Songs about time and other (finite) resources

'The Hourglass Sessions' is a new album from Martin Hoybye revolving around time and the ephemeral. The eleven tracks are tied together by their common musical setting and textual orbit: Why are we here? What is important? What will I pass on?
The songs are a journey through inner landscapes shaped by the hands of time. At times torn and jagged and at others blissful, abundant and lush. The forces of life and love are recurring sources that help refill the hourglass, so that it may be turned to make everything new again.

While time is a trope running through all of the songwriting, one point Martin Hoybye would like to have come across is that many of our perceived infinite resources are, in fact, finite.

'We treat natural resources like water and air as carelessly as we tend to treat each other. In a sense, our lives are too short. We are not geared to understand the repercussions of our actions centuries or even just decades down the line,' he says.

The first single 'Longer Lives' with its recurring statement 'we need longer lives' puts existential focus on this limitation - but also on hope for the future because time brings change and thereby possibility: 'They say your lifeline is given / you're just one grain of sand / well maybe time changes even / the lines in a hand,' as the lyric goes.

And this message is textually related to the other songs on 'The Hourglass Sessions,' from the bleak 'Had My Time', over the dancable 'Time Flies' to the lively 'So Little Time' with its South American references.

Thematically the songs deal with big questions through the lens of what is close at hand - or close to home - because in the seemingly daunting and scary circumstances that climate change and the advent of the Anthropocene brings, Martin Hoybye wanted to try to write about what mattered most to him. And rather than turning out as topical or political songs the project quickly took a more personal direction.

'Because how do you write about the idea of the end of the world? What does that even mean? I realized that to me that meant something very personal yet universal. And in turn the bulk of these songs are about life and living, about family and what I would like to pass on. Working with these foundational human conditions I have strived for a universality that hopefully lets others see themselves in these songs," he says.