And speaking about making no sense at all, here is my new song. Which, incidentally, also doesn’t make any sense at all, but should be quite a bit more fun than drinking a mixture of whine and cola. On second thought, so is jumping off a cliff.

Vironnimo – Incredible Inanity

Haus am Ende dieser Welt – first song I recorded with my first acoustic guitar, first song I thought was ready to be presented to a greater audience and the first song a girl liked so much she wanted to meet with me. Very special one to me, I still love it. However, I hate the fact that noone seems to get the irony. Seriously, for how much of an a**hole do you take me?

Wunderdinge – definitely the best lyrics I have ever written (sorry to my non-german followers). I will never forget writing it, during the first holidays I spent with a very special girl. I will never forget her and that trip, nor the living room of our vacation home where I figured out the chords, and the shower where I sang the first lyrics to myself. These things will always be connected in my mind and I hold them very dear.

Fading – Oh, the labour! The, approximately, fifth version I recorded of this song. I think it is one of the best songs I have ever written, still I have never been happy with the recordings. However, if I start a sixth attempt on this one, who knows where that is going to end?

Mein kleines Herz – Tested a new synthesizer there, which took me months to get and which I sold only a couple of weeks later. But all the trouble was totally worth this song.

Broken Tunes – Perhaps the best sounding song and guitar solo I have ever recorded. It is actually inspired by a street musician from San Francisco, who played some really sad but beautiful songs whith a passion I have rarely seen since. I’d give anything to see that guy again!

At The World’s End – Great history to this one, of which most of it I would like to keep to myself (yeah, my girl left me, really hard to figure out). Still, the first one I tried out that jazzy-swingy feel, and since I started writing it before the break-up and rewrote the lyrics after that (which I still regret), I now hear the old lyrics in this one, so it means something completely different to me than anything anybody else could make of this song.

Thousand City Lights – I don’t know if anyone else likes this song but me. I feel I have never captured my feelings in a song better than in this one. Still admiring myself for the bass part…

Joe The Elephant – The bass, the bridge, the lyrics, the chorus, the bottleneck guitar… I am a genius.

On Top Of A Sunny Day – Why do I keep doing this to myself? Manchester United, Champion’s League 09/10, after a disastrous first game against my second most hated club, we turned it at home and had it in the godamn bag… how the hell did we lose? I should have never written this song, it just keeps reminding me of that night! Why am I even putting this on my homepage?

Letter To Mary-Ann – Written for my beloved band Yellowknife. Unfortunately, I have to move out of town and won’t be playing for them anymore. Check them out, one of the greatest bands ever! Maybe the song doesn’t do the band justice, but in its simplicity, it is still one of my very best.

Pain & Death – What can I say? I needed to fill an afternoon, and for some time I had wanted to try out some heavy guitars again. The result is 50 seconds of fun.

Chocolate Bars – This song went horribly wrong! It was actually inspired by the Gorillaz, who I think are one of the very best modern bands out there. I started with a drumbeat, got carried away and… this came out. I really, REALLY like it, though. I am not quite sure what the lyrics mean, but they are, in my oppinion, brilliant.

About Stars And Diamonds – Great song, great lyrics, sound totally fucked up. I need to mix that again sometime, but until then it still remains some days’ work that I am very proud of. I have already written quite a lot about this song, so…

A Place To Live In – I don’t know, the voice isn’t even that good, and the sound isn’t too tidy as well. Maybe I am just proud that I can play the guitar and sing at the same time? It is really hard to do with this song… Still, again I love my own lyrics. Maybe I should see somebody about that…?

So, this is it. A selection of my songs which I think are the best I have to offer, in chronological order. Some songs which I actually like did not make the list for one reason or the other. What is to follow? Well, I will be moving to a new city, meet new people, get new influences – and will definitely be writing some new songs!

I hate love songs. Don’t get me wrong, I love love itself, I think it is the most important thing in life. it is one of the most intense feelings one can have and therefore has a natural place in music. But there are just so many love songs! There are almost nothing but love songs! It’s sickening, really. And as I myself have written some love songs , especially in the last couple of months, I wanted this song to be about something else. There are so many things worth writing about, so many things I like, hate, wonder about.

But… love songs are so damn easy! These lines just come to me without having to think twice. And I really tried this time, to think twice and write something else. It has been a hard fought battle, that I did not stand a chance in. So here goes a song about how much it sucks to write love songs. But then again, as the words came so easy, that love songs are not THAT bad after all. Oh, how I hate it!

Vironnimo – A Place To Live In

First of I knew I could just repeat the bassline over and over and built the whole song above it. But it would be great to break this up for one short time to create a climax. At first I thought I might go for subtle but effective, like Depeche Mode often do. So the bassline for this part is very harmonic to the original line and the rythm is only broken up for two notes.

For the next step, trying to figure out what direction to go, I sat down with an acoustic guitar playing the chords according to my bassline and trying to figure out some vocals. This is basically a try-and-error jam with myself which I do regularly. I tried to compose melodies on instrumentes but I always felt more comfortable this way. The advantage to me is also that a melody often comes with the first bit of lyrics as well (fitting lyrics on to an existing melody has proven quite hard to me sometimes). The first lines I got were “Sometimes I think I can reach for the stars” and “sometimes you walk above a mine of diamonds”.

