Christian Löffler - A Forest (2012)

Christian Löffler stays in the forest with his debut album. After the single „Aspen“, which is named after a certain kind of tree that is typical for his home region in the north of Germany, he now comes along with a full length Album called „A Forest“. The closeness to nature in Löffler’s work is more than just an escape from the urban world. For the time he produced the album, Christian lived in a small house near Usedom. There was not much more than a room and a window with a view into the forest. While wandering through the woods and out to the sea, he captured many sounds that found a way into his music. The sound of leaves and breaking waves create a sometimes melancholic and sometimes threatening atmosphere. Wooden sounds are also often used in his tracks. Around these sounds Christian Löffler creates music, that can’t be associated with the rough and industrial atmosphere from urban life very much, but more with the warm and melancholic vibe of mother nature. A very new aspect in Christian’s work on this album is the use of vocals. While he used vocal samples for the first time in his collaboration with Ki-colleague and friend Steffen Kirchhoff on their Split EP for Ki Records, more complex vocal structures find their way into his music on „A Forest“. In the track „Feelharmonia“ Christian collaborates with the Danish musician Gry Noehr Bagøien and creates a hypnotic track in which the vocals slowly develop into really sung words. On „Eleven“ he works with Mohna, singer of Hamburg based band Me Succeeds, and uses her fragile voice throughout a whole track. Another special piece on „A Forest“ is „Swift Code“, on which Christian works together with the lyricist and poet Marcus Roloff. The two met on the „frankfurt poetry festival“ in 2011 and decided to do something together. The result is a track with sometimes implicit and sometimes explicitly threatening poem passages that fit perfectly into Löffler’s sound realm. The cover was also made by Christian Löffler, who also works as an artist on paintings and photography. He captured the image during one of his many walks throughout the forests near Usedom.