Escape With Romeo interview: ‘People think that they are using a product, but instead they are the product’

Escape With Romeo‘s return stopped being interesting simply as a comeback with 2024’s “Suspicious Bliss”. That album established that Thomas Elbern was not interested in reopening the band’s history merely to revisit it; there was new material to write and, increasingly, a present worth responding to. “Night After Night”, released on August 7, 2026 through Zeitklang, continues that trajectory with a harder, more immediate record built around guitars, electronics and a growing unease with the systems shaping contemporary life.

The circumstances behind it were different too. After forty years working as a music journalist for national radio, Elbern suddenly found himself with considerably more time, and sketches already sitting on his hard drive began turning into songs. At the same time, the world entering those songs had become increasingly difficult to separate into “online” and “real”: surveillance, AI, algorithmic behaviour, political extremism, digital dependence and the erosion of privacy all appear across the album. What interests Elbern, however, is less dystopia as spectacle than the moment when something previously intolerable becomes ordinary enough to be accepted as the “new normal.”

That tension also reaches the language of the record. Titles such as “Edit Me Out” and “Cancel Anytime” take expressions associated with platforms and subscriptions and apply them to people, while “New World Order” looks at the vulnerability created when increasingly large parts of everyday existence are handed over to digital systems. Musically, Escape With Romeo remain recognisably themselves, but the references continue to expand: “Wrong Side of Town Pt. 2”, for example, emerged after Elbern encountered Skeler and began imagining what EWR doing hardwave might sound like.

I spoke with Thomas Elbern about “Night After Night”, AI and what he calls “hijacked emotion”, why individuality can coexist with extreme predictability, independence after more than three decades, the practical realities of touring as a trio, and why Escape With Romeo still have reasons to move forward rather than simply preserve what they have already built.

Escape With Romeo interview

Karo: When I reviewed “Suspicious Bliss” for ReGen, the record seemed to exist in a productive contradiction: the music had become more physical and guitar-driven just as the lyrics were becoming increasingly preoccupied with technological intrusion, isolation and a reality that could no longer quite be trusted. “Night After Night” is harder, more emotional and more direct. Did “Suspicious Bliss” already contain the beginning of this record, or did something change in the two years between them that demanded a different degree of force?

Thomas: I would say that “Night After Night” follows the same path that “Suspicious Bliss” already craved. My personal situation was also different: my career as a music journalist working for national radio finally ended after 40 years. Suddenly, I had a lot of time, and all those sketches that were already on my hard drive began to form into songs.

The surroundings played a role as well. Watching catastrophic news and seeing more and more worst-case scenarios developing in the world encouraged me to make an album like this.

Karo: “Night After Night” is an interesting title because it suggests duration rather than catastrophe. Not one decisive collapse, but waking repeatedly into the same anxieties, systems and headlines until the exceptional becomes ordinary. Is that accumulation important to the album? Is the record concerned less with disaster itself than with what happens psychologically when people become accustomed to living inside conditions that would once have seemed intolerable?

Thomas: That’s a very good point. Yes, it is exactly the accumulation that is described here. It’s the thing people call “the new normal.”

What was intolerable in the past can become the new reality, and there seems to be no collective outcry. Instead, we see growing racism, homophobia, income disparity, hate speech and leaders who make everything worse.

Karo: “Edit Me Out”, “Cancel Anytime” and “Something That Lasts” almost form their own vocabulary of contemporary relationships. Words that belong to software, subscriptions and digital services have slipped very easily into the language of intimacy. Has that linguistic shift become interesting to you as a songwriter: the idea that people can now be edited, muted, cancelled, replaced or simply unsubscribed from?

Thomas: A lot of the titles on the album are “internet speech”: “Edit Me Out”, “Cancel Anytime”, or the song “What They Don’t Tell You”, which is not on the album. They all circle around things you read very often in blogs and publications.

It’s the idea that the intimacy you mentioned has stopped being genuinely private. It’s also the idea of masses becoming extremely predictable while still believing themselves to be individuals.

