My New Single "Rest Of Our Luck" Is Out!

Today is a VERY special day for me.

I am so proud to release my first single in years today. I called the song "Rest Of Our Luck". No joke, I'm beaming with pride and I am a bit jittery. The last nine months were a blur of artistic expression, project management (well…), and fun.

Over the coming months, I will share more songs with you, so stay tuned! Be sure to hit the "follow" button on Spotify so as not to miss the following songs!

My editor Rachel inspired me to write digital liner notes for every song. I loved these little CD booklets. Remember, they came with every album back when we still bought music in physical formats!

Why I Wrote It

Now, let me take you back to the moment "Rest Of Our Luck" was born. Picture this: it's March 1st, 2018. The night before, my bandmates and I made the tough call to part ways with our band, The Candidates. Cue the dingy bar in Friedrichshain, Berlin, with its sticky floors and lingering smell of cigarettes. We knew it was time to move on. That night, we drowned in beer.

So there I was, the next morning, nursing a monumental hangover. Not knowing where else to turn, I picked up the guitar to process my emotions. The whole song took shape in an hour or two. The hangover likely inhibited my usually critical brain. “Rest Of Our Luck” just flowed out of me, no overthinking, just raw emotion.

What The Song Is About

"Rest Of Our Luck" is a song about hope. It's about picking yourself up after a defeat and continuing with whatever you have left. It intertwines the sorrow of losing my band with the steadfast belief in what lies ahead.

In a way, this is a pick-me-up song. The original was somber and dark. This was intentional. It was a contradiction between the lyrics and music. Listen to this instrumental demo from 2020.

Here are the lyrics, if you want to dive deeper. You can see some of my notes like "smile" and "wave your hands"... I used these as embodied reminders of how I want to sing individual lines.

In the verse, I am honoring the time we spent together as a band. How it helped me grow as a human and as an artist. How it informed the choices I made in 2017. The chorus is pointing into the future with confidence.

The Souls Within The Song

Creating a record can be a one-man show with tons of software instruments and samples. But for this album, we took a craftsy approach. Here is the full list of musicians you hear on this song:

• Vocals & Guitars: Julius Bachmann

• Lead Guitar: Tal Arditi

• Bass: Thanos Karakantas

• Drums: Rafat Muhammad

• Strings: Héloïse Lefebvre

• Horns: Johanns Böhmer, Leonie Freudenberger, Markus Ehrlich, Friedrich Milz

I want to give special thanks to my producer Charis Karantzas. And, to Thanos Karakantas (once again) for arranging the strings and horns. It is hard to understate how important these two gentlemen were for the entire project.

How We Produced & Recorded

My friend Luca first saw the potential in this song. He was particularly enchanted by the flow of the chorus. So I knew early on "Rest Of Our Luck" would make the record. I have to say, going into this album production I had next to no experience of what the process would look like. I'll share more about my collaboration with Charis in a separate post in the coming weeks. For now, let's just say: it was a fascinating journey. "Rest Of Our Luck" turned out very close to how I envisioned it in the beginning. Here are my initial references: 

• California Soil by London Grammar 

• Virginia in the Rain by Dave Matthews Band

Can you hear how we tried to replicate elements of the sound?

The song came to life in our November rehearsals. That's when Tal (electric guitar), Thanos (bass), and Rafat (drums) came up with the rhythmic unison in the verse. It strings together my original loose guitar line. The pizzicato strings add high-end definition and make the tune vibrant. 

If you feel like back in the 90s listening to the chorus... We tried to get a Verve Brit rock vibe going with the string arrangements. In the mid-section, you can hear Markus Ehrlich’s horn and woodwind ensemble painting a lyrical picture. I love how they managed to paint the minimal lines I sketched with my minimal harmonies.

How The Artwork & Video Came Together

Most of the artwork on this album is created by artificial intelligence. If you have some experience operating AI, you'll know that it is quite the process. So, as part of my digital liner notes, I want to share how arrived at the final artwork.

In my first attempt, I used the Canva AI for the first time. Thinking about the theme of hope, I prompted it “a bud coming up from dry soil in the style of pauli der maulwurf”.

I checked in with my art director in residence, my wife Jessie. She said this looks like "the cover art for a happy Sunshine State indie record". In short: this attempt had failed. So I started playing around with prompts that captured the song's melancholy. I also switched over to DallE. Thinking about my childhood, I remembered when my cassette tapes unspooled, and how I would use a pencil to fix them. This was the motif that ultimately made the single cover:

For months, my friends from Sydow Media followed me to rehearsals and into the studio. They were documenting the whole production. Check out the teaser video for "Rest Of Our Luck" they created in the process!