New Fuzz Sagrado EP

As my 4th year in Brasil comes to a close, I am really glad to finally release new music with Fuzz Sagrado - which always means guitars, riffs, and vocals and so in a way can be seen as the direct continuation of SBE. There's now even two older song ideas from that period which I managed to realize by myself. And it has been a bit of a "crazy ride" to finish this EP. I've had a friend in Italy, Alessandro of L'Ira Del Baccano, help me understand a few significant things here, and still I am learning. But I am happy with the result and now it's here for you to check out ...

Snowchild

Oh the tranquility seems to be wearing me out
Tried to be cool, calm and collected while it twists me around
And everything within me is starting to freeze,
and yearn to burst into the light

It's half past midnight now and I'm so tired to explain myself

And I don't want you around
when your icecold ethics are just bringing me down
Trail of (cold) smoke misguiding me
And to still see you frown seems just so pathethic
You took control of me now either way

It's feeding on me through every shallow day and every vengeful night,
while it feels just like going insane
with that same old drive in me
as I'm longing to be oh more than just morally fulfilled

Cold Remains

Everything changes, nothing seems to be real
Guess that's how it goes just for everyone
The words that we speak dissent the pain that we feel
So strange how we thought we're the only ones ...

Who'd loved yet had lost all their naivety
That's how coming of age slowly takes its toll
Take a look at the numbskulls that we have become,
in the end just afraid to grow up

And then I wanted to die,
was looking for an easy way out to end this reckless life,
so I could be reborn,
emotionless and cold

Everyone screws around with each other's minds,
unable to listen, and unlearning to think,
while here I am lost on the middle of the road
and still just don't know what you want from me

We lived on the cost of our integrity
and that's how coming of age really took its toll
Take a look at the memories that we have outgrown,
in the end just afraid to break up

And then I wanted to die,
was looking for an easy way out to end this reckless life,
so I could be reborn,
emotionless and cold - just like you

Morphine Prayer

Here comes resurrection, again I'm on my own,
for all that once had been familiar became unknown
I've sent my morphine prayers to ease off, or to restrain,
ever since I've been a servant to her game
Used to love her with obedience, an addiction as I would say,
yet never then would I foresee her wicked ways

And now at times it seems so silly, no use to reminisce
This foolish love was torn to pieces of fragile bliss
Like a moth who's burned her wings in golden rays of the sun,
promised you that I would wait till the bitter end had come

Neurotic Nirvana

Once true brotherly love shook this earth,
now look at what is left of it
All faded into darkness, the memories lost in time
Debating such ambiguous things like correctness or truth
and yet there's no switch to rewind

In their blind convenience,
these naive fools never stood a chance
in their fragile resilience, such a pitiful scene to see

In blind convenience, selfishness, more than arrogance
Missed the point - trying to pretend
relations wouldn't mean a thing

If that's where it was all headed to
I guess I will just accept my fate
Thought we'd made this bold pact for eternity,
now I have to leave all l my innocence far behind

Blind convenience, here I lie slain by these cold hands
If that's where our forever ends, how can you be so mean to me

New vinyl coming!

It's been a while, I am still a bit undecided about this whole blog thing. It seemed great during that "covid daze", to get things off my chest or use this as a kind of online diary, or even self therapy ... dunno. A lot of things are always happening, sometimes I may be just a little lazy to post stuff. Apologies!

So I have a new vinyl coming in January 2025, yay! I've been putting quite some effort into this, finding labels who'd take a bit of a risk. Don't get me wrong, I think this album is among my finest and totally deserves this "proper release". I may have quite my own philosophy about this, I don't think everything needs to printed on physical media anymore, no! 

I am not even a collector at all myself, but I know that there are people who love to have such things and like I said: This particular album totally deserves it. It will be the third Surya-vinyl after "Holy Holy Holy" in 2017 and the super rare "The Hermit" from 2016!

A few words about all this in general, because some people really liked it and one fan even wrote it may be my best release since Samsara's last album which in some ways is quite a bit "funny" for me, because the backgrounds of these two albums can't be much more different really:

This one here was made here in my brasilian home studio, in calm, with passion and dedication - while the Samsara-album almost ended my career. I really didn't want anything to do with it all anymore, almost gave up guitar because I had to play these songs like a zillion times before recording them under the stress of a dissolving band.