I got this idea while reading a lot of travel blogs. People travel through Bali or Laos and think they are doing something individual. People think that they are using a product, but instead they are the product. And yes, in that sense, they are all extremely replaceable.

Karo: Artificial intelligence was already present on “Suspicious Bliss”, while in our 2024 conversation you spoke about computer-generated voices and described the DAW itself as an instrument. The question feels different now. AI is no longer merely something an artist can use or write about; it increasingly influences distribution, visibility, recommendation and even judgments about value. Has the real concern shifted from what machines are capable of creating to the decisions we are gradually allowing them to make on our behalf?

Thomas: Again, a very good point. The DAW nowadays, or certainly in the foreseeable future, can create almost anything. Even the artist who was once needed to programme it and provide the input it needs can now be reduced to somebody writing a prompt while the computer does the rest.

To quote our famous song “Somebody”, with a wink, this is the “hijacked emotion.”

On the other hand, in combination with a great artistic vision and real skill, this technology could lead to something completely new. But most of what I currently hear and see online is AI-generated shit that feels like cosmic debris, or a bad idea of chart music, while consuming far too many resources.

Karo: “New World Order” enters territory where dystopian language has almost become exhausted through overuse. War, AI, surveillance, extremism and environmental collapse are no longer speculative vocabulary; they are part of everyday information flow. How do you stop a song about the present from merely reproducing that background noise? At what point does a general anxiety become specific enough to turn into music?

Thomas: With “New World Order”, everything started with the trance arpeggio you hear at the beginning.

Lyrically, it could be seen as a protest song about the possibilities of digital surveillance combined with greedy corporations that will enslave you and take over your digital existence.

“Your beautiful saviour will shoot you in the back” is a metaphor for how two-faced everything is in “New World Order”. It’s similar to the idea in the dark comedy film “Brazil”, where a simple typing error, changing the name Tuttle to Buttle, can ruin somebody’s entire life.

In 2026, it can be the deadly phishing email, a vicious Trojan on your computer or your social media account that turns your life upside down. The idea of “New World Order” is essentially: stop for a moment and think about what actually surrounds you in 2026.

Karo: “Wrong Side of Town Pt. 2” returns to “After the Future”, an album you have spoken about with considerable ambivalence, and which became connected, indirectly, to the period when you decided Escape With Romeo had reached an ending. Why reopen that particular door now? Is “Pt. 2” continuing the narrative of the original song, or are you also revisiting your own relationship with a period of the band you once wanted to leave behind?

Thomas: It’s actually neither of those things.

I always loved the atmosphere of the original, particularly the cinematic quality of the sounds involved. Then I went to a gig by Australian DJ and producer Skeler in Cologne the night before, listening to and enjoying all that wave, hardwave and phonk-related material being played there.

I went back to my DAW the next day and tried to recreate what I had heard through a follow-up to “Wrong Side of Town”, using new lyrics, guitars and beats.

It’s my idea of EWR doing hardwave.

Karo: “You Need the Drugs” is an unusual cover because the original already sits between musical worlds: WestBam and Klaus Jankuhn’s electronic language meeting Richard Butler’s unmistakable Psychedelic Furs presence. Escape With Romeo has occupied that border between electronics and guitars for most of its life. Did the song feel strangely familiar for that reason? And at what point in the rearrangement did it stop feeling like someone else’s material?

Thomas: The idea of doing “You Need the Drugs” was born and realised even before the album itself took form.

I heard the original at a New Year’s party and immediately heard the EWR version in my head. It was clear that our version would become very much Escape With Romeo.

Guitars, guitars, guitars were the key.

Karo: Frenzy Erl’s role here goes far beyond drumming: the two of you recorded, mixed and produced the album together, and he also mastered it. Does having a drummer involved at every stage alter the hierarchy of a recording? When the person responsible for pulse is simultaneously making decisions about density, space and final sound, can rhythm begin to determine the architecture rather than simply inhabit it?

Thomas: When I make a demo or even a final production, I also programme the drums that I hear in my head. Frenzy usually plays the drums when the song has reached its genuinely finished version.

