TRÄNENDie Lange Nacht der Musik (The Long Night of Music) 2024
Gwen Dolyn and Steffen Israel (Kraftklub) from Chemnitz have found their very own sound aesthetic, carried by a sinister New Wave aura, aesthetic pop passages, reverb-heavy vocals, 80s synth sounds and dominant guitar runs. Their lyrics are variously reminiscent of Wir sind Helden, Hans-A-Plast and Ideal.
Gwen Dolyn and Steffen Israel (Kraftklub) from Chemnitz have found their very own sound aesthetic, carried by a sinister New Wave aura, aesthetic pop passages, reverb-heavy vocals, 80s synth sounds and dominant guitar runs. Their lyrics are variously reminiscent of Wir sind Helden, Hans-A-Plast and Ideal.
It started as a frivolous idea and grew into a whole cosmos. Gwen Dolyn – poster girl of the German-language progressive pop underground and the burgeoning Neue Neue Deutsche Welle (NNDW) – had set her mind on reinterpreting the German punk classic Duell der Letzten by Chaos Z and was looking for experienced musicians to join her. She contacted Steffen Israel, the guitarist of award-winning Chemnitz indie punk rap conglomerate Kraftklub. Steffen was game and they met in the studio.
Little by little, they realised that they had a band in the making, which they dubbed “Tränen” (Tears). After a few months of playing hide-and-seek as a support act for Kraftklub, they rocked the late summer Berlin Wuhlheide festival and released their debut album, Haare eines Hundes on 3 November 2023.
The eleven-track LP lives by its retro aura and play of colour in shades of grey, from the courage to be filthy, from bizarre timing and symphonic fullness. Choral episodes and earworms disintegrate into blurred fractures; epochality and snottiness, ice age and fireside feeling are only a hair’s breadth apart, entangled between changes of tempo and flashes of irony. The binding element in this firework of hard-hitting NDW drums and cosmic reverb-rich synths is forever Gwen Dolyn’s voice. Plus inimitable lyrics full of palpable oppressiveness and resourceful mind games that are variously reminiscent of Wir sind Helden, Hans-A-Plast and Ideal: “… do you love me more when rampage is just another word for capitulation?”
Instragram @dietraenen