And how ridiculous it seems spending thousands of bucks on a recording (SBE), oh perhaps it still sounds a wee bit better while at the same time I hear the stiffness behind my tracks, and it's all just way too big of a compromise for me. So what's more important, good sound or passion? Eventually the goal is going for both! I might say with that latest Surya-album I am almost there and proud of my achievements.

It's a great album. Period.

An end, and a new beginning

There's a concert coming up, the first one since 2019 for me, and I'm writing here again ... a lot has happened in the last months, I've lost a few friends and found new ones. We've been evicted from our house, not sure why, crazy stuff ... In my fourth year in Brasil, things are still strange at times. I've been searching answers in spirituality. This may seem strange to some people, sometimes it seems strange to myself, but if that doesn't make sense, what else does? Some of the things here are a big old mystery. I have come to this foreign land, far away from the the life I've known before, and it's all so different ...

During these months I also tried to make something happen for SBE - it was suggested to me to return with SBE, after I expressed my "saudades" to play live and initially had this idea for a "best of career"-program with a new band. I began to miss it, and to travel and all. So Thomas, Hans and I talked for the first time in years, and although for a moment it seemed as if something could happen, it can't - ... I'll try not to stay bitter about it. It would have been easy to come back with the familiar name (that I created, where I wrote most of the songs etc) instead of starting over again. At least, we will continue to play some of these songs in the new group.

But these days I have other challenges ahead of me. I started the year with a new Surya-album and recorded a whole lot of new stuff, but I can't lie: the last few weeks I was in a bit of frustration perhaps. The untimely end of SBE and the loss of some friends took their toll and made me question how much of that is my fault, even though all I want to do is PLAY MY MUSIC really. Is it that difficult for every band? Was it like that when we were younger? Was I ignoring other people's feelings? I guess life's like that: things change. I look back at all with gratitude and will not try to force much for now, ... just recently I really enjoy to work together with other musicians again.

Here's three excerpts of constellations I have been playing in the last months ... all were special to me ... most impressive perhaps would be the group with Steffen Schneider (Spaceship Landing, Blackbox Massacre), Raphael Nigbur (Blackbox Massacre) and Charlie Paschen (Coogans Bluff, Charlies Studio etc) but also meeting with my old friends Jens Vogel and Robin Niehoff was great! Eventually though I have decided to stick with two "local" Brasilian guys, although drummer Lucas Fursy is from 200 km away. It was guitar- and amp maker Guilherme Bordin who initiated me to play with local guys, despite all the difficulties here ... let me just say it is MUCH easier to play music in Germany in general!

But that's how it is, I really learn to have a different view on the past and present here ...

New Samsara Blues Experiment - Livealbum

One of the last live pics, from Mannheim 2019 actually, by picsfromthepit

We've been working on this new live album for quite a while and I'm really happy that there's finally a proper document of our shows. After the long sold out "Rockpalast" CD from 2013, this new album will be released on 2 LP and CD via World In Sound in November 2023 and is already available on Bandcamp and all other popular streaming and download services. It was recorded in Germany in November 2018 on our last tour, recorded and mixed by Holger Stratmann from Rock Hard Magazine, and mastered by Eroc from Grobschnitt.

Pedalboard detail for my guitar friends :)

New album: Surya Kris Peters "Strange New World"

Much to my own surprise: Here's new music from my other solo project, which shall remain the one true EXPERIMENT ;) I have been working on these tunes pretty much at the same time as on Fuzz Sagrado's recent album "Luz e Sombra", so some similarities shall be quite evident, most of all: MY BIG GUITAR COMEBACK! This is the first Surya-album with guitar on every track, and at times I think that perhaps this is the sound that I would try to elaborate with this project, although I honestly like the idea of remaining rather unpredictable. Well, it's on bandcamp now and there for you to discover ...

