Hey Hivers!
As many of you know, yesterday was our last day in the Lockdown Studio. After 10 weeks we have packed up our belongings will be heading back to Berlin. Each of us will take a few days to spend with family, Stefanie and I with her family, Flo with his in Braunschweig and Stefan is in Austria with his family. Olly went early to Berlin to spend time with friends. These recharge days will be crucial to clearing our heads and getting ourselves ready for what is to come…
What is to come? Well that is still a bit of a mystery in some respects. We recorded 12 songs in the Lockdown Studio. Some of them are a part of the Story Album that we told you about, and the others are more Singles that we plan to release every 4-8 weeks for the duration of the year. Each of these releases will be accompanied by a video and we are hoping that they will greatly expand our reach and be heard by a many people who still have yet to know who we are!
We have already begun working with an animation team for the story. They are a group of art students based out of Montpellier in southern France. They are extremely excited and motivated. That has really been a boon for our output. Over the next weeks, things will develop further, as we have already handed over the storyboard and begun to make the first blueprints for the first episodes. For us, this will be an exercise in patience. The music is finished and we have already made it almost entirely through the mixing process, but an animated film can take months to complete, and we know that we will have to be patient. It is for this reason that we will be releasing singles to have new music both for you AND for us!
While that part is becoming far more clear, what is still very uncertain is what we will do in the coming months. Our plan is to keep practicing and writing new music. There are compositions that were in their early stages that we did not finish while at the Lockdown Studio, and we believe it will be possible to finish them in the next months. But the losses that we experienced as a result of cancelled tours and festivals still looms, and there is no doubt we will need to figure out more stopgaps in order to keep ourselves afloat until things normalize and gatherings are advisable. Busking remains an option, though we will need to watch the development to understand whether or not it will be possible. Also – will we stay for an extended period of time in Berlin or hit the road and travel to different cities and do some street music?
The uncertainty of what lies ahead is certainly a bit stressful, but there was once a time when this was our everyday lives. When we traveled and did nothing but busking. Far before people were willing to buy tickets to our shows and before festivals had even heard of us. That’s our origin story, and while that is not something we hope to have to do for a long period of time, we know how. It’s something I’ve always been proud of this group for, that regardless of what we face, we take it head on and we do not shy away from a difficult task.
I want to once again thank you all for supporting us through it all. We believe that these past months have taught us valuable lessons.
Wishing you all a safe week amid some of the darkness that continues to sweep over our world at this time. We will overcome this together and I’m happy we have this little Troublemaker community here to support and encourage one another. It’s been fun interacting on Telegram and I am excited to see how that continues.
Keep up with us here on Hive! Thanks for your upvotes and support.