans changed due to my upcoming commercial releases. Instead of writing and producing pop songs, I focussed on electronic music once again. I released plenty of remixes and two singles.

The songs that are on “Event Horizon” were written and produced in between these releases. Some of them were intended to be released, some were not even planned to be shown in public. After a long pause, I had a deeper look into my list of unfinished and unreleased projects. I found out, that there were plenty of good songs, which I never posted onto SoundCloud or similar sites. Building up my YouTube channel, I’ve loaded some of these into the internet, but I totally forgot to promote these. Therefore, only my dearest followers knew, that there was new music besides my official releases.

In the end of 2020 I felt bad about all these songs being lost in the middle of nowhere. So I decided to remaster the best of them and finished two sketches. I figured out, that most of my later production had a very gloomy, dark and aggressive atmosphere. As some of them were inspired by science fiction movies, putting them onto a science fiction related album was the best way to give them the attention they deserve. From the deepest inside I knew, that this album was about closing a chapter and starting something new.

Title and cover are related to astrophysics

Funnily, the title and artwork came into, when I was dealing with completely different music. I asked a good friend, whether she could collect cool terms of astrophysics and relativity theory. We had a list of about 30 terms. “Event Horizon” won due to its literal meaning and easy pronunciation. Information, that cannot be spotted, is just the right metaphor for the feeling I have about quitting electronic music.

Even with the best telescopes, you may not be able to shoot the event horizon itself, since it is a theoretical boundary. If I took that title serious, the artwork would have been pitch black. No information – no light – black. I didn’t like that idea since black is always connected to death, end and pain. So I asked another friend, who is a passionate astrophotographer. He gave me some of his awesome shoots and I chose a reddish cluster. This is a photograph of the North America Nebula and this part is related to the Golf of Mexico. After some hours of photoshopping, I turned his photo into the cover artwork and designed the inlay.

The sequence and choice of the titles is intentional

“Event Horizon” has been turned into a concept album by arranging the titles in a very special manner. “Lightyears Away” is the song that was created at first. Its calm and dreamy feel is a great choice for the intro. “Beautiful” and “Dissolving Sky” are both uplifting trance songs with a touch of progressive. I wanted this album of electronic music to start hopeful, until “Fruchtsäure” turns it into a complete different direction. It was also clear that “Zombie” and “All Hallow’s Eve” are closely related in topic and feel. “Dream Of You” takes nearly the same lead synthesizer and pushes this album from aggrotech back into hard trance. “Selective Memory” follows right after and takes you to house music. I have thought a lot about the position of “Yesterday’s Past” since this one is a hopeful uplifting trance song. In the first version it was in the upper third of the album, but there is so much aggression and pain, that I decided to close this album with a beautiful song. You can stream and buy “Event Horizon” on Bandcamp.

Background stories of all songs

Lightyears Away

“Lightyears Away” is one of my favourite tracks ever written. I’m a big fan of the arrangement and the sound design of that song. We sent this one to labels, but nobody understood why it was rejected. It lay on my hard disk drive for many years until I found the guts to upload it onto YouTube. It is also the song you enjoy the most until now.

Beautiful

I had a bad time deciding whether I should put “Beautiful” or “We Are” onto my album. They are both so different. Shortly before finishing the album, I decided to take the uplifting one. This song has no special meaning.

Dissolving Sky

I wrote the melody of this song in my very beginning around 2006. I found it on a floppy disk and liked it so much, that I produced it. The original version was way more uplifting.

Fruchtsäure

This collaboration of step response and me was fun. He is a mainly acid techno producer. In this scene, most of the titles are puns, which have something to do with acid and chemistry. So the title of this song is nothing else but “fruit acid” in German.

Zombie

“Zombie” was written and produced together with @tna-sphere who came from the experimental electronic music. I just started producing electro house, so that’s the mix of both of use. Our melodies and soundscapes were so dark and gloomy, that my collaborator came to that splendid idea of a post apocalyptic zombie horror movie. He wrote some lyrics in German.

All Hallow’s Eve

I swore to leave electronic music production, but then someone gave me an image of a tarot card with an evocative silhouette staring at some weird things or people. My mind just went like: Halloween, graveyards, cyber goth, aggrotech. I dug out a sound design sketch I did some years ago, created a melody and threw everything into the grittiest distortion I have.

Dream of You

You know that term cognitive dissonance? So that’s what happens when you read the title “Dream of You” and listen to that song. You imagine something beautiful and get the angriest bit of trance I ever created. Those of you who follow me on YouTube know that there are two versions of that song. This one is the nightmare version.

Selective Memory

This song came into my mind while I was writing my science fiction novel. One of the main characters lost some of his memory. He is worried, if he is the same person as he was before. While searching for his true self, he says something like, “What if I had a selective memory? Would I consciously delete some parts of it?”

Neotokyo

Playing on a broken piano, the melody came right into my mind. It was inspired by Japanese pop and electronic music, but I added some weird effects to it. The sound of the main synthesizer happened by accident and reminds me of a broken shakuhachi flute. This song was originally planned to be with Japanese vocals. It was called “Yume no michi” (way of dreams), but as I didn’t find a vocalist, I chose “Neotokyo” as a title. It is a reference to one of my favourite video games, where the future version of Tokyo turns into a run down cyberpunk city.

Yesterday’s Past

The title of this song is a play on words. I still cannot decide if it’s “yesterday is over” or “the day before yesterday”. That’s the reason why this song is written with and without the apostrophe. It is an homage to the good old café del mar trance and ambient sessions, so the choice of instruments is done on purpose. It is my first and last try on Balearic trance. I usually don’t listen to this kind of music.

That’s all folks

I never thought about writing such a long article about my album, but this is all I have to tell you. So, “Event Horizon” became a concept album, that was never intended. Funny, how things go! I hope you enjoy this one, even if I will leave electronic music for some months or even years.