Luz e Sombra - the lyrics

Minas Gerais/Brasil, May 2023

There's No Escape

It's such an indistinct feeling

bright flames are burning deep underneath

and as they crawl up to the ceiling

I feel them pouring right into me

We are human, so fragile and clueless

And maybe none of us chose this life 

or then gets stranded in no man's land

Watch that steady stream,

it's such a curious scene

Yet some day you may see it through

We are human, obsess with useless things, get deluded

And if you wanted to escape,

you will see that there's no way out 

You gotta stick to the plan

or you'll get overrun

So hard to stand your ground

No chance to turn our eyes away

You can not just sit this one out

But if you dig deep through this ragged surface, 

you soon will find nothing's just as it seems

We are human, insatiable and cruel

And you're just one more time around

No chance to turn your eyes away

You better stick to their dirty plan

or you'll get overrun

So hard to stand your ground now

and then there's no one out there 

who would just stop all this madness

Wake Them Up

Think they're safe and sound

by the way they drag themselves around

Seems that all gods children just can't relate

It's such a pity to me

how much they'll miss in this life

if they won't start to listen to what they really feel

Hey don't wake them up,

when they prefer to sleep all their life's away

and it's all they got,

make sure the doors are shut

Who sleeps cannot be no sinner

I know y'all won't do no wrong

but then it's time to arise

Hey don't wake them up,

when they prefer to sleep all their life's away

and it's all they got,

please never give them up

And when you roam through these filthy streets,

look at every odd face that you meet

with all the scars that they wear on their minds

and all the hopes that they'd scrapped

While getting stuck on some part of their odyssey,

it just occured to me that all this suffering could end

Hey don't wake them up

when they prefer to sleep all their life's away

and it's all fucked up,

yet so hard to break out

Hey, go wake them up!

Luz e Sombra

Deep inside of you,

there's a void you can't break through

Before the world comes falling in, 

gotta find another way

and if you really want to know,

you'll find the truth

One Endless Summer

I've wasted away so many precious days

while looking at parts of my old life,

then it all just turns into a blur

All the reasoning done with myself

and the feelings I'd trapped on my inside

have lead to this endless summer,

here by your side

Fading away,

in these hungry flames of our youth

The spirit will always remain,

so don't you cry

Like after every hard rain, shines the sun,

yes even after death, life goes on

You'll see that some of these startling things 

seem to depend on what you have learned

And don't you chase 'em away,

both demons and angels are a part of truth,

as you will see that golden age arise

 

We're only trapped in sweet forever babe

Leaving Samsara

Though we weren't born to touch the sky, well we did

and all the trails that we've left behind still tell our tale

Just by following a call from inside,

we climbed a mountain, stood against the rain

with our raging hearts

These wounds must heal and all the pain I feel

The fussing and useless discussing will come to an end

We fell victim for our own foolish pride,

got lost in delusion and fear

After all you'll see that I am still here

By myself, I'm here in these strange new world,

but I still cling to this voice,

that tells me now it's not what I thought,

tells me how I'm not made of gold

Was looking for peace, or finally some freedom,

the same as you,

hoping for something to enlighten me 

or just sets me free

Alone, I'm staring at the face of the world

in all its beauty and all its disgust,

with all the anger, that is still inside of me

And then the rain, is getting stronger every day,

while none of all this is real

The sooner I come to realize,

will drive my demons away

Sometimes I linger in all the memories,

that seem like a fever dream

At times I rather push them away, much farther away

But they've become such an undeniable part of me

and I know that it wasn't all just in vain

And no, I can not deny,

insight and guilt transcend me

when we'll meet, just one more time

Did you enjoy the silence?

