Silke Bischoff releases ‘Tears – A Collection of Silke Bischoff Songs’
Silke Bischoff released “Tears – A Collection of Silke Bischoff Songs” on September 25, 2026 via Dependent Records, with a previously unreleased title track.
Silke Bischoff released “Tears – A Collection of Silke Bischoff Songs” on September 25, 2026 via Dependent Records, distributed by SPKR, with a US release date of October 2. The dark wave and synthpop compilation follows the band’s signing to Dependent for catalogue reissues in May 2026.
The 14-track collection gathers restored versions of the band’s catalogue, newly mastered by producer Olaf Wollschläger, who has also worked with Mesh, Yello, Milú, Melotron and Beborn Beton. It adds a previously unreleased track, the title song “Tears,” pulled from the archives and featuring vocals from the band’s late co-founder, Felix Flaucher.
‘Tears’ tracklist and credits
- Tears
- I Don’t Love You Anymore
- Under Your Skin
- No Paradise
- Northern Lights
- The Union
- The Man on the Wooden Cross
- The Letter
- On the Other Side
- Ajna
- Benetton Girl
- Waste of Time
- Sometimes
- To Protect and to Serve
Recording lineup: Felix Flaucher (vocals) and Axel Kretschmann (vocals, keyboards, guitar), with Frank Schwer (guitar) joining from the second album onward. Kretschmann recorded and mixed the compilation at Kinderzimmer Studio in Berlin; Wollschläger remastered it at Cottonbeat Studio in Burscheid. Flaucher designed the artwork, with layout by Flaucher, Nico J. and Kretschmann. The release is available as a hardcover 48-page CD artbook with photography by Flaucher and liner notes by German author Mark Urban, through the SPKR store.
About Silke Bischoff
Axel Kretschmann and Felix Flaucher founded Silke Bischoff as a gothic and dark wave project in 1990. Three two-track demo tapes built an underground following, and the club track “I Don’t Love You Anymore” turned into an early hit. The self-titled debut album followed in 1991, establishing the band within the dark electronic scene; “On the Other Side (I’ll See You Again)” went on to become a fixture of the European goth movement.
The band’s name referenced an 18-year-old woman who died in the 1988 Gladbeck hostage crisis, a choice the founders intended as a memorial, though it drew controversy in Germany at the time. Guitarist Frank Schwer joined for the second album, “The Man on the Wooden Cross” (1993). The following record, “To Protect and to Serve” (1995), produced the club hit “Under Your Skin” and pulled the band toward a wider audience, including unwanted attention from German television over unfounded accusations of promoting Satanism.
Kretschmann left after the fourth album, “Northern Lights” (2001); Flaucher and Schwer continued briefly as 18 Summers following a legal dispute. The original members reconciled in 2017 for a private performance shortly before Flaucher died on August 22 that year, aged 59, after a long illness.
Kretschmann revived Silke Bischoff at the 2025 Wave-Gotik-Treffen, with guest vocal performances from Deine Lakaien’s Alexander Veljanov and Sven Friedrich of Dreadful Shadows, Zeraphine and Solar Fake. More concerts with guest vocalists are set for 2026, alongside further planned reissues of the band’s catalogue in digital and physical form. “Tears” is the first release to follow from that revival, and the band played Bochum on September 25 and Leipzig on September 26, with a Berlin date at Columbia Theater following on September 27.
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