Earthgrooves Vol.2: The Sound of earthTV released

Since the release of the first earthgrooves album five years ago, we have been working A LOT. Writing and producing with many great artists on behalf of major movie and record companies took us around the world. 

Wherever we were, we met up with resident musicians. Jamming, writing, recording or just hanging out with them was a tremendous source of inspiration: the inspiration that we needed to define the concept of earthgrooves Vol 2 “the sound of earthTV”.

We wanted to take earthgrooves to another level, to create something fresh and new. Free from any commercial considerations we developed a kind of research project to find out what contemporary instrumental music could sound like. We based the production of this album on the symbiosis of many different musical influences and cultures. On this musical journey, we took roads that sometimes led to places we haven’t even dreamed of before.

More than 100 musicians from all over the earth were involved in this project. They come from places like Australia and the Ukraine, Sweden and Morocco, Cuba and Tunisia, New Caledonia, the USA and many more countries. 

The result of this journey is what you are holding in your hands: earthgrooves Vol 2 “the sound of earthTV“.  And while you are listening and enjoying, we are already tying up our hiking boots to hit the road again and start collecting material for the next big thing: earthgrooves Vol 3.

Christian Hamm and Alain Bertoni, Spring 2008

01 Time Is A Factor 

In September 2003 I was invited by Thomas M. Hohenacker and Marcus Leser to experience the first live video stream of earthTV in the Telcast production studios in Munich. The first cameras were installed in Australia, Europe and the U.S. but the program was still not broadcasted on any TV channel around the world. The pictures blew me away and I instantly knew that I wanted to be part of the adventure by scoring music for it. For me, the major issue in the earthTV program was time. As our whole life seems to be controlled and limited by time, the idea of being able to watch simultaneously different live video streams from different locations around the world seemed to stop the clock for a moment and challenge time. On this track, I worked with the Art Orchestra Kiev – probably one of the best orchestras in Eastern Europe. Its enormous musicality makes the song flow like a river of time. 

Christian Hamm

Composed by Christian Hamm/Alain Bertoni. Guitars: Christian Hamm, Voice: Peter Caron, Piano: Igor Pussini, Orchestra: Art Orchestra Kiev, The Art Orchestra Kiev is: 1st Violin: Petr Belinkow, Swetlana Lebedinetz, Valentina Fagewskasja, Sinaida Gill, Nikolai Korgasitschenko, Oxana Sorokina, Tatjana Malowa, Petr Rjabtschengukl, 2nd Violin: Elena Logwinenko, Wassilj Morusow, Ljubon Tschemodanowa, Jana Tokar, Irina Antoschkiwa, Sjomkin Vitali, Tatjana Judenko, Michail Sidelnik, Viola: Nikolaj Litwitschenko, Eduard Romanenko, Juri Maraschuk, Katharina Pavlenko, Wjatscheslav Julev, Cello: Wjatscheslav Babkow, Leonid Wolodtschenko, Boris Sudaarew, Alexander Ivanovskij, Sergej Putschkov, Doublebass: Sergej Vilikich, Ewgenj Skernik, Valeri Latuchow, Alexander Ernakow.

Arranged and conducted by Christian Hamm and Boris Kossko. Arranged and programmed by Christian Hamm. Recorded at orange studios Cologne, Ukrainian Radio Concert Studio Kiev. Mixed by  Christian Hamm and Reinhard Schaub. Published by Hamm & Bertoni Publishing. Produced by Christian Hamm and Alain Bertoni for orange entertainment.

02  Tjukurrpa 

We met Wabbokombor in Nouméa New Caledonia where we were scoring a new Hi Definition documentary film. The different sounds he produced with his Didgeridoo were just amazing. Wabbokombor originally comes from Australia and he told us about the Tjukurrpa (Dreamtime) spiritual art of Australian Aborigines. We took a whole day to jam and record with Wabbokombor in a small studio in Nouméa, just him on didgeridoo and me on guitar.