Since the nerve-wrecking fights and the tensions are gone

You still don't know if it was for glory, or self-deceit

I feel you staring at me with a frown,

while that old relentless clock is marching on

You already knew I gotta keep pushing further 

and follow my calling, and maybe break through

Love In Progress

In the beginning it's all sorcery,

our names written in cloudless skies,

a love so untouched, and so pure,

but that's just half the truth -

cause when you'll awake,

with every nervous breath you take,

dark memories come crashing in

Oh babe it ain't over,

we both just came a little further,

cause out back home there is no one,

to teach about our own truth

But anyway,

I didn't come here just to make you sad

I know the rain

will wash all your sorrows away

So let him cleanse your soul now,

come let us float away

No babe it ain't over,

we both are just a little older

and out back there is really no one,

to understand me like you do

You didn't pick the wrong one

Let's wait until we both are sober

Inflamed like this we'll never see

of what we've stumbled into

Oh babe it ain't over,

we both just came a little further now,

cause out back home there is no one,

to teach about our own truth

Learning To Live, And Live Again

Oh, it's just another lazy afternoon,

but i'm ready to hear - the next lesson

And while everything's been shut down, 

I've been learning to live, and live again

with all these people so insincere

Oh well I guess they're still slumbering,

mending their pain

This whole wide world is still in such a mess

I'm so glad for the voices of reason, 

rising above all the same old nothing

We gotta search for the truth in our hearts, 

to find the key for love and trust,

as it's time for these to reign

Yeah sometimes it may drag you down,

but then it's just such a waste of time,

waiting for everyone else to change their minds

There's many ways to go through this short life

To find a way out of all this distress,

we'll better listen again - to our own inner voices

Surya Kris Peters: me and my strange stuff

I even did the impossible: Cut my hair ... Berlin-Weissensee, 2016

There are two previous SBE albums, but today I feel like writing about another topic: the influences on my Surya Kris Peters project. It was November 2013, when SBE were on a long tour through most of Western and Northern Europe. We'd been on the road for a whole month, from Berlin to Scandinavia to the Benelux countries, France, Spain and Portugal and back again - a hell of a ride. In between I got really sick, food poisoning in the middle of Spain where nobody spoke English, you couldn't even talk to the sound engineers or bands on site. 

In addition, I was quite annoyed by a strange problem that was to haunt me even until the end of the band: SBE was always super loud! In the quartet lineup though it became increasingly difficult to make out my own guitar's sound on stage. Everything was crazy loud, and that's not always cool. You also have to remember that some of the clubs we played weren't that big back then, and there was a lot of noise coming out of the amps every night. I tried using a booster pedal to get my solos through, but in the end it seemed all a bit over the top. 

When we got back home after the tour, months of time-out and discussions followed. Our bassist Richard also wanted to try other things in his life, following his profession as a sound engineer, and eventually decided to leave the band. We didn't rehearse for months, and in one of our conversations I vaguely let slip through that I was longing for something else in music. That idea was very indistinct. What I actually wanted, I didn't really know myself yet. But at some point during that time, I also started getting more involved with synthesizers. 

I bought my Moog Little Phatty shortly after recording the Long Distance Trip-album in 2010, but for the first few years I played just with the presets and had little idea of anything. After I got into it a bit more, modular Eurorack synthesizers became of bigger interest in 2015. All that stuff was incredibly fascinating for me, a different world! I had zero idea about it and always wondered where exactly the sounds came out and how it worked with all the cables. In the beginning, everything seemed very complicated, which I can only smile about today. 

But also the music I listened to in private changed a lot. While until then classic and obscure heavy rock of the 1970s was on my agenda, that somehow wore out more and more when I had discovered almost all underground bands of that era and also suddenly felt as if every other long-haired musician outed himself as a big Black Sabbath or Pentagram-fan. Oh okay, ... I was a bit tired of the always same sound of distorted blues-influenced guitar, bass and drums, so I slowly started to explore other sounds. 

I put a lot of effort in these special screen-printed versions of "The Hermit" and "Holy Holy Holy".

In 2014 and '15 I became a little obsessed with the soul divas of the late 60s and early 70s, Margie Joseph, Ann Peebles, Inez Foxx, etc. Of course, that had very little to do with my own music, let alone me wanting to play that music at all, but something about it fascinated me and held a certain appeal for a long time. Well, I like female voices, and probably can't help it ;) It probably made for a kind of balance to all the heavy stoner and hard rock bands I was exposed to all the time.

I had also tried Krautrock from time to time, but it didn't really work until today. There were a lot of good ideas, but a lot of it seemed at the same time kinda "immature" and sometimes almost a bit amateurish. Well, it's a wide and almost unoverseeable field, but if you look closely for a while, you can of course find some outstanding gems like Manuel Goettsching/Ashra, early Popol Vuh, and for me also the jazzy groups like Missus Beastly in particular.

