Location: Outdoors? Indoors!

We had planned to shoot outdoors in the Austrian Alps — at night. But when I met Volker in Innsbruck in July 2025, we looked at the weather forecast: rain. For the next seven days. Day and night. Wowza. We needed to come up with a new plan, immediately.

Plan B: Obstacles and miracles

Volker had made his homework like an A-student. He showed me different options for visual filters he had been working on and that we could use for our music videos, and we chose two of them for starters. Using a web cam, we recorded live in TouchDesigner.

Surprise Mo(ve)ment: Wait, what?

After some quick video tests, we got excited! We put a little orange miniature car on the table and pointed the webcam to it, using the "Flare"-filter. We looked at the monitor: The car was moving!   Full speed! Although it was just standing still on the table! We were on a good path. The song Flare   is about our early adulthood, about freedom and the feeling of being at the brink of an exciting future. It has the vibe of a magical road trip, so the car was a perfect fit! And we could invite the audience to joins us for the ride.

Day by day, we got carried away by creative waves, highly concentrated, in the flow. Bringing the miniature world to life in a completely analog way was fun and fulfilling. One thing quickly led to the next: The construction lights turned out to be a spacecraft.

It would take off through a majestic beam of light disappearing into the dark sky: meaning by filming a candle through two pencils (remember the double-slit experiment from Physics class?). We attached a little piece of string to the orange car to steer it through the forest and have it overtake other cars. We created sunrises and sunsets by moving a lamp behind a piece of white paper. Tons of ideas poured out of the ether into our heads. We were busy shooting day and night.

Nightly Sessions: Dive into the depths

During one of our nightly brainstorming sessions, we were talking about the release strategy of HEAT. How to do it? Drop the full double EP as one big release? Or do the other extreme: Release only one song at a time? While trying to come up with a solution that would be beneficial algorithm-wise but would also feel good for us personally, one thing became clear: To always say things like Flare (Rock version) and Flare (Electronic version) was tedious. So we talked about different states, e.g. in quantum mechanics. Should we put waves and particles after each song name? Also too long, too complicated. We wanted something brief and clear. So we chose to go with the spin carried by elementary particles: + and -. Brief check on Spotify, if digital platforms allow those characters in song titles. Yes, they do! It was decided.

Rock and Electronic: Heat +/-

So our third album would be called HEAT +/-, a double EP with five songs each, all of them existing in two different states. Our first Singles would be Flare +/- and the next Singles Blowtorch +/-. But what about the artworks? And here we were, brainstorming about the album cover — again! Should it stay as is or be in the style of one of the videos? We were captivated by a still we took from our miniature world nightly shootings ... this was it, the new cover photo! Our new release hit the home stretch.