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SONGS

Please listen to the material that I have written in the course of the recording project "The World Is Mine". Scroll down to find the songs and follow their evolution.

The World Is Mine - An EP In Progress

Released on 13 June 2017

It feels wonderfully weird to finally share this: Almost exactly one year after starting this songwriting and recording project, after countless hours of improvised recording sessions and an intense exchange of ideas in our band chat, we have managed to bring its six tracks to a level that we feel is good enough to publish them as Thank You George's second official release. You can find them on the project's SoundCloud profile, together with an Intro and an Outro, and we are finally inviting all of you to listen, like and share 'The World Is Mine'.

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Breathe

First recorded in November 2016

"Breathe" is about another observation I made while traveling. It's about the way people meet and about the very specific selection process they all take part in and through which they choose some of their fellow travelers as their (temporary) friends, partners in crime, lovers or disciples, while ignoring, or even openly rejecting others. Due to the fact that everybody meets for a very short period of time, the whole putting-people-into-boxes-thing happens a lot faster than in the real world. And escaping these boxes is a lot harder, too.

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Themes and drafts

Recorded in February 2017

In February 2017 I decided to publish this collection of themes and drafts that I had written and recorded here and there along the way. The main reason shaping this decision was that after publishing the song "Float" in November 2016, I hadn't really been able to compile another full-grown song out of the fragments I had lying around. I was experiencing what you might call a crisis of faith: for two-and-a-half months I hadn't been able to write new material. No music. No lyrics. Nothing. So I decided to sort through and publish some of these fragments instead.

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Float

First recorded in September 2016

From the very first to the very last note, "Float" is the first track I have written solely while being on this year-long trip. The other songs all contain at least a fragment or an idea that I had been carrying with me since before leaving for Iran in May. "Float", on the other hand, was written in a completely different manner. Normally my process involves constantly coming up with guitar themes and chunks of lyrics that I write down or record on my phone. Then, when I have some peace and quiet, I listen to the fragments and I edit them.

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Sky / Ocean

First recorded in August 2016

I was on a bus in Georgia when I realized that I had just started traveling. Before that day it felt like being on vacation. An extended vacation, sure. But then again I had been backpacking for comparable amounts of time in the past. In the months before I had walked through Iran and Azerbaijan with my mind expecting to go back home to my previous routine and we'll-known terrain. It took me almost two months to process the thought that I would be on the road and outside my comfort zone for an undefined period of time.

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Chains

First recorded in July 2016

Seeing how some people's lives are an endless succession of cruelty, poverty and discrimination has always been the most confusing fact of life to me. And thinking about my own role and behaviour in dealing with these people has made it even more confusing. When I traveled through Albania two years ago I saw entire families living on garbage dumps. Their children were playing with self-made trash-toys sucking on their little dirty thumbs. They were born in a pile of trash and they were destined to live their lives in a pile of trash.

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Sand

First recorded in May 2016

A few weeks ago I heard the story of a Syrian refugee who tried to escape the terror of war by fleeing to Europe with his family. When crossing the Mediterranian Sea their boat overturned and sunk. He lost his children and his wife that day. Being one of the few survivors of that tragedy they brought him to an island in Greece where he sat down on the beach and stared at the sea, refusing to move. He told the police that he wouldn't leave that place without his family. I don't know if this is a true story or an urban myth. Still it is one of the most heartbreaking things I have ever heard.

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Mine

First recorded in May 2016

"Mine" was one of the first songs I wrote for Thank You George. Originally I arranged and played it with Alex Fruendt, the jazz drummer I founded the band with back in 2013. We recorded a demo version in our rehearsal room and uploaded it to our soundcloud profile. When Alex left the band in mid 2014 "Mine" got lost for quite a while. We rediscovered the song when we started establishing the recording project "The World Is Mine" with Ali and Jan and our producer Toby. We even added it to our setlist and played it live at a few of our latest concerts.

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