INFO

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TRACKLIST

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HALTE MICH
ERFOLGREICHE LIFE
DEIN
ETWAS PASSIERT
ECHOKAMMER
GRENZEN
GIFT
MASKE
SICH ERGEBEN
BLIND
ANDERE

WATCH & LISTEN

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Shop

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Story

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Pompous, monumental, spherical, soggy, melancholic, vulnerable, here and there ironic – much of what describes the nature of ANDERE, this mood that absorbs and long after the end of the album does not let go, catches on the first listen. Right at the beginning, Max Rieger sets the basic mood in HALTE MICH for the following stories on the second album of his solo project all diese gewalt, which will be released on Glitterhouse Records on November 6, 2020: “Nothing comes too close to me / doubt always there / you know everything is true / everything is facade / everything is hiding / keep me covered.”

As we all know, there are countless ways to listen, and Rieger arrives at a verdict all his own. “I think the album, as it has become now, is terrible.” Ouch. Have we misheard the whole thing? Have we succumbed to an image that we had already sketched out in advance? Even after ten, twenty, thirty runs through it does not want to become terrible, remains on the contrary strong, touching, multifaceted and yet coherent.

Unlike WELT IN KLAMMERN, the clearly more conceptual predecessor, in which no piece could have been missing or added, the eleven songs from ANDERE are in contact, but can also take place individually at any time. Although the opening HALTE MICH and the closing title track ANDERE encompass the album and form a securing envelope, there is great song self-sufficiency here. The path of creation differs from previous ones, which Rieger says is also due to the length of the working process of over four years. “In the first two years, there was no common thread in the work on ANDERE. I only found it in the last few steps.” And something else has changed. The texts captivate with a simplicity that only emerges in the penetration and condensation of what has been written. “I’ve become significantly more concrete and more and more put off by washed-out statements. I don’t think the idea that you have to poeticize language into music is apt, and I don’t think it’s contemporary to stand out and be elitist anymore.”

The sound is allowed to come across all the more spacious and two-dimensional, like a multi-layered carpet or an increasing beat screw. In ERFOLGREICHE LIFE, a swelling fairground sound underscores the irony of the narrative ” “successful life / never lose it again / successful life / everything works / successful life / uh ungenerous / successful life / extroverted.” In GRENZEN the story is embedded in the sound of a New Wave guitar – “nets between spaces / the fear of neutral people / of yesterday tomorrow today” , in GIFT on the other hand, the initial coolness of the sound almost makes you shiver and finally leads to something threatening, aggressive: “What am I supposed to do with it / what speaks out of me from the depths / this was never me / no I’m really not / if I am then I’m not me / if I am then I don’t want that”..

Showing oneself makes one vulnerable and Rieger describes the biggest difference between band life and solo project: “At Die Nerven we have collective thoughts and divide every reaction by three. There, I’m much more belligerent and much less vulnerable. With all this violence, I decide alone, but also stand alone in responsibility.”

Anyone who has ever felt deep pain, manifest loneliness, for the moment final abandonment, can hear on ANDERE that Rieger’s music has this depth, which is not audible, visible, tangible at every turn, and which does not suddenly fall at the feet in the desperate search for the much-invoked authenticity. Looking at the Facebook page of all this violence, one entry from January of this year reads, “FOUR YEARS OF SELF DECONSTRUCTION MUST BE ENOUGH.” – “Maybe that’s why I think it’s awful, because I wasn’t at peace with myself during this long process of creation. Now it’s painful to hear exactly that,”Rieger reflects aloud. We can agree on that. ANDERE is many things, but certainly not terrible.