With a lot of time on my hands, I was going through my film collection and revisited some old favourites of mine, namely the collection of Tarkovsky movies (especially “Nostalghia”), some Bertolucci movies (Last Tango in Paris, Besieged), more extreme Gaspar Noé films (Irreversible, Into the Void, Climax) and the great film and tone poem Koyaanisquatsi. I saw it first when studying film quite a while ago, and beside the lecture of Albert Camus’ The plague it seemed strangely fitting to the current situation we all find ourselves in. “Life out of balance” due to the excessive way of life of modern civilization. In addition to this, all the noises going on at home during the quarantine, the clattering of the sewing machine to make respirators, kitchen device, the TV, kind of provided the right inspirational mix to kick off a special creative challenge- using the “stay at home” situation to write and record a whole album within a short period of time in a rough and lo-fi way. “Present/Tense” is the result of that. A snapshot of a special point in time while life was out of balance, rather a documentation of a voyeuristic fascination of chaos and its impact on common values and behavior and the curiosity of what the “new normal” will look like than anxiety about being alone and how life will continue. 

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Credits

Piano: André Kellerberg

Master and post-production: Thomas de Balder (TdB Production, Praga)

Artwork: Nico Fontana

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