That gave me the direction I needed. The song had a melancholic feel, the lyrics could make for something deep, personal and meaningful. To translate this into the song, I decided to give it some serious length. As I already had the idea to repeat the bassline over and over and do a subtle climax (and I am stubborn with those ideas) I went for a slow build-up. Meaning: Looooooong, quiet intro. And if I want the climax to work, I better keep the rest of the song quiet, too. The vocals were anyway, so heavy guitars or funky riffs were naturally out. No, wait a second… let’s do a heavy climax. Fuck subtle! Let’s have clean, inconspicuous guitars just floating around the whole song and then, after an hour or so, do some serious damage with that distortion thingy over there. So that’s about all I needed to know. I recorded the bassline and looped it. I recorded the bassline for the break.

Then for the drums, something simple with a little playfulness so it’s not boring. Repeat that as well to keep it low. Quiet play, no fills, not even cymbals. Then let go for the break. And after that, don’t turn it down again completely, let them go like they have been released from a former restraint. But then again, keep it simple to return back to the style of the song and to keep a clear distinction from the break.

After that, the vocals. Usually I do guitars first, but I had no idea what to play and I did not want to record anything that would later interfer with the voice. When I wrote the lyrics while playing guitar, I was singing in a low tone. So I recorded the voice low. Hm. Not quite it. Maybe with a little more power. Urghs, wrong idea. Maybe sing higher. Hm. Still something missing. Maybe do the low version and emphasize some parts with a higher voice. Lovely! In fact, why don’t do the whole song that way? Done.

Finally, guitars. Now I have a long song, deep sounding lyrics and I want the guitars to be really modest. I decided to have one guitar that just adds a little width and background, so I used as little notes as possible. Going for D and the quint allowed me to keep going through the D and G on the bass, making it a “set and forget” instrument which only really gets noticed if it stops playing. Then I needed something to make the whole thing a little interesting. The intro obviously had to be filled with some sort of lead guitar. But if I wanted a slow build-up, they had to be simplistic, too. So I looked for a warm sound and went fingerpicking. It is not really about the melodies, more about the sound created by the instrument. I improvised a while and figured that two guitars with some kind of call and response play would do. Somewhere along the way I noticed that – again – some eighth notes just made for a lovely, “forwardy” sound and used them during the second verse again to add to the build-up.

The bridge then consists of three parts. The big explosion in the middle, a build-up to it and a part to fade out the noise. For the build-up after the singing I thought it would make sense to pick up the call and response again, but make it a little more “intense” this time. By that I mean… not much, actually, it is still pretty warm and restrained, just a few more notes/less pauses (I used a pick, though, just imagine!). But that does all the more for the heavy guitars, when they finally set in and give the whole four minutes before that a fucking purpose. The heavy part is very short, though, which is Beatles 101. It is what will most probably attract the most attention and what most people will find particularly great (not because it actually is, but because of the impact it has). So stretching it would not only ruin the impact, but people would get tired of it. Cut it short, and people will want to hear the whole song again. And again. And… What makes this part really work, though, is not the six heavily distorted guitartracks, but the almost clean one in the middle. This is actually the same sound used for the pickings in the intro and before the heavy part, just played with far more force to make the amp go into overdrive. The harmonies lead that part away from the keynotes, just enough to create a little extra atmosphere. This part is then, modified and again not that intensely played, carried to the last bit of the bridge. That way, keeping the sound and the rythm going but somewhat taking the bite out of it, it provides some continuity and a kind of fade out, opposed to a second extreme break in a few seconds time (which would not go down well). The drums are now beaten harder and the ride is used for a more open, driving sound, but the rythm is again very straight and without any fills or special accentuations so it does in fact bridge the heavy part with the last vocal part.

Troughout the whole song the 8/8 rythm and the repeating chords are very characteristic and something I aimed at from the beginning. The chords change just enough to give some room for harmonies and nice melodies, but the very subtle changes between them always keep the atmosphere calm. The straight rythm also helps the quiet atmosphere as well, but, together with the changes in the lead guitar tracks, gives the impression of the song going somewhere. When that somewhere is finally there in the big break, the straight eighths in bass and guitar and the chord changes inside the song’s key provide continuity. This is of most importance, because although you want a contrast as strong as possible to get the most of the effect, you do not want a part in your song that does not belong there and leaves people puzzled.

After all I am really pleased with this one. I have to admit that usually I am not a big fan of this music myself. This actually started as an experiment to try out these simplistic songwriting concepts that so many modern bands use. It amazes me how all those little things come together and make a song work quite well. So, here it is:

Vironnimo – About Stars & Diamonds

Dicky Shithead & The Shitty Dickheads

Ok, I went a little astray here. Point ist, on a day like this, when the rain pours down, you are in deep shit professionally, a beautiful girl just stood you up and your damn friends don’t answer their phones… it is very easy to like it when things are not what they seem. And if they nonetheless are, you may want to put a record on which at least makes you believe the world to be a better place.

So, here is a song about the beauty of the world. Or maybe not, who knows?

Vironnimo – Chocolate Bars

Vironnimo – Pain & Death

Our guitarist Manuel has really got things going on the internet, we are on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and Youtube and get an amazing feedback from fans and subscribers. We want to thank all of you guys who are already supporting us in these early days with a give-away!

Watch this video and maybe win the first Yellowknife shirt! Good luck

Dear fellow bass players: Defending your position in a band is as pathetic as it is pointless. You should count yourself lucky to be allowed to hang with the cool guys. Don’t risk that by getting pissy about your petty need for respect. Just calm down by listening to some soothing music and accept your natural role at the bottom of the food chain.