I also got into more and more "Space Age" film music of the 60s and 70s, and the already mentioned KPM Library Recordings from an earlier post here. What wonderful music once had been made! In a way, that vibe has been with me for a long time, not that I ever tried to imitate it, but I think my Surya project has taken a lot of it as an influence, although it has appealed to rather few people among my fans so far - very different from "Guitar Chris".

However, many of of my Surya tracks and albums have brought me a great, maybe greater satisfaction than the studio albums with SBE, some of which I can't even listen to, out of dissatisfaction, or it is also simply overheard, while in my solo project I can implement so much more spontaneous ideas, while also not having to impress anyone with it, it's all a real fun project - which will also soon find its continuation with a new album!

I almost forgot to mention that from my childhood I was fascinated by the music and image of Mike Oldfield (there's this one picture of him sitting in this old mansion with all his instruments that has been burned into my memory since I was a boy), and Isao Tomita's "Pictures At An Exhibition" from my father's LP-collection. The very early Surya stuff was also influenced by Asian sounds, like Osamu Kitajima, some of Flower Travellin' Band and sounds like that.

The long way to the Long Distance Trip (Pt. 3)

I wanted to finish my little treatise on the background of the LDT album with some possible influences in the years before, and of course I can only talk mostly about my personal faves, well, as the main songwriter that might make sense. Although I would also like to mention that SBE drummer Thomas Vedder in particular has a very eclectic taste in music and in his own way has perhaps always been the coolest guy in the band, even if he doesn't talk much to strangers. He has this encyclopedic wisdom in him and a huge music collection. He loves English prog (Soft Machine, Gong, Steve Hillage, etc.), 70's rock and Krautrock more than the newer groups and in some ways was a little ahead of many of us.

Whereas I was also heavily influenced by the seven years with Terraplane. We had long jam tracks there too, but didn't really know what we were doing. It just kind of came together. "Singata" was actually an unrecorded Terraplane song as well! I had been a big fan of the Doors for a long time, and Oelke and I were equally big fans of Led Zeppelin. Especially the long (live) versions of "Dazed and Confused" had impressed us a lot. But also Hendrix, Black Sabbath and others played a role, for me especially the very early UFO, or Canned Heat and 70s underground groups like Josefus. In the early 2000s however we didn't know any other band in Germany that had such "crazy" long pieces (15-20 min) in their live set, except Colour Haze of course. And later I was also to discover Earthless from California, who were a step above all that in their own way, even back then! But for me it was always also important to have at least a bit of song structure and vocals.

So without rambling on too much further, here's a selection of other main influences for the "Long Distance Trip" album in particular, Mammatus again, but also Om and early Toner Low by the way, or Ancestor's "Neptune With Fire", and my all time Stonerrock-favorite Nebula. And there are also a few highlights from old groups that everyone should know, even almost 50 years after they were active. By the way, I always found it funny how from ca. 2014 on suddenly "everyone" claimed to have always been a Black Sabbath fan, etc. But maybe that was due to increased networking and social media. I can still remember very well how in the 90s and early 2000s old groups like Black Sabbath etc. weren't popular at all and many people considered 70s rock as sort of "old-fart music". Anyway, starting in 2015 I also became more and more interested in electronic music, but more on that elsewhere. Have fun with these groundbreaking tracks, on the long way to the Long Distance Trip!

New album available for preorder!

My new album with Fuzz Sagrado "Luz e Sombra" is now available for pre-order and a first track can be previewed. I tried a slightly different approach with the promotion this time. I'm not an expert at it but it's kind of fun to create some excitement in myself as well after working on this album for most of the last year.

The first track is now presented by the famous THE OBELISK blog. JJ Koczan is one of the few people who have documented my entire career with SBE, and he's at the forefront of this new project as well. Next week another long track will be featured by Psychedelic Baby webzine and the final album will be released on May 19! 

I hope you enjoy it, I think there are some real highlights on the album this time. Many thanks to Wolf from World in Sound for taking care of the physical release!