A short clip with a part of an instrumental which I wrote for the first Schall und Stille album, but which didn't make the cut.

‘The Bridge’ was inspired by the flood in the Ahr Valley in 2021. One day, two local families let this kite string float above the river, at the place where the devastated bridge once stood.

I spent a few weeks volunteering in the Ahr Valley after the flood and was particularly struck by two very different things I experienced - one of which has the potential to rebuild trust in humanity and the other to tear it apart.

Thing number one was the mesmerizingly heartwarming solidarity. There were so many people of all professions, ages and income levels there to help, and I was really touched by the humanity of it all.

And the second thing is the almost obsessive collective unwillingness to recognise how climate change has brought about this catastrophe. Of course, people had other and more pressing problems back then. But things haven't goten any better. Many locals don't want to hear about climate change and have voted in droves for Germany's far-right, climate-change-denying Nazi party (the so-called ‘AfD’).