It’s Xmas again and therefore time for Antichrisis’ consuetudinary “End of the Year”-Rankings. Actually 2014 saw some very fine album releases — and these are my favourites hitherto:

Die Nerven - Fun
Alvvays - Alvvays
Warpaint - Warpaint
The Raveonettes - Pe'ahi
Sleaford Mods - Divide & Exit
Kate Tempest - Everybody Down
Scott Walker & Sunn O))) - Soused
Adrian Crowley - Some Blue Morning
Marianne Faithfull - Give my Love to London
Robert Plant: Lullaby and… the Ceaseless Roar

Peace for all Creatures on Earth & A Happy New Year to You!

We’ve just returned from a wonderful vacation in Rugia: 3 weeks just me & Ayuma, the wind & the sea along with gulls, crows, cranes and cormorants. We’ve been out and about each and every day, exploring the island from north to south and getting as much fresh air as we possibly could. It was my first time at the Baltic Sea and I was really amazed by the sheer beauty of Rugia’s ravishing landscape which provided lots of inspiration for new songs.

When we returned home there was a parcel deposited for me at our local post office: it came from Russia and contained a beautiful art book as well as an impressive painting of two cranes, which was a strange coincidence as we loved watching those cranes on Rugia preparing for their migration to Spain and North Africa, and their grace and beauty left us simply gobsmacked. Those flocks of cranes with their typical crane calls became somehow very special to us, hence this beautiful painting of two cranes by A. Zhuravleva sent to me by Alexandra and Simon (2 Russian Antichrisis-fans, I guess?) got a very special place in our flat, too. Thanks a lot for that gorgeous present, guys!

So now after 3 weeks of total abstinence from the Internet, emails and telephone calls we’re back to our daily routine again — and unfortunately there’s a big construction site right in front of our house as they’re doing some serious channel digging there, which means that we have to live with a soundscape that reminds slightly of World War II at the moment: absolutely no way of mixing tracks or getting any recordings done under these circumstances. But construction works (hopefully) don’t last forever, and as soon as those guys have finished their job we will proceed with our musical activities.

From time to time we’re receiving requests by various people asking for a song that has been taken down from our website a few years ago and isn’t available for download any longer, and ever so often we’re trying to answer these requests by sending those people the desired track itself or its download link via email.

It’s a free service by Antichrisis for our fans -- and one would expect a few lines in reply like “Thank you for sending me that song” or something like that. But strangely enough this never ever happens: seems like those acts of courtesy have gone lost in the endless width of the Internet. So maybe we won’t bother with those kind of requests in the future any more -- mind you, we’re just a little bit old-fashioned when it comes to exchanging pleasantries.

But there’s also something very pleasant to report about -- and this is about those fans that have purchased our latest album “Not Fade Away” at Bandcamp: they’re sending us nice comments almost every time, and not just a few of them have actually paid much more for the album than we’ve been charging. This is really kind and generous, hence a very warm-hearted “Thank You” from Antichrisis to all those of you who bought “Not Fade Away” so far.

But while talking about albums: As already mentioned we’ve been planning to release Antichrisis’ new album “Foxfire” this year -- but due to some unexpected incidents we probably won’t be able to stick to this schedule. But no need to worry: forbearance is not acquittance. Only the vocal recording sessions have to be postponed for the time being; everything else is just fine.

So instead of having a whinge we’ve already started working on the next but one Antichrisis album which will contain the soundtrack to an imaginary film that Ayuma and me have been kibbling in the windmills of our minds, in a manner of speaking. There will be no more pop songs on that album, instead it’ll be a very dark and disturbing electronic symphony much in the vein of “Cantara Anachoreta” but by other means. The first few tracks that we’ve created do sound just gorgeous and we hope you’re going to like it even it’ll be something that Antichrisis has never done before.

But as soon as these aforementioned incidents are sorted out and we’re able to proceed with our vocal recordings, we’ll be finishing and releasing “Foxfire” as soon as possible.

Due to public demand we’ve made Antichrisis’ renowned demo “Missa Depositum Custodi” available for free in our download area. The .zip-file contains all tracks of the original demo as well as some unreleased songs of that era, but please keep in mind that all that stuff was recorded back in 1996 on an 8 track cassette deck -- hence its sound quality is what modern hipsters would call “genuine Lo-Fi”.

Get “Missa Depositum Custodi” for free here.