Silke Bischoff release a remastered ‘Under Your Skin’ as the ‘Tears’ compilation moves to 25 September
Silke Bischoff issued a remastered “Under Your Skin” on 18 August 2026. It precedes “Tears”, the Dependent Records compilation now due on 25 September.
Silke Bischoff issued a remastered “Under Your Skin” on 18 August 2026 through Dependent Records. The track first appeared on the German dark wave and synthpop act’s third album “To Protect and to Serve” in 1995 and became the record that carried them onto dance floors beyond the goth scene. It is the second advance single from “Tears – A Collection of Silke Bischoff Songs”, the compilation that opens the band’s reissue campaign, and which production problems have pushed from 4 September to 25 September 2026 in Europe and 2 October in North America.
Axel Kretschmann, who wrote the song with the late Felix Flaucher, connects it to the period the band was in rather than to any single studio decision.
“The track ‘Under Your Skin’ was conceived at a time when our collaboration within the band had reached its creative peak”, Kretschmann commented. “While we were working on the album ‘To Protect and to Serve’ it felt as though everything fell naturally into place. Ideas simply popped up, melodies and lyrics fit perfectly, and everything just seemed to happen quite on its own. ‘Under Your Skin’ is one of those songs that reflect this phase best. The track remains at eight minutes but to me it never felt necessary to shorten it. I have always maintained that a song should be exactly as long as it demands – and I would never cut it short just to fit it into an arbitrary radio format.”
What is on the Silke Bischoff ‘Tears’ compilation
The fourteen-track selection runs “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”, “AJ:NA”, “Benetton Girl”, “Waste of Time”, “Sometimes” and “To Protect and to Serve”. Olaf Wollschläger, whose credits include MESH, Yello, Milú, Melotron and Beborn Beton, remastered the material at Cottonbeat Studio in Burscheid.
The opening track is the reason the compilation carries the title it does: “Tears” is a previously unreleased song pulled from the archives, with Flaucher’s vocals on it. It was released with a video in July 2026, directed and filmed by Ronny Zeisberg for wieglas Photo & Film Factory, with the lyrics by Flaucher and the music credited to Kretschmann and Flaucher.
The physical edition is a hardcover 48-page CD artbook with photography by Flaucher and liner notes by the German author Mark Urban. It can be pre-ordered from the SPKR store and from Bandcamp. Kretschmann recorded and mixed the source material at Kinderzimmer Studio in Berlin; the artwork is Flaucher’s, laid out by Flaucher, Nico J. and Kretschmann.
Silke Bischoff live dates 2026
Three German club shows are booked for release week, with The Second Sight supporting:
- 25 September 2026 – Bochum, Germany – Matrix
- 26 September 2026 – Leipzig, Germany – Täubchenthal
- 27 September 2026 – Berlin, Germany – Columbia Theater
About Silke Bischoff
Axel Kretschmann and Felix Flaucher founded Silke Bischoff in Germany in 1990 as a gothic and dark wave project, Kretschmann on keyboards, guitar and vocals, Flaucher on vocals. Three two-track demo tapes preceded the self-titled debut, which Chaos issued on vinyl in 1991 and on CD the following year; the underground club track “I Don’t Love You Anymore” came from that period, and “On the Other Side (I’ll See You Again)” became one of the songs most closely associated with the European goth movement.
The band name drew immediate objections in Germany. It was taken from the 18-year-old hostage who died in the 1988 Gladbeck hostage crisis, an incident in which the conduct of the press and the police came under heavy public criticism. The founders described the choice as a memorial, on the grounds that the names remembered from such cases are usually the perpetrators’.
Guitarist Frank Schwer joined for the second album “The Man on the Wooden Cross”, released by I.N.R.I. Records on 25 October 1993. “To Protect and to Serve” followed on the same label in 1995 and produced “Under Your Skin”. “Northern Lights” arrived in 1996 on I.N.R.I., and the band’s television profile at the time extended to an accusation of promoting Satanism on German TV. Kretschmann left after that run; Flaucher and Schwer continued from 2002 as 18 Summers following a dispute over the name.
The three reconciled in 2017 for a private performance among close friends. Flaucher died that August at the age of 59 after a long illness. Kretschmann brought the band back on 8 June 2025 at Wave-Gotik-Treffen in the Agra hall in Leipzig, with guest vocals from Deine Lakaien singer Alexander Veljanov and from Sven Friedrich of Solar Fake, Dreadful Shadows and Zeraphine. The live line-up now pairs Kretschmann with Markus Köster on drums and Andy Simanowitz on piano, keyboards and backing vocals. The band signed to Dependent Records for the catalogue reissues in May 2026, and “Tears” is the first release under that agreement.
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