HOPE ( FEATURUNG ANDREA BETTINGER )

Krautrock afficiados might recall a wacked out video from a band named Dies Irae called " The Trip " that was filmed on a former SS parade ground for the Geman TV show Dieduetscherocknacht in the summer of 1971. The track was from a one off album called " First " on the PILZ record label that became somewhat of a cult recording . The singer was Rainer Wahlmann and in 1975 he formed a new band called Green Wave that became well known in and around their home base of Saarbrucken in south-west Germany. It wasn't until 1999 until they managed to record their first album The Inner Garden. The song Hope was the closing track and was made into this video acouple of years later.

The song / video also features the sultry .vocalls of another local talent blues/folk singer Andrea Bettinger who is known for her passionate deliveries of covers of Marc Coln's Walking In Memphis and Gary Moore's Still Got The Blues. She can be likened to inga Rumpf of Frumpy and Atlantis fame .In this ethereal video that bleeds with optimism and freedom with it's floydian guitar and sureal images Bettinger adds a very spectral karma both visually and vocally. She represents hope itself in a very metaphysical way as Wahlmahnn plays a character that believes in the abstraction that she portrays. The viewer will notice that the two never embrace and as the vignette is concluded she dissolves into a ray of bright light.

Not nearly as '' out there '' as the Trip video it shows a much more mature Wahlmann ( a modern hippie rather than a 70s hippie ) as well as demonstrating how a simple message can be put forth on a sheostring budget without any lavish effects.