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.