Back in Germany, we took the tracks and built a song around them. We added some percussion we had recorded much earlier during a session in Polynesia. Then we found out that some old recordings of ours with a horagai flute player from Japan worked perfectly in this song. Finally we had Raúl González from Mexico on drums and let DJ Hedley from Manchester do his TB 303 thing – the term “earth grooves” makes sense, doesn’t it?

Christian Hamm

Composed by Christian Hamm/Alain Bertoni. Guitars, Mandolin: Christian Hamm, Didgeridoo: Wabbokombor, Horagai: Brian Asano, Percussion: Ariki Kupe, Kereteki Aguan, TB 303: DJ Hedley, Drums: Raúl González.

Arranged and programmed by Christian Hamm. Recorded at orange studios Cologne, Mangrove Studios Nouméa. Mixed by  Christian Hamm and Reinhard Schaub. Published by Hamm & Bertoni Publishing. Produced by Christian Hamm and Alain Bertoni for orange entertainment.

03 Pan-American Diaries 

Music often appears to me like a journey. In a dream, I traveled the longest road in the world – the Pan-American Highway. This road goes through North and South America through totally different cultures that have some of the greatest music and rhythms known to man. In this dream, I took musical souvenirs from every place I stopped: Mexican guitars, bongos from Uruguay, stringed instruments from Bolivia, maracas from Paraguay, electric guitars from the U.S., flutes from Bolivia, a tango piano from Argentina and many more. When I woke up in the morning I had the song finished in my head. Following the recording session with a rap band in Miami we went over to Havanna and recorded the great percussion players Carlos and Juan that brought all their energy to this track.

Christian Hamm

Composed by Christian Hamm/Alain Bertoni. Guitars, Bass, Piano: Christian Hamm 

GuZheng: Xu Fengxia, Strings: Carl Tenor, Guy Terry, Bill Bloomsfeld, Jan Rasmussen, Marie Solveig, Percussion: Carlos Riguviera, Juan Gomez.

Arranged and programmed by Christian Hamm. Recorded at orange studios Cologne, Miramar Studio Havana. Mixed by  Christian Hamm and Reinhard Schaub. Published by Hamm & Bertoni Publishing. Produced by Christian Hamm and Alain Bertoni for orange entertainment.

04 Malouf Rendezvous 

Malouf, the Arabic music of the Andalusian Muslims chased out of Spain, was imported to North Africa at the end of the 15th century. It grew so popular that, in some countries like Tunisia, it became the music par excellence supplanting all other forms to the extent that it was named “Malouf”, which means “that which is normal”. 

All percussions and Arabic instruments were performed and recorded in Kairouan, Tunisia. The incredible Momo Djender brings magic to this song with his vocal performance.

Alain Bertoni

Composed by Christian Hamm/Alain Bertoni. Vocals: Momo Djender, Guitars: Christian Hamm, GuZheng: Xu Fengxia, Horagai: Brian Asano, Bass: Henry Walford, Percussion: Nadeem Kashif, Khalf Nur, Marimba: Marvin Howell, Drums: Khalf Nur.

Arranged and programmed by Christian Hamm. Recorded at orange studios Cologne, Studio Sotex Tunis. Mixed by  Christian Hamm and Reinhard Schaub. Published by Hamm & Bertoni Publishing. Produced by Christian Hamm and Alain Bertoni for orange entertainment.

05 Pas de mode mineur 

I have always been fascinated by the performances of great ballet dancers like Mikhail Baryshnikov, Gelsey Kirkland and Polina Semionowa and I have always loved the music that great composers like Strawinsky, Shostakowitsch and Ravel wrote for ballet. Ballet dancers add a whole new dimension to the music – they make notes, harmonies and rhythms visible. I wrote this song as a duet for violin and guitar. Like two dancers on a stage, the two instruments have their solo parts. There are parts with the ensemble (in this case the orchestra) and parts where they both “dance” together. The violin soloist on this track is the wonderful Gerdur Gunnarsdóttir from Iceland.

Christian Hamm

Composed by Christian Hamm/Alain Bertoni. Guitars: Christian Hamm, Solo Violin: Gerdur Gunnarsdóttir, Oboe: Michael Niesemann, Percussion: Per Hagenström, Orchestra: Art Orchestra Kiev.

