Today singer-songwriter Jules Ahoi announces his first single in 2024 ‘Old Master’s House’ (out 7 June) ahead of his upcoming album and the German Tour 2024. Moving on from the laid-back seaside feel of his debut ‘Between Lines’ and the existentialist ‘Melancholic Dreamwave’, his latest album ‘MAGNOLIA (The Bauhaus Tapes)’ – out 6 September via Embassy of Music – sees the Cologne-based artist leave the familiar shores and enter uncharted musical territory.

Inspired by the house once occupied by famous Hungarian painter and photographer Lázló Moholy-Nagy, ‘Old Master’s House’ features richly orchestral, nostalgic arrangements of Muriel Bonn’s cello and a toy piano while still keeping Ahoi’s salt-of-the-earth baritone front and centre. Ahoi’s folktronica resembling the most haunting moments of Sean Carey, Fionn Regan, and Bibio gives us the first glimpse of the road untaken opening ahead of him.

In February 2023 Ahoi was presented with a unique opportunity to stay at the Bauhaus Dessau World Heritage Site 200 km southwest of Berlin as a part of an artist residency. For one month, he lived and wrote in the old master house of the painter, typographer, and stage designer Lázló Moholy-Nagy, one of four professors’ houses that stand side by side on the grounds of Bauhaus Dessau.

Ahoi wrote the lyrics for the new album exclusively on an old typewriter found in a pile of bulky waste in a small town in Brandenburg on his way to the Bauhaus. “I wrote down the very subjective impressions and experiences I had in this house in the song,” says the Cologne resident about the process of creating ‘Old Master’s House’. “You actually have to have been there to see the pine trees in front of the large windows cast incredible shadows throughout the building. This means that the interior of the house is constantly changing.”

I see pine trees shaking

What’s at stake when

A storm is howling

Around an old master’s house

The houses are also museums and visitors to the Bauhaus often walk through the gardens of the Masters’ Houses. This means that someone is constantly looking through the window and saying: “Ah, look, someone is sitting there, doing something. You can hear constant whispering around this house – and that combined with the birds in the trees and the way the wind blows through the pine trees… I really felt like I was part of the whole thing, but at the same time a bit like I was on display.”

While memories wash out

Humans forgive

And a lot be forgotten

What will persist?

Inspired by nostalgia and the signs of time that spare none, ‘Old Master’s House’ explores how the past lingers and influences the current moment, all of which was a direct result of a long-lasting impression Moholy-Nagy’s former house left on Ahoi: “I thought about it there, what actually remains when you build monuments or memorials. With so many things standing around everywhere, in the end the only thing that should remain is humanity and love. And you can show that without putting anything anywhere in the world.”

Follow Jules Ahoi: Website| Spotify |Apple Music | Tidal | YouTube | Instagram | Facebook | TikTok

Stream:  ‘Old Master’s House’