During the final phase of production, we decide together where the aural journey should go. What is important is that we normally mix and master everything in Frenzy’s studio in Munich, where there are no distractions and we can finish the album together.

Karo: Stella Tonon’s contribution to “Suspicious Bliss” was already more interesting than straightforward backing vocals; you said in 2024 that she immediately understood where her voice belonged inside the material. On “Night After Night”, does the presence of another voice ever change the point of view of a song itself? Can a voice entering from outside destabilise the narrator and make you hear your own lyrics differently?

Thomas: Talking about the opening track, “Edit Me Out”, the female voice there is actually a sample. That is nothing new for me; my way of working has always been very hip-hop in that respect. If I find a great legal sample that I want to work with, I go for it.

So that female voice is a major part of “Edit Me Out”, but many of the other female voices and improvisations on the record are very much Stella.

She always brings her own particular idea into the music of EWR. She fully understands and feels both the sadness and the rough elements in the music, and she can respond to them with her unique voice.

Karo: You once described the audience as the place where a song is finally tested: only onstage do you discover whether its internal logic actually survives contact with people. Escape With Romeo is now taking these songs out as a trio, despite studio arrangements that can contain almost unlimited layers. Has that smaller configuration forced you to identify what is genuinely indispensable in a song? What remains once production is stripped away and three people have to make the idea physically convincing?

Thomas: Interesting point! We are studio nerds and take full advantage of every sound source we can get hold of.

But if you want to survive financially as a touring band, you have to make decisions that nearly every band makes nowadays. That is called backing tracks.

You have to decide which parts of the sound are the most important. Those are played live. The rest becomes like a parallel universe coming through the speakers. Making that distinction is always crucial.

But I also think that, as a trio, we cannot strip things down much further than we already do. Drums, guitar, bass and the main vocal always have to be live.

Karo: Escape With Romeo built a genuinely independent structure remarkably early, with label, studio and management gradually becoming part of the same ecosystem. But independence in 2026 is a peculiar condition: an artist may own the masters and finance the record while still relying on platforms, distributors and opaque recommendation systems to become visible. Has independence become less about escaping gatekeepers and more about choosing which gatekeepers one is prepared to depend on?

Thomas: Having been independent for more than three decades, I can say that the game is always changing.

The role of record companies has largely vanished for us; now everything is about live gigs and promoters. Yes, it’s also about numbers and streaming, but it is still, as it always was, about luck.

If your music gets used in a famous series or film, you automatically reach another level.

And today’s gatekeepers are tomorrow’s open doors. It’s a complicated music world and nobody is particularly happy about it. But in the end, connecting directly with your fans will always remain one of the main points.

Karo: There is something counterintuitive about making a record more direct after nearly four decades of accumulated technique, experience and musical memory. Young bands are often direct because they have relatively little to discard; an established artist has to decide what no longer deserves to remain. Is directness for you now partly an act of subtraction? And after 13 albums, is making something immediate actually harder than making something elaborate?

Thomas: I found working on the previous albums quite liberating.

From a production point of view, it is always a pain in the ass, because it’s the final 15 percent that creates most of the work. But it is liberating in the sense that we don’t have to prove anything to anyone.

We can evolve and do whatever we think is right for EWR.

Making an album is both elaborate and, in this case, immediate, so “Night After Night” feels like a natural step in our history.

Karo: And finally, where can people actually catch Escape With Romeo on the road in the coming months? Which dates or places are you particularly looking forward to, and is there any show on this run that matters most to you?

Thomas: We are touring mainly in Germany in 2026, and we plan to play more abroad in 2027, if the world is still standing. That includes Europe and South America.

Karo: Thank you very much for your time, Thomas.

Thomas: Thank you, Karo!

“Night After Night” is out now through Zeitklang. Escape With Romeo’s confirmed 2026 tour begins in Munich on 19 September and continues through Cologne, Essen, Karlsruhe, Bielefeld, Nuremberg, Rüsselsheim, Hamburg and Berlin, before crossing into Poland for the Shadow Dance Party at Pod Minoga in Poznań on 31 October. A December date in Rhede is also confirmed, while the band says further dates for 2027 are being developed.

