“Forms of Hands” is now in its 23rd edition, showcasing 14 tracks from some of the most esteemed names in modern Industrial music who have long been associated with the German label. This installment is notably intense, featuring a robust selection of Rhythmic-Noise that often blends with hard Techno elements and IDM. At times, Breakcore rhythms cut through the sonic landscape, creating a dynamic and powerful auditory experience. Among the merciless tracklist, S.I.N.A. offers a unique yet understated moment of rest. This edition features exclusive tracks from legendary artists such as Esplendor Geometrico, Sonar, and Greyhound, alongside prominent figures like ICD-10, MS Gentur + Sven Phalanx, Heimstatt Yipotash, 13TH Monkey, Saturmzlide and SKET. Additionally, emerging names like Anarchotech, Hysteresis, Strobo.Lolita, and Supersimmetria contribute to this extraordinary collection. “Forms of Hands” Volume 23 is truly a grand cru of the genre. (Rate:9).

Listen to “Urgencia” from Esplendor Geometrico:

About Hands

Hands Productions was founded in 1990 in Fürth, Germany, by Udo Wiessmann as a platform for his own projects Winterkälte, Atrum and Severance. Over the years the label’s catalog spanned minimalist ambient, breakbeat and rhythmic noise, with Winterkälte’s early vinyl releases helping define the drum’n’noise style associated with the label. Hands later moved its operations to Dortmund, Germany, and has released early work from acts including Orphx, Needle Sharing and Ah Cama-Sotz. “Forms of Hands” is the label’s recurring various-artists compilation series; this 23rd volume gathers current and past Hands artists.

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com

German musician Mike Erkau started making music forty years ago now! He got involved with multiple projects like Trackologists, Cosmic Noise Crew, Stimulus Response and his own sonic alter-ego The_Empath. Earlier this year Mike Erkau stroke back with the first new studio-album in eight years. “Black Holes” also is the first album released by Audiophob. This opus is a genius composition which is mixing good-old Ambient-Electro together with a more contemporary IDM touch; a kind of retro-futuristic voyage which might appeal for fans of Tangerine Dream and clock dva. I talked with Mike about this The_Empath masterpiece which took some time to get accomplished. This is without a shadow of a doubt one of the best albums from the year.

(Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries)

Q: I noticed you started dealing with Electronic music in 1993. What did you keep in mind from your early experiments and compositions and what remains today from the musician you were at that time?

Mike: It is a great challenge to consistently follow your path, to find your own style and to remain true to yourself. Not to lose sight of the big picture. To keep your heart and your antennae open for new things. Curiosity.

To think outside the box. To be inspired across all genre boundaries. It’s like picking flowers away from the mainstream. Searching for sounds and musical structures that touch something somewhere deep inside yourself. Playing around, recreating, adapting, taking apart, picking apart, recombining to find out what it does to you, and what it might do to others. To share with soulmates and walk a path together. Taking perspectives, approaches into your own toolbox. Learning and getting better. That’s exciting.

I see music as the perfect catalyst for any emotion, both positive and negative. In doing so, the balance should always point in the positive direction, because that generates the necessary energy for my musical journey. It’s an ongoing process.

Q: I read your newest The_Empath album “Black Hole” took you a while to achieve. Can you give us more details about the concept and composition of the album? What did you try to express?

Mike: The original idea for “Black Hole” came up back in 2016. At various festivals I heard some musicians whose music appealed to me a lot, and I felt like trying out collaborations with them.

Originally, it was supposed to be 6 sound structures of 12 minutes each, the theme was already called “Black Hole”, in the astronomical sense. The desire was to find out how something like that could sound. So I had 12-minute sound collages sent to me, which I wanted to use as a basis for adapting, refining and expanding them. A perfect playground, so far, so good.

A couple of massive impacts in the private sphere and the events that overruled everything valid until then  in the years 2020 to 2022 threw me completely off track and pulled me emotionally into a deep black hole.

The rat race was stopped, no one could tell where it was going, unforeseeable consequences. Omnipresent powerlessness and ambivalence. Social, ethical and moral upheavals and everywhere only masked insecure, dissatisfied, annoyed and angry people.

