The year was 2008. The name of the project was Botany Bay, and for the first time there were enough people interested in our music that we couldn’t escape the idea of taking it live anymore... For Laura – my then-singer and musical partner – it was a dream come true. For me, it felt like a nightmare in the making.

But as the months went on, our little "you-and-me-against-the-world" outfit grew into a four-piece band. And somewhere along the way, my nightmare turned into something I never dared to hope for: a steadily growing live audience, the rush of actual applause and actual feedback... and the surreal joy of hearing people sing our songs back to us. If I’d known it would only last four years, I would have savored those moments even more. But that’s another story.

This clip goes back to where it all began: Laura and I in a cramped rehearsal room in the Bad Godesberg station building, trying to figure out how many synths two people could reasonably juggle at once. Here, we’re working out how to play Kismet, the opening track of our then-current album, live, for the very first time.

(for those wondering about the technicalities: Laura is playing a Korg Wavestation and a Kurzweil Micro Piano; I'm playing a Yamaha VL70 with a breath controller and an M-Audio MIDI keyboard connected to a Yamaha TG77)