About Escape With Romeo

Escape With Romeo were founded in Cologne in 1989 by singer, guitarist and songwriter Thomas Elbern. Before starting the project, Elbern had fronted the new-wave band Seltsame Zustände and had been a guitarist and songwriter with Pink Turns Blue. The first Escape With Romeo album appeared in 1989, and the early track “Somebody” became one of the songs most closely associated with the band, helping establish an audience beyond Germany. The band’s own historical account describes the project as growing from Elbern’s initial setup of Atari computers, drum machines, four-track recording, turntables, guitar and bass into a full live band after “Somebody” began circulating in clubs.

From the beginning, Escape With Romeo combined guitars with electronic production rather than treating rock and electronics as separate phases of the band. Their long-used description, “Post Punk meets modern Electronica,” remains a useful shorthand, although the catalogue itself has moved through considerably more territory: new wave, darkwave, alternative rock, electronic pop, acoustic work and, increasingly in the current period, elements of trip-hop, post-rock and contemporary electronic production.

The early album sequence included “Escape With Romeo,” “Autumn on Venus,” “Next Stop Eternally,” “Blast of Silence” and “How Far Can You Go?” Later records included “Come Here White Light,” “Love Alchemy,” “Psalms of Survival,” “Emotional Iceage,” “Samsara” and “After the Future.” From 2001 onward, releases were issued through Zeitklang Records, the label established and run by Elbern.

In 2017, Elbern announced that Escape With Romeo would come to an end. A farewell period followed, including the band’s final tour in 2018 and festival appearances in 2019. What was intended as an ending did not remain one. During the pandemic years Elbern began reconsidering the project, and Escape With Romeo returned in 2022, initially through newly arranged versions of older material and the double compilation “Based on a True Story – Best of Escape With Romeo.” The official notes to the 2022 versions of “Refuge” and “White Room” explicitly described those recordings as the beginning of the band’s return.

The more consequential step came with “Suspicious Bliss” in November 2024. Rather than continuing primarily through retrospective material, Escape With Romeo released an entirely new album. Its harder guitar sound, electronics and dystopian lyrical concerns established the direction that now continues into “Night After Night”. The band themselves described “Suspicious Bliss” as a fresh start following their 2022 reorganisation.

Released on 7 August 2026, “Night After Night” is Escape With Romeo’s 13th studio album. It contains fourteen tracks and was produced by Thomas Elbern and Frenzy Erl, with Erl also handling the mastering. “You Need the Drugs” is the album’s one outside composition, written by Klaus Jankuhn, Maximilian Lenz/WestBam and Richard Butler; the remaining songs are credited to Elbern. The record was preceded by 2026 singles including “Fear’s a Ghost” and “Sound and the Fury”.

Escape With Romeo currently perform live as a trio: Thomas Elbern on vocals and guitar, Tobias Schwartz on bass and vocals, and Frenzy Erl on drums. Stella Tonon remains part of the wider recording world around the band and contributed vocals to recent material, including the “Suspicious Bliss” period and subsequent recordings, but she is not part of the touring trio.

The current configuration is deliberately compact. Elbern describes guitar, bass, drums and lead vocals as the elements that must remain genuinely live, while additional studio layers are carried through backing tracks. That division is less an attempt to reproduce the recordings literally than a practical decision about which components constitute the physical core of Escape With Romeo onstage.

The band begin the “Night After Night Tour 2026” in Munich on 19 September, followed by Cologne, two Essen shows, Karlsruhe, Bielefeld, Nuremberg, Rüsselsheim, Hamburg and Berlin. On 31 October they cross into Poland for the Shadow Dance Party: Halloween Edition at Pod Minoga in Poznań, followed by a December show in Rhede. The official band site says further dates are being developed for 2027, while Elbern tells Side-Line that the plan is to return to broader international touring, including Europe and South America.

Interview by Karo Kratochwil.