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Christian Löffler has always been driven by a desire to be creative. In his early teens he would draw and dabble in painting, trying to capture if not a specific feeling, then the essence of something. An ideal. Something profound. “Still, today, it’s the same feeling that drives me, and it makes no difference what I use for it, whether it is music or paint.,” he explains. Graal (Prologue), his new project, utilises both, but it was not born solely of his creative urges. It also stems from frustration, and a sense that while touring he no longer had the mental space or down time to let his creativity flourish. Following an intense period of live concerts, where his music felt stagnated Löffler would find himself solely focussed on visual art – painting, drawing, and “some video stuff”, but absolutely no music. This return to his roots reminded him how it felt when he first started making music, and allowed him to “turn off my brain a bit, especially thoughts about what is possible or not”. In other words, it gave him freedom. The album is named after the town he calls home – a windswept yet picturesque German outpost on the Baltic coast – and the rugged beauty and wonder of the area’s famed landscapes shines through the whole record. Löffler has always been influenced by nature and a sense of place, and he’s become a master at exploring space and amplifying the power of tranquility. Despite retaining what he describes as a rudimentary roughness – “for me, they still feel like sketches because I never really produced them out” – there’s a grace and lushness to all six tracks that inexorably draws and comforts you.