Kant Kino interview: ‘Sometimes a joke gets closer to the truth than a manifesto’
Kant Kino’s Lars Henrik Madsen on “Echoes of The End”, absurdity, exhaustion and the pleasure of not obeying the EBM rulebook.
Kant Kino
Nine years after “Kopfkino”, Kant Kino have returned with “Echoes of The End”, a 24-track album that feels less like a comeback announcement than the result of something slowly refusing to die. The Norwegian duo have never treated EBM as a museum piece or a discipline to be obeyed, and this new record continues that attitude with force, melody, fatigue, humour and a very clear distrust of neat answers. Instead of presenting collapse as spectacle, Kant Kino seem more interested in what happens after people have already adapted to absurdity.
The record moves through anxiety, alienation, hard electronic rhythm and melodic memory, while keeping the dry wit that has always made the project sharper than standard genre seriousness. Lars Henrik Madsen talks about the long road to “Echoes of The End”, why 24 tracks made more sense than a polite short album, how humour can get closer to truth than a manifesto, and why Kant Kino are not interested in preserving EBM under glass.
Kant Kino interview
Karo: “Echoes of The End” arrives nine years after “Kopfkino”. That is a long gap, but it also means the project returns into a very different cultural climate: more noise, more collapse language, more algorithmic distraction, more exhaustion. What had to change in the world, or in Kant Kino, before this album could exist?
Lars: Probably less had to change than simply happen. We started working on this album years ago and assumed it would be finished much sooner. Instead, life got involved. There was a pandemic, health issues, work, family, long periods of creative fatigue and more than a few moments where we seriously considered abandoning the whole thing. The strange thing is that while we were struggling to finish the album, the world slowly started looking more like the album. What began as fragments about anxiety, alienation, absurdity and modern exhaustion gradually became less speculative and more observational. By the time we finished Echoes Of The End, it felt less like a prediction and more like a field recording.
Karo: The album has 24 tracks, which already feels almost provocative now, when music is often pushed toward shorter formats and faster consumption. Did you need that scale because the material kept expanding, or because the subject itself demanded something larger, more crowded and less polite?
Lars: Both, probably. We never sat down and said, “Let’s make a 24-track album and completely ignore modern attention spans.” But once the songs started forming a larger picture, removing pieces felt wrong. The album became a collection of different perspectives on the same landscape. Besides, if the modern world is an endless stream of noise, distraction, contradictions and unfinished thoughts, making a neat, efficient 35-minute statement felt suspiciously polite.
Karo: Kant Kino have always had a strange relationship with seriousness: the music can be hard, sharp and socially alert, but the titles and gestures often carry dry humour or absurdity. Is humour a way to survive the darkness, or a way to make the darkness more accurate?
Lars: Definitely the latter. Reality is rarely purely tragic. Most of the time it’s tragic and ridiculous at the same time. People don’t experience societal decline as dramatic movie scenes. They’re standing in supermarket queues, arguing online, forgetting passwords and trying to make dinner. Humour helps reveal the absurdity already present in the situation. Sometimes a joke gets closer to the truth than a manifesto.
Karo: “Rodney” became the first signal of the new phase. The name itself is oddly specific, almost anti-mythological. Why “Rodney”? Is he a person, a mask, a symptom, a private joke, or simply the wrong kind of name for a song that clearly carries a heavier charge?
Lars: Yes. Part of the appeal of the name is that it refuses to explain itself. In a culture obsessed with symbolism and decoding, it’s refreshing to leave some doors closed. Rodney may be a person, an idea, a warning, a joke, or someone sitting quietly at the end of the bar while the world slowly catches fire. We’re perfectly happy letting people decide for themselves.
Karo: There is a strong sense of systems failing across this album: emotional systems, social systems, perhaps even the small daily systems that allow people to keep functioning. Are Kant Kino interested in collapse as a dramatic event, or more in the quieter moment when people have already adapted to living inside it?
Lars: The latter is much more interesting to us. The dramatic collapse only lasts a moment. The adaptation lasts years. People are remarkably good at normalising things that shouldn’t be normal. They adjust, improvise, develop routines and continue living inside increasingly strange circumstances. That quiet acceptance is often more unsettling than the collapse itself.
Karo: Your music often combines very direct electronic force with melodic memory. It can hit hard, but it also remembers synthpop, old industrial discipline and the strange emotional pull of classic electronic songwriting. How do you keep the songs from becoming either too brutal or too polished?
Lars: We probably fail equally in both directions. We’ve always loved the physical impact of EBM and industrial music, but we’re also hopelessly attached to melody. If a song only hits hard, it tends to become forgettable. If it’s only beautiful, it risks losing tension. The interesting space is somewhere between a punch and a memory.
Karo: Coming from Norway, you work slightly outside the usual Belgian-German axis through which EBM history is often told. Has that distance been useful? Did it give Kant Kino more freedom to treat the genre with affection, irony and disrespect at the same time?
Lars: Being outside the centre probably helps. We’ve always loved the genre, but we’ve never felt particularly obligated to obey it. Norway is far enough away that nobody hands you an official EBM rulebook when you start a band. That distance allowed us to approach the music as fans rather than caretakers. We respect the tradition, but we’re not interested in preserving it under glass.
Karo: “Echoes of The End” feels very current, but it does not sound desperate to be modern. How do you relate to the present electronic scene? Do you feel part of it, irritated by it, entertained by it, or mostly operating in your own stubborn corner?
Lars: A bit of all four. There is a huge amount of great electronic music being made right now, but there is also a tendency for scenes to become trapped in cycles of nostalgia, trend chasing or algorithm friendly repetition. We’ve reached an age where trying to sound modern would probably be the fastest way to sound outdated. We’d rather make music that feels honest and trust that listeners will decide where it belongs.
Karo: Kenneth, you have also worked with mastering, remixes and technical production for other projects. When you return to Kant Kino, does technical control help you sharpen the material, or do you sometimes have to damage the surface deliberately so the music does not become too clean?
Kenneth: Technical knowledge is useful right up until the point where it starts getting in the way. One of the biggest challenges is knowing when to stop improving something. Music can easily become so polished that all the personality gets sanded off. Sometimes the right decision is not adding another layer or fixing another detail. Sometimes it’s leaving the crack in the wall because that’s where the light gets in.
Karo: After such a large album, what would feel like a real risk for Kant Kino now: becoming more minimal, more melodic, more brutal, more personal, or finally allowing the project to become completely unreasonable?
Lars: The last option sounds dangerously attractive. After spending years finishing something this large, the most interesting direction is probably the one that makes the least sense from a strategic perspective. Fortunately, we’ve never been particularly strategic.
Karo: “Echoes of The End” sounds like an album that closes many doors, but also opens a few uncomfortable ones. After returning with such a large and decisive release, where does Kant Kino go next: further into collapse, toward something more stripped and personal, or into a place that would surprise even people who think they already understand the project?
Lars: We honestly don’t know yet, and that’s probably a good sign. For a long time, finishing Echoes Of The End was the destination. Now that it’s finally out in the world, we’re enjoying not having a map for a while. Whatever comes next will probably still sound like Kant Kino. Beyond that, we’re not making any promises. Some doors have definitely closed. The interesting question is what might crawl through the ones that just opened.
Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.
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