Heinrich Lenz | Marius Mertens

Arrival in the middle of the night. Confusion, protocols, security checks, aggressive bargaining and bumpy rides, packs of stray dogs, men around fires at dawn, dreary cities and half-light landscapes.

A change of scenery. An ancient place with a new facade, wrapped in colourful saris with dirty linen underneath them. A different world, bathed in the most beautiful light of the brightest future of all. A different sun that sets and rises faster. And a different moon that waxes and wanes not sideways but from bottom to top, slowly filling to the brim with sounds of drums between the bells, singing children, waves of croaking birds, the market vendor's megaphones and the musical mayhem of the late night weddings. There is no silence and no time to sleep.

The frantic dance of history, utterly cheerful and still somewhat melancholic. We tried to follow it's rhythm for a few moments. So we set up our equipment to record it's song. Listening is always a gateway to beauty.

Travelers from the snobbish place where history supposedly already ended. We came to not look back. We came to fight old ghosts under new circumstances. We came to listen outward and inward. What better place for that than a last ship at the end of time.

Slow tides at nightly river banks with thousands of fireflies around us, the dawn chorus of countless strange and wonderful birds, children herding goats in the glare of the afternoon sun, the roaring bluster of the Shiva puja and the distant noise from the villages in the valley reverbarting in the temple ruins on Kalinjar hill.

We recorded in the field and worked in the studio, we ate delicious food, caught a few fevers, discussed everything under the sun with Julius and Surekha, went on beatuiful excursions with Raju, sometimes we wished for stillness and found mesmerising melodies in noisy chaos.

At the end of time there is the sound of crickets, wind in dry leaves and a man singing in the fields.