“everything can now be undone” (DEIN)

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TRACKLIST

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Credits:

Lyrics By, Music By, Performer, Recorded By, Mixed By – Max Rieger
Mastered By – Robin Schmidt
Photography/Artwork – David Spaeth, Zelda Biller
Post Production – Manuel Wagner

HALTE MICH

ERFOLGREICHE LIFE

DEIN

ETWAS PASSIERT

ECHOKAMMER

GRENZEN

GIFT

MASKE

SICH ERGEBEN

BLIND

ANDERE

WATCH & LISTEN

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Story

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Pompous, monumental, spherical, soggy, melancholic, vulnerable, ironic here and there – much of what describes the nature of ANDERE, this mood that absorbs and by no means lets go after the end of the album, 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 6 November 2020: „Nichts kommt mir zu nah / Zweifel immer da / du weißt alles ist wahr / alles ist Fassade / alles ist Versteck / halte mich bedeckt.“

As is well known, there are countless ways of listening and Rieger comes to his very own judgement. “I think the album is, the way it is now, terrible.” Ouch. Have we misheard everything? Have we succumbed to an image that we had already sketched out in advance? Even after ten, twenty, thirty listens, it doesn’t want to become terrible, on the contrary, it remains strong, touching, multi-faceted and yet coherent.

Unlike WELT IN KLAMMERN, the clearly more conceptual predecessor, in which no piece could have been missing or added to, 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 the earlier 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 can be all the more spacious and flat, like a multi-layered carpet or an increasing beat screw. In SUCCESSFUL LIFE, a swelling fairground sound underlines the irony of the narrative “successful life / never lose again / successful life / everything works / successful life / uh unabashed / 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 from the depths of me / 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 this”.

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

Anyone who has ever felt deep pain, manifest loneliness, for the moment final abandonment, can hear on OTHERS that Rieger’s music possesses this depth, which is not audible, visible, tangible at every turn and which does not suddenly fall at one’s feet in the desperate search for the much-invoked authenticity. If you look at the Facebook page of all this violence, one entry from January this year reads: “FOUR YEARS OF SELF DECONSTRUCTION MUST BE ENOUGH.” – “Maybe that’s why I think it’s terrible, 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. OTHER is many things, but certainly not terrible.