Jens Berke - Music

Anyland

Inspired by my favourite band The Church I began playing guitar in the late 80s. A few years later, the booklet of the album "In Reflection", a solo work recorded by one of the band's guitarists Marty Willson-Piper, made me buy a 4-track recorder. There it was, my own mini-studio with all its possibilities and limitations, and I recorded a couple of songs during the 90s. Some of them are available for download here. ANYLAND is the name I gave myself for the sake of having a name.

All music is written, played and recorded by myself entirely. Same with the lyrics: all written by me, so beware: they have never been checked. Please forgive me if they sound somewhat strange or even false. Most of the songs have been recorded without long rehearsal, so you'll find errors and timing problems here and there.

All tracks are available in MP3-format in high quality (128 kbit). The year of recording is displayed in brackets:

Random Skills

From 1997 to 1999 I was singer and played rythm guitar in a band called Random Skills. We had a few gigs only and a dozen songs to play - all of them written by me. Here is a selection of songs. Some of them were recorded in our rehearsal room live, some others in a very small studio.

All tracks are available in MP3-format in high quality (128 kbit). The year of recording is displayed in brackets:

The Church

In 1985 I listened to this band for the first time which since then has been one of my all time favourite bands. I just love their sound and can't leave them out when I make a page about music. What are they? Well, I can't do the job that a lot of more professional writers failed to do: describing a band's style. Let's just say: layers of guitars, psychedlic sound, witty lyrics.

They had their biggest success in 1988 with "Under the Milky Way". This song has been used lately in one of the best movies ever made: Donnie Darko (and I don't say that just because my favourite band is part of the soundtrack!). Get more information about the movie at the Internet Movie Database.

The band has a loyal bunch of people following their musical development over the years, and some of these people started to gather online when the internet evolved in the late 90s. There are some great sites dedicated to this band, and of course an official site. Start digging here:

You find more links to other sites and lots of related projects if you look there. I contributed to this online community myself by creating a page specialized in chords and tablatures of this band: Sing Songs

Sing Songs

I'm a guitarist. I was inspired by The Church. I like playing their songs. I'm able to write HTML. Some day I thought: does all this together mean anything? "Oh, yes, it would be great to have a site especially for those people who want to play songs by The Church and don't want to or can't figure out the chords (like me)." A lot of songs were on Brian Smith's Shadow Cabinet already. So the idea was born and I created Sing Songs - the site with chords and tablatures of songs by The Church and related projects. The site's name is the title of an album by The Church.