Klangstabil interview: ‘A sound, a voice, or a melody can act as a key that opens something within you’
Klangstabil (Photo by Karo Kratochwil)
After seven years away from the stage, Klangstabil returned not with nostalgia or spectacle, but with something rarer: clarity, presence, and the kind of emotional precision that has always set the project apart. Since 1994, Boris May and Maurizio Blanco have built a body of work in which structural discipline and human vulnerability do not cancel each other out, but deepen one another. Songs like “Shadowboy,” “Push Yourself,” or “You May Start” have long ceased to function as mere catalogue highlights; they have become part of the emotional architecture of dark electronic music itself.
What makes Klangstabil still feel so singular is not only the weight of their discography, but the way their work continues to speak to rupture, recovery, inner pressure, and connection without ever lapsing into theatrical excess. Their recent live return made that especially clear: stripped-back, intense, and quietly overwhelming. We spoke with Klangstabil about silence, friendship, control and vulnerability, live performance as release, and the strange, enduring way songs keep changing while remaining entirely their own.
Klangstabil interview
Q: After a seven-year silence, returning to the stage seems like not just a logistical decision, but also an emotional and artistic one. What had to shift internally for Klangstabil to become live again, and what did you feel this return could now express that perhaps it could not have expressed before?
A: Everything has its moment in life. The pause felt right when it happened, for both of us. From my side, I needed the space to clear my mind, to not think about anything for a while. That worked, and it was genuinely beneficial. I believe Maurizio experienced something similar in his own way Klangstabil has always been a channel for processing thoughts and emotions, turning them into something tangible and understandable. Naturally, during the break, things came up that needed to be dealt with, otherwise you carry them with you indefinitely, and without an outlet, that can become a weight. That’s why it felt right to bring Klangstabil back. What this return can express now that maybe wasn’t possible before, I can’t really say. That’s something each listener has to decide for themselves. For us, it remains what it always was: communication and an exchange of energy.
Q: When you look back at the project that began in 1994 and compare it with what Klangstabil is now, what has remained fundamentally intact, and what had to be transformed in order for the project to stay truthful to itself? And when you return to songs such as “Shadowboy,” “Push Yourself,” or “You May Start” now, do they still belong primarily to the selves who once wrote them, or have they also become something new through time, distance, and the lives of those who have carried them?
A: I think in both cases the answer is friendship. Friendship has always remained, but it is also constantly nurtured, like a tree that always receives enough water and light. All the songs you mentioned are part of the DNA of Klangstabil. They will always accompany us and will always be a mirror for us. The songs are us.
Q: Your music has always carried a rare tension between emotional exposure and structural precision, almost as if mathematics and vulnerability were not opposites, but two necessary languages describing the same inner state. How consciously do you work with that balance between control and rupture?
A: You use beautiful imagery and describe it quite accurately, like a yin-yang symbol. We like simple structures, a clear beat that gives the emotions a framework. We enjoy build-ups and breakdowns, and a phase at the end that brings everything back to calm. Essentially, it’s a classic arc of tension.
Q: What moved me so strongly in the live setting was the radical economy of it: darkness, light, voice, presence, and almost nothing that could distract from the human core of the songs. It felt less like spectacle than like concentration, almost like theatre reduced to breath and exposure. Boris, when you stand inside that stripped-back space, does it feel to you like interpretation, release, confrontation, or something closer to witnessing yourself in real time?
A: Another great question, thank you. Before every concert, I ask myself what I want to convey that night. What have I experienced recently that I want to process? Which tracks should carry a calmer energy, and which ones are there to break out? And ultimately, what do I want to leave with the audience afterward? If I feel that I’ve shaped the concert the way I intended, I’m happy. Then I know I’ve truly processed something, that I don’t have to carry it around with me anymore. Whether it’s frustration from the days before, moments where I felt hurt, or even happiness that I want to share, because in truth, I’m doing well, and performing is part of that.When both of us on stage walk off feeling satisfied, it means a lot. And the exchange with people after the concert is just as meaningful, it stays with me.
Q: There was a strong sense that the music was not simply being performed, it was rather as though the songs were creating a space in which people could encounter parts of themselves they might not otherwise touch. Do you think music can sometimes recognise something in a listener before the listener has language for it, and is that one of the deeper possibilities you still trust in?
A: Absolutely. A sound, a voice, or a melody can act as a key that opens something within you in a way nothing else can.
Q: Klangstabil lyrics often feel as though private wounds, social disillusionment, and existential unease have long since stopped belonging to separate territories, and part of their force comes from the sense that they are not merely observed, but metabolised. When a song begins for you, does it tend to emerge from lived experience, from watching the world, or from an emotional pressure that only later finds language? And when you write, are you trying to understand pain, survive it, transform it, or simply prevent it from remaining mute?
A: If you remove the question marks, you have the answers. In a way, all of that is part of it. Songs usually don’t come from just one place, it’s a mix of lived experience, observation, and emotional pressure that eventually finds its way into language. Writing helps to understand things, but also to process them so they don’t stay inside.
Q: You mentioned health issues on stage, and that gave the evening a particular human gravity. Without asking you to go anywhere you would rather not, were there challenges along the way, physical, emotional, or otherwise, that altered your relationship to performing, and has returning to the stage changed your sense of fragility, endurance, or presence?
A: I’ve been a bit under the weather lately, like many others. Unfortunately, a cold hadn’t fully cleared up in time for the last show, but I still managed to get through it. We’ve never cancelled a confirmed gig from our side. We only do about one show per month anyway, because anything more would get too exhausting. Two gigs back-to-back are quite rare for us. We’re not trained singers, nor are we really physically prepared for life on tour. I keep telling myself I should do more for my body, but in the end it’s mostly just a lot of walking and cycling. It would probably help with stamina and appearance, but I’ve never really been focused on looking better or more “fit.”I also don’t like conversations about appearance, “oh, have you lost weight… gained weight… lost weight again.” It gets tiring. We go on stage as we are.
Q: klangstabil feel to you like something reopening, something continuing, or something becoming possible for the first time? And now that the live current is moving again, has it also shifted your sense of what still wants to be written, performed, or brought into the world?
A: It’s definitely another step forward that we’re taking together. The urge to express didn’t just come with the live shows, it was already there before. There are a few themes connected to a new artwork that’s in the pipeline. Certain perspectives, or an inner attitude, are already flowing into the current performances and are also reshaping the existing set. I think we’ve become a bit more resigned toward the outside world, but that’s also part of the spirit of the times. Still, we try to bring in positive approaches, which is important for us as well, in order to stay stable.
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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