I wrote this song over a period of two weeks, mainly working by nights in the cold winter of 2012 in my city Berlin. I got the idea when I came home in the morning after a night working in the studio on my album. My black coat turned white in the heavy snowstorm that started on the way from the tram-station to my place. The streets were completely abandoned, no tourists, only an occasional city-fox crossing the street. It was morning, but the sun never really rises in the winter, you just see a shadow in a grey sky. I lived in a really rough apartment and the shower didn't work anymore. I turned on the water to fill my bathtub. That's when I got the main idea for Ghostcity.

The heavy synth groove entered my mind almost the same time as the title of the track. I demo'd the track pretty fast on my computer. Since my sleep rhythm was so messed up I worked the following nights on the track and slept during the days. To get inspiration for the lyrics I put the song on my phone and listened to it while I walked through the now. The streets were literally ice and it was hard to walk. I used the city-fox that I encountered around my block in the lyrics: 'Different shadows always following me, The city-foxes are controlling the streets'.

It started to make sense. I compared the city in the song with a violent femme fatal. I imagined her with a leather jacket, suicide lipstick and an untraceable foreign accent. I wanted it to sound like a futuristic abandoned East Berlin.

That's why after I finished writing the song I took the demo to the GDR factory where me and sound designer Robin Hunt own a studio. We started recording the natural reverbs of the factory halls and some of the machines we found in the abandoned building. The heavy drum breaks are Robin's work. He was hitting all these machines with an iron pipe while I was recording it. This completed the dystopian post-apocalyptic vision I had of Ghostcity.

(Studio in winter pictures by Obi Blanche)