Arranged and conducted by Christian Hamm and Boris Kossko. 

Arranged and programmed by Christian Hamm. Recorded at orange studios Cologne, Ukrainian Radio Concert Studio Kiev. Mixed by  Christian Hamm and Reinhard Schaub. Published by Hamm & Bertoni Publishing. Produced by Christian Hamm and Alain Bertoni for orange entertainment.

06 Cardamine des prés (for Silke) 

This song is surely the most personal on the album. It is inspired by the most beautiful feeling in the world – love. It captures the moment where you realize that you gained all you ever dreamed of and life is giving you the feeling that you get when you look at a meadow in the sun, full of wonderful flowers. This song is dedicated to the woman in my life – and the love and lightness that we share.

Christian Hamm

Composed by Christian Hamm/Alain Bertoni. Guitars: Christian Hamm, Strings: Carl Tenor, Guy Terry, Bill Bloomsfeld, Jan Rasmussen, Marie Solveig, Oboe: Takajoshi Arakami.

Arranged and programmed by Christian Hamm. Recorded at orange studios Cologne. Mixed by  Christian Hamm and Reinhard Schaub. Published by Hamm & Bertoni Publishing. Produced by Christian Hamm and Alain Bertoni for orange entertainment.

07 Back To The Light 

To write and produce music is often full of different emotions. In the process of finding the right idea, chords, melody or rhythms you can go from desperation to absolute happiness when you know that you finally got exactly what you wanted. This process has to do with intuition and gut feelings and it’s so easy to get wrapped up to the point where you don’t know if things are any good or not any more! But when you get it right it’s like coming out of the dark, back to the light.

Alain Bertoni

Composed by Christian Hamm/Alain Bertoni. Guitars, Tampura, Sitar, Bass, Organ: Christian Hamm, Marimba: Steve Morales, Strings: Carl Tenor, Guy Terry, Bill Bloomsfeld, Percussion: Nadeem Kashif.

Arranged and programmed by Christian Hamm. Recorded at orange studios Cologne, Miramar Studio Havana. Mixed by  Christian Hamm and Reinhard Schaub. Published by Hamm & Bertoni Publishing. Produced by Christian Hamm and Alain Bertoni for orange entertainment.

08 The 7th Sign 

This one was specially written for our biggest TV partner in Europe, Pro7, and was the first title produced for earthgrooves 2 “the sound of earthTV” . The track was written as a sort of introduction for the new album. As we wrote the music, earthTV gave us a 5-minute video they produced from New York. The video started with a time-lapse shot of Manhattan at sunrise, which was very impressive. We tried to reproduce this special mood in the introduction of the song that took by far the longest time. We had at least twenty different possibilities with different instruments that were all good but we new that the one thing was still missing until Christian came up with the electric piano riff. The accents on the second part of the introduction underscore the first sunbeams hitting the New York skyscrapers. The track was only 180 seconds long to fit with the Pro7 program and we came back to it three months later to add new parts and finish it in its current length.

Alain Bertoni

Composed by Christian Hamm/Alain Bertoni. Guitars: Christian Hamm, Strings: Carl Tenor, Guy Terry, Bill Bloomsfeld, Piano: Leon Bates, Bass: Henry Walford, Drums: Mark Rothko.

Arranged and programmed by Christian Hamm. Recorded at orange studios Cologne, Crescent Moon Studios Miami. Mixed by  Christian Hamm and Reinhard Schaub. Published by Hamm & Bertoni Publishing. Produced by Christian Hamm and Alain Bertoni for orange entertainment.

09 Dawn 

The idea was born after a very long and loud party at the club BCM in Ibiza in July 2007. At five in the morning, Christian, myself and three other friends were just trying to recover after a very demanding night. Anyone who has been to BCM in Ibiza will know exactly how we were feeling at that time, too much bass drum and way too many drinks. We were just staring at the horizon saying nothing and enjoying the calm before sunrise. The hour we spent looking at the sea, from the very first weak rays of light, while the sun was still below the horizon, to the final burst of sunshine that brought the whole island to life was breath taking, no one said a word. The track went through numerous transformations (probably five or six different arrangements) even one with a real groove in the middle but we decided that it was maybe too much. This is the final version we chose with a nice sunset at the end of it.