The mourning for the many dead, while others stuffed their pockets. The emotional hell for empathic people. “Lost Your Cygnal”, “Ergosphere” and “Supermassiph” are the most impressive sound documents for it. Luckily I always had the Cosmic Noise Crew around me at that time, and we used the lockdowns to revise the concept for the album in the studio, to explore sounds and to bring everything down to a good denominator.
That helped me a lot to get out of that black hole and not lose sight of the stars. To think positively. Examples of this are “Utopia”, “Star Cradle”, “Hypernova” and “Southern Hemisphere”.

Q: The concept of black holes seems to be a perfect source of inspiration for Ambient music but how did you proceed to transpose the concept into sounds, noises and finally songs? And can you tell us a bit more about the equipment you used?

Mike: I experimented with my hardware synths for a while in the beginning, but somehow it all sounded too ‘earthly’, too limited. In 2016, I only had a very small home studio due to lack of space. So I started chopping up the source collages, looking for loops and micro events on a granular level and creating iterations of them with effects. At the time I was collecting freeware VST’s – and experimenting my way through over 1000 plugins. Along the way I browsed the internet for sound samples -there are quite a few sound documents that have been made available to the public by NASA. Among them are recordings of the Cassini probes and radio wave emissions from supermassive black holes, e.g. TON 618, a distant, bright quasar in the constellation of the hunting dogs, or the black hole in the Perseus galaxy cluster. These cosmic sound machines can be experienced by human hearing through translation.

In 2019 I had begun to build a sound spaceship into my apartment, just as I had always wanted since 1993. Stuffed with hardware sound generators covering a spectrum of synthesis types as wide as possible. Just like in a spaceship cockpit.

In recent years, a lot of good hardware has come on the market, which is above all also affordable, as well as tons of ingenious VST plugins. I use these depending on my mood, controlled by a Novation KS5 as a master keyboard. As a mixer I use a Behringer X32Rack + S16, for the USB stuff a Swissonic 1916 with Sub Hub’s. It really wasn’t until 2020 that I had all the technical requirements in place to be able to use all these options at will. And that without hitting technical limits during every studio session.

The following hardware sound generators were used on the album, among others: Access Virus Indigo, Clavia Nordlead 2, Korg MS20 mini, Novation KS5, Arturia Microbrute + Microfreak, Waldorf Blofeld + Streichfett, Doepfer MS404, Roland GAIA, Behringer Neutron + Pro-1. VST plugins: Sonic Charge, GForce, NI Absynth(!) + Reaktor, Spire, Sylenth, Valhalla, Arturia V-Collection etc.

When I look back to 1993 – oh man. With my beloved Amiga500 with 1MB RAM and Clarity Sampler, Doepfer MS404, Novation Bass-Station Rack and Korg DW8000 with the most rickety keyboard I’ve ever experienced -without the possibilities of any audio warping and DAW controllers, let alone boundlessly huge sample libraries and tons of VST’s. You had to be inventive and willing to experiment and have fun doing it. At that time, you couldn’t buy creativity, and you still can’t.

Q: You invited a few guest artists to collaborate on three tracks from the album. I’m especially wondered how the track together with Heimstatt Yipotash happened as both of you are still involved in Trackologists? What made this collaboration different? And do you still have further plans with Trackologists?

Mike: At that time I was already on the road for a while as a VJ with the guys from Heimstatt Yipotash and we hatched the idea for a joint music project on a trip to a gig. When I started with “Black Hole”, the first Trackologists album  (cf. “No Surrender, No Retreat”) was just finished, and while rummaging through the huge collection of material, I stumbled across leftovers, field recordings and experiments, a few tracks played several times slower and so on. I then processed them further, added more layers to them and expanded them. I simply wanted to have these sounds on “Black Hole”. The special thing about our collaboration was and is that we first and foremost understand and complement each other super humanly and musically and always have a good time together.

YES, there are further plans with Trackologists. After the whole difficult time, which has more or less burdened everyone in all areas, we have resumed the common track. At the moment we are working on a come-back EP and structuring sketches and ideas for a second album, whose theme and name is already fixed. It will follow the first album musically and in terms of content, with more lyrics and a musically more homogeneous concept. This will hopefully be followed, desirably, by a series of gigs where we can really let off steam for ourselves and the audience.

Q: Next to music you also have a true passion and fascination for visual creation. You already did numerous live shows for other artists. Tell us a bit more about this other aspect of your art and do you’ve plans about any kind of imagery for the The_Empath album “Black Hole” (think about live shows, clips…)?

