After the melancholic indie folk song ‘Magnolia‘ that draw comparisons to Nick Drake, Andrew Bird, and Jose Gonzalez on the Philadelphia blog The Wild Is Calling, Cologne-based solo-artist Jules Ahoi presents another facet of the upcoming album ‘MAGNOLIA (The Bauhaus Tapes)’ with his folk rock single ‘Ålesund’, an understated slow burner showcasing Ahoi’s grainy timbre and visually evocative writing.

“You would assume that Ålesund is a place I’ve been to before and therefore associate with something. But it’s not,” the 34-year-old clarifies. “I was in Norway, and we wanted to go to Ålesund, but it’s so incredibly far that we didn’t end up going there at all.”

Set in an imaginary place Ahoi has never visited, a port town bathing in an otherworldly light where the sun never sets, ‘Ålesund’ tells about the two travellers’ journey into the unknown, a yearning for something you don’t actually know, the expectation of a night that never comes, and – at its core – a relationship between two people hanging in the balance.

My contours fade              

And I fade into you   Dissolving              

In eyes like jade

And lips telling the truth  

It’s gloaming but  

It’s not getting dark Tonight in Ålesund

The longing that shaped the creation of ‘Ålesund’ is also clearly perceptible on a musical level. The song is introduced by subdued, slow percussion, which is joined first by the melody of the acoustic guitar and then by Jules’ vocals. In the chorus, the harmonious combination of the voices of Jules Ahoi and cellist Muriel Bonn can be heard. The string instruments familiar from the first two singles and a subtle bassline also join in with the chorus. As the vocals fade in the last third, the entire instrumentation, especially the bass and drums, unexpectedly picks up speed again in an almost orchestral form, before finally fading out with the echoing bass.

While traveling through Norway, Jules began to write the song, putting all his longing for this unreached place into it. Back in Germany, the musical draft was left lying around for the time being. “During my residency at the Bauhaus, I was alone a lot. And sometimes I wished I was somewhere else because it was a bit cold and barren there,” says Ahoi. “Because there were no blinds, it didn’t really get dark. And that made me think of this song again and I continued writing it there.”

The places that surround him have often influenced the Cologne resident’s creative process. When he lived in a van by the sea in the south of France in his twenties and gave surfing lessons there, this was also clearly audible in his sound. In a similar way, his stay at the Bauhaus Dessau influenced his art – and once again broadened the creative horizons of the Jules Ahoi project. 

This is not the first time Cologne-based solo-artist is inspired by places that he only knows from his own imagination. In ‘Oviedo’, which was released on his penultimate album ‘DEAR_____’ (2020), Ahoi described a very similar sentiment towards another town. “Oviedo is located in the north of Spain and is a very old, picturesque city that I have wanted to visit for a long time but never got around to. I feel the same way about Ålesund.”

‘MAGNOLIA (The Bauhaus Tapes)’ is coming out on 6 September via Embassy of Music.

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