Alain Bertoni

Composed by Christian Hamm/Alain Bertoni. Guitars, Bass: Christian Hamm, Solo Violin: Gerdur Gunnarsdóttir, Strings: Carl Tenor, Guy Terry, Bill Bloomsfeld, Jan Rasmussen, Marie Solveig, Bagpipes: Harvey McDowell, Piano: Leon Bates, Percussion: Raúl González.

Arranged and programmed by Christian Hamm. Recorded at orange studios Cologne. Mixed by  Christian .Hamm and Reinhard Schaub. Published by Hamm & Bertoni Publishing. Produced by Christian Hamm and Alain Bertoni for orange entertainment.

10 Valediction 

Originally, this started late in the evening after recording a tune that didn’t make it on the album. I just received an email from Marcus Leser at earth TV with new videos from new camera locations around the world. We watched it and directly started recording a new idea. Berthold Matschat was hanging around with us after doing a session in one of our other studios and we recorded him playing different Harmonica solos on this new and very basic track. We didn’t go back to this song for at least 3 months. When we listened to it again we thought it was worth a try to finish it and so we did. We gave the name Valediction because we always thought that this would be the last song on the album, but then, like very often I must say, we changed our mind.

Alain Bertoni

Composed by Christian Hamm/Alain Bertoni. Guitars: Christian Hamm, Harmonica: Berthold Matschat, Strings: Carl Tenor, Guy Terry, Bill Bloomsfeld, Piano: Leon Bates, Bass: Henry Walford, Drums and Percussion: Raúl González.

Arranged and programmed by Christian Hamm. Recorded at orange studios Cologne, Crescent Moon Studios Miami. Mixed by  Christian Hamm and Reinhard Schaub. Published by Hamm & Bertoni Publishing. Produced by Christian Hamm and Alain Bertoni for orange entertainment.

11  Jardin Majorelle 

Jardin Majorelle is a botanical garden in Marrakech, designed by the French artist Jacques Majorelle in 1924. When I visited the garden during a trip to Morocco in summer 2004, I thought it was truly a place of inspiration and contemplation, an oasis of beauty in the middle of a ridiculously accelerated city life.

Reinhard Schaub

Composed by Reinhard Schaub. Vocals: Birgitta, Guitar: Christian Hamm, Santur: Manoochehr Sadeghi, Saz: Fatih Erenler, GuZheng: Xu Fengxia, Darabuka: Hays, Xylofon: Rafael Mayers, Percussion: Nadeem Kashif, Whale Drum: Sioux.

Arranged and programmed by Reinhard Schaub. Recorded at Schaub Factory Cologne, Kashif  Studios Marrakesch. Mixed by Reinhard Schaub. Published by Hamm & Bertoni Publishing. Produced by Reinhard Schaub for orange entertainment.

12  Tenderness 

This track is a tribute to one of the greatest Latin Rock instrumentalists of all times, Mr. Carlos Augusto Alves Santana. Christian could not resist jumping into his footsteps and produced a song that sends us back to the late 70s. He recorded this track with the original Santana specific guitar sound. I first heard the tune as a finished production and I thought Christian did an excellent job.

Alain Bertoni

Composed by Christian Hamm/Alain Bertoni. Guitars: Christian Hamm, Organ: Leon Bates, Bass: Henry Walford, Drums: Raúl González.

Arranged and programmed by Christian Hamm. Recorded at orange studios Cologne. Mixed by  Christian Hamm and Reinhard Schaub. Published by Hamm & Bertoni Publishing. Produced by Christian Hamm and Alain Bertoni for orange entertainment.

A special thanks to all the very talented musicians who played on the record and to the people who didn´t play (an instrument) on the record but, of course, played a very important role in bringing the whole thing together: Thomas M. Hohenacker, Marcus Leser, Frank Schneider and the totally terrific staff at earthTV.

A very loving thanks to Silke, Natalja, Philippe and Léon, Laura, Migo, Ewe, Ursula, Phillis, David and Dieter.