Mike: My fascination for visual design has resulted from the desire to see another media layer at live gigs, complementing and enriching the music, performance and light show. Not necessarily just a flickering background wallpaper, but matching the music, reacting to the music. So to speak an amplifier for the message and thus for the transported emotion.

I started doing that during my studies, for my own tracks and every now and then at parties as a VJ. From 2005 to 2015 I was often on the road with XABEC and learned and got to know immensely. The absolute highlight from this time is still for me the gig at the Maschinenfest 2008 in Krefeld, from which a DVD was created afterwards. I am very grateful for this time. It resulted in many contacts, and when I was up for a festival, I asked friends: ‘hey, can I make a video for you’ and was in the middle of it instead of just being there. Give and take. There were also facade projections for multimedia festivals and a trailer for Tzolk’in.

Working with these techniques is no less complex than creative work with audio, unfortunately at least as time-consuming and was/is often put on the back of the line for cost reasons. I still enjoy producing videos because I like the aesthetics and the interplay. At the moment, however, I’m concentrating more on my own projects.

For “Black Hole” there are no promising ideas for live shows and clips yet due to time constraints.
A dream would be to play the album in planetariums on 3D audio systems. If it comes so far I am then quite fast with the thing.

Q: You already mentioned Cosmic Noise Crew which is another project you’re involved with. I think it sounds  even more Ambient-driven than The_Empath but what makes the difference to you between all of your projects? And do you’ve specific references and/of ‘masters’ when it comes to this kind of music?

Mike: The difference between the projects is primarily the subject matter and secondarily the intensity of the emotions that are processed with it. For a long time I resisted opening up different pigeonholes and sorting my emotions into them. However, it became increasingly difficult for me to bring all this into one mould, and for the listeners it was certainly not easy to classify it. Mixing my musical preferences for aesthetic soothing sounds alternately with brute beats and noises, I was fortunately able to get away from this by splitting up into different projects. Cosmic Noise Crew clearly has Ambient, healing musical structures and sounds as its goal, where inspiration and the musical socialization of several players come into play and complement each other. With Trackologists it’s more forward, also sometimes straight in your face -full speed ahead. Here we act out, with a view to content and sound aesthetics, but without destroying. We put in the texts many clues between the lines for the people who are looking for it. To hold up the mirror, but not only to others, but starting with ourselves.

The_Empath I need as an island for myself, but on which everyone is welcome at any time, who is able to enrich this project with positive energy.

References and masters, a tricky question to finish. I can only answer for myself. I would say to be a reference deserves everything that combines the attributes honest, technically brilliant, creative, surprising, expanding the horizon, rousing and emotional. The list is endless, and it never stops growing. My master is the universe.

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com

Genre/Influences: Ambient-Electro, IDM,Experimental.

Format: Digital, CD.

Background/Info: Mike Erkau started dealing with Electronic music in 1993. Thirty years later he can look back at different productions and now strikes back with his first new studio album since 2015. “Black Hole” also is his debut album on Audiophob. As the title might indicate it’s a conceptual work which took many years for the artist to achieve.

Content: The_Empath invites the listener to a ‘retro-futuristic’ Electronic travel. The Ambient-Electro side is the guiding line through the album which has been mixed with contemporary IDM influences. More than once I got the sensation listening to the fictive mix of Tangerine Dream and Clock DVA. The work is however driven through an impressive astral dimension reinforcing the concept of the ‘black hole’. Heimstatt Yipotash, =mp45= and Mortaja contributed each to 1 track.

+ + + : This album sounds as an impressive come back. It took years for The_Empath to achieve this work but it sounds as a true accomplishment. The tracks are characterized by total sound intelligence; the mix of vintage sound treatments reinforcing the ‘astral’ dimension of the work and IDM parts. The work sounds complex and yet easily accessible. The addition of rhythms even bring some tracks into dance. The work reveals different great songs but you can’t get away from “Lost Your Cygnal” and “Hypernova”.Last but not least I also want to say a word about the artistic digipak (DVD format).

– – – : I don’t see true minus points here.

Conclusion: The concept of this album remains a true mystery which never stops fascinating scientists. This feeling has been perfectly adapted into great music. 

Best songs: “Lost Your Cygnal”, “Hypernova”, “Southern, Hemisphere”, “Utopia with =Mp45=,” “Ergosphere – with Mortaja”.

Rate: 9.

Artist: www.subroom.com / www.facebook.com/the.empath.music

Label: www.audiophob.de / www.facebook.com/audiophob

About The_Empath

The_Empath is a solo project of German musician Mike Erkau, who started making electronic music in 1993. He is also involved with the projects Trackologists, Cosmic Noise Crew and Stimulus Response, and worked as a VJ with XABEC between 2005 and 2015, including a performance at Maschinenfest 2008 in Krefeld.

“Black Hole” is The_Empath’s first new studio album in eight years. In a Side-Line interview, Erkau said the concept originated in 2016 from collaborations with musicians he met at festivals, and that the album’s darker material, including “Lost Your Cygnal” and “Ergosphere,” was shaped by personal events between 2020 and 2022. “Black Hole” is his debut release on Audiophob.

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com

Genre/Influences: Industrial, Rhythmic-Noise, Power-Noise, Industrial-Techno, Electro-Industrial.

Format: Digital, CD.

Background/Info: The legendary “Forms Of Hands” festival got cancelled in 2020 because of the ongoing pandemic. So the 20^th edition took place in 2021 and was accompanied by the good-old compilation. We got fourteen projects and tracks.

Artists: <1979>, ICD-10, Hysteresis, Maschinenkrieger KR52, Heimstatt Yipotash, Mono No Aware, Monolith, Strobo.Lolita, 16Pad Noise Terrorist, Cervello Elettronico, MS Gentur, Greyhound, Nullvektor, Winterkälte.

Content: If you’re familiar with Hands you for sure recognize most of the bands. This new sampler is dominated by merciless Rhythmic/Power-Noise assaults from projects like Winterkälte, MS Gentur, Greyhound, Maschinenkrieger KR52, Mono No Aware and Strobo.Lolita. The Industrial-Techno format has been featured by ICD-10, HysteresisMonolith and Nullvektor. Other formations like <1979>, Heimstatt Yipotash and of course Cervello Elettronico bring a more sophisticated, minimal and intelligent sound. 16 Pad Noise Terrorist stands for the most Experimental touch of the compilation.

+ + + : Hands is a label I deeply respect for numerous reasons; first of all as leading label of qualitative ‘Industrial’ music, next for its longevity, but also for the will to innovate and give a chance to artists with a new and sometimes visionary approach of Industrial music. It has been perfectly represented by this new compilation. It’s interesting getting back to the first issues of this series and comparing it with this 20^th edition. It’s an amazing evolution in sound although the label always remained driven by Industrial music. The evolution of a band like Heimstatt Yipotash perfectly symbolizes the evolution of the label.

– – – : If you’re not into the harder Rhythmic-Noise side of the label, there are for sure better compilations in this series.

Conclusion: A hard, powerful and ultra-danceable vintage of Industrial music and who says Industrial, thinks Hands!

Best bands: Heimstatt Yipotash, Cervello elettronico, ICD-10, Nullvektor, Monolith, Hysteresis, >1979<.

Rate: 8.

Label: www.handsproductions.com / www.facebook.com/hands.official

About Hands

Hands Productions, known as Hands, was founded in 1990 by Udo Wiessmann in Fürth, Germany, as a platform for his own projects Atrum, Severance and Winterkälte. The label later moved to Dortmund and widened its catalogue to full-length artist albums, releasing early work by Orphx, Ah Cama-Sotz and S.K.E.T.

Since 2001 the label has issued an annual “Forms Of Hands” festival compilation gathering one track from each act on its roster. The 2020 edition of the festival was cancelled, so the twentieth edition took place in 2021. “Forms Of Hands 20 – 20th Edition” was released on 10 September 2021 with fourteen artists and fourteen tracks.

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com

André Matthes and Thomas Niedballa started their music activities in 2001. A few years later they singed to HANDS and started to release heavy Industrial & Experimental productions under the HEIMSTATT YIPOTASH moniker. The new work “Brankmanship” is their first new album in six years, but also a work revealing a more sophisticated sound mixing Industrial, Rhythmic-Noise, Experimental and Industrial-Techno. I experienced the work as the fusion between power, melody and intelligence. Both artists had a lot to say about their work.

(by Inferno Sound Diaries)

Q: “Brinkmanship” is your first new album in six years! How does it feel to have released this new work after such a long time and why did it take that long?

André: I’m surprised myself that there’s such a long time  between the two albums. The selective sense of time is sometimes very relative, I don’t feel that the time span since our last release “Mecanismos De Control” is that long. Nevertheless, six years is of course a long time in which a lot has happened, both in the small private sphere and on a global scale.

After “Mecanismos De Control”, which dealt in the broadest sense with the financial crisis in 2008 and the actions of the responsible actors behind it, we worked together with Mike Erkau (The_Empath) on our joint project Trackologists. The work on Trackologists’ debut album “No Surrender, No Retreat” proved to be very fruitful, inspiring but also time-consuming, so there was space for new HEIMSTATT YIPOTASH ideas during this time. It then took some time until we had enough material for new songs, and above all a unifying idea on the theme, a guide that should connect the tracks on the album.

We like to give our albums a story in which the songs are embedded and refer to each other. Storytelling is already important in our way of working, perhaps it also explains the longer intervals between our releases. In the early summer of last year we had all the songs ready, the tracklist was fixed and an intensive phase of fine-tuning followed. I listened to every song and the album almost every day for eight weeks and made some changes. It is really difficult for me to accept the track as finished and release it for mastering. That’s when the control freak in me comes through. Terrible 😉 Thomas does it a more Punk-style. Boarded up and good. Then I come and start to make some changes. But that’s only good up to a certain point, because at some point it gets smoother and more pleasing but not really better.

HEIMSTATT YIPOTASH has always stood for a certain amount of unspoken joy in experimentation, and of course I don’t want to and should not optimize it to the max. At the end of 2019 the master was finished and we were very proud to be part of it, I think I can speak for both of us. The album shows so many different facets and yet, in my opinion, never loses the red thread. It is an astonishing further development to its six years older predecessor, especially when you listen to both of them one after the other. Now, a good year after the completion of our songs, I can say for myself that I can still get excited about the titles, despite listening to them umpteen times. 🙂

Thomas: I feel like André: the previous album “Mecanismos De Control” is somehow still present and doesn’t seem so far away. However, after that album there was a bit of ‘air out’ and we concentrated on the joint project Trackologists with Mike. During this joint work we were able to benefit from Mike’s knowledge for our own composition and production process. Thanks to this input, we then invested much more time than before in the current album “Brinkmanship” to compose and produce the tracks as cleanly as possible without losing sight of the worn edges.

Q: That’s maybe why I experienced this new album as your most diversified production ever; a true mix between different influences. How do you explain the evolution from the early, rough Industrial productions till “Brinkmanship”?

André: I think the driving force behind our work is experimenting with our possibilities. Personally I was inspired by Rhythm Noise and related styles. Especially by the fact that you suddenly got the chance to become creative yourself. That was in the mid-nineties. Until then I was rather an enthusiastic consumer. Records and concerts -I took everything that excited me, and that was always very comprehensive. Whether AlternativRock, Grunge, Punk or Avant-Garde, EBM, DarWave, Rhythm Noise -I could and still can get enthusiastic about many styles.

That was my input, and has remained so to this day, with some small cutbacks. For every time and for every situation there is the right music for me. So at some point I started to become creative myself, using pickups and microphones to shape and record noises and soundscapes. In addition, I had the possibility to merge the whole thing together using simple PC tracker programs and thus record my first (mostly very repetitive) songs. In this phase I found a like-minded person in Thomas and from then on we complemented each other in initially still separate projects. In the following time we self-released some CDRs, which we mostly distributed to friends and acquaintances and played a handful of concerts in small clubs. Our equipment at that time consisted of two PCs including tube monitors, pickups and lots of stuff. At some point we were actually allowed to play at the “Maschinenfest 2004”, and so we joined the HANDS label there.

Label boss Udo Wiessmann offered us to release an album on HANDS. It was a huge thing for us, it was incredibly inspiring and expanded our possibilities enormously. From this time on we officially called ourselves Heimstatt Yipotash, in reference to the previous solo-projects. With the years and every further release the learning curve in what we did and how we made music increased. In addition to the initially dominant intuition and joy of experimenting, we also gained a growing understanding of songwriting. In principle, we taught ourselves to make music over time, we are the absolute autodidacts 🙂 And -as mentioned at the beginning, we experiment with the respective possibilities we have.

Thomas: Since the beginning of our musical journey together, we have loved jumping between drawers and playing with listeners’ expectations. We actually always do what we want to do and do not look for disco suitability or the satisfaction of listening habits or expectations. But at the same time we don’t turn a song around until it absolutely sounds “especially creative and different”. We are insanely happy that Udo has always allowed us this creative freedom and that we can release our albums on the HANDS label without ‘censorship’ or ‘creative guidelines’.

The songs of the first albums sound for us now, with the distance of the years, both from the composition rather ‘simple’ and low-fi. Also some of our own musical preferences are shifting, which is reflected in the current songs. You find  more influences from IDM and other ‘song based’-styles than the more dominant Rhythm Noise of the earlier years. More stringency in sound and less jumping between genres could possibly be helpful to be more successful. But that has never been our motivation to make music. We want to entertain, but at the same time we want to encourage people to think, do research and also to exchange ideas. All the albums we have recorded so far reflect our view of society, the world and our environment at the time.

Q: Can you tell us a bit more about the writing and production process of the new songs? And what makes the chemistry between you both?

André: The driving force for each of our albums is usually to tell a story. The narrative element is already strongly pronounced. In the case of the debut “Storegga Effect”, for example, it was the cyclical sequence of major natural events with mass extinctions and the subsequent renewal or regeneration of the biosphere. The most narratively dense work to date, “Urban Night Motifs”, was a dystopian plunge through a dark, dirty and violent metropolis at night. We wanted to achieve a similarly dense atmosphere again on our current album, because I still like the soundtrack-like gloomy atmosphere very much.

The content of our songs is always close to the problems of the world and we have often addressed them. Also this time we created many songs that take a stand on global problems, so like new catchwords like genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, data surveillance or old scourges like war, corruption and abuse of power. Originally the album should be called “Tribunal” and it should be a kind of condemnation of the conditions. From today’s point of view, it seems to me to be richly bold and naively superficial. We had already taken this direction somewhat with “Mecanismos De Control” and we didn’t really want to go on further like this. We changed the context and formed the songs into a kind of taking status of the world today (“Artificial Ego”, “Fix, Find, Finish”, “Belt To Blender”). We contrasted this with our personal feelings, anger and powerlessness (“Progress”, “At the Edge Of Words”) and the desire to escape this mad world (“Step Into The Void”, “Separation”, “Trigger”).

Seen in this light, the current album is less combative than the previous one, but rather pessimistically resigned. Perhaps it results from the realization that no matter what happens, no matter how bad the disasters and wars will be, people still rarely learn from mistakes, and that in the end the predator prevails. Our way of working is usually to sit together (usually in Thomas’ arbor), connect our equipment and just jam away. Sometimes the first ideas come up, sometimes we just do sound exploration and fill our sample memory. The resulting song sketches are then moved back and forth a couple of times, and at some point the individual track develops its own character, which is then worked out. It’s not that we set ourselves a concept and then work it out, it all starts intuitively, almost like jazz from the gut. 🙂 If the track comes to life, it gets a name and is then shaped in the desired direction. When you finally compare the sketches and the finished track, you are amazed and get the impression that the song has a life of its own and we are just the obstetricians. It has always been like that, and I think that’s what makes up the way we work.

Thomas: Instead of the rehearsals and jam sessions that are usual with ‘classic’ bands, we have now established a well-functioning ping-pong method for us: if not out of jam sessions together, relatively many sketches are first created at my place. These are partly loops of only 10 seconds, but can also be rough song structures of three minutes. André takes over these beginnings and works on them with his own preferences and moods. This gives the sketches a completely new dynamic and complexity, which you often can’t even think of when you tinker with them alone. The nice thing about our joint work on songs is that nobody has a special role as ‘songwriter’ or ‘drummer’ or similar, but the songs can always develop without ‘selfish’ wishes or preferences. Neither of us has the claim to put more songs than the other on an album or to always have to listen to our own samples in the finished song. There are tracks that completely change their sound several times during their creation.

The possibilities of working with, in our case, Ableton Live are simply indescribably beneficial here. For us, it is amazing how the songs on the albums ultimately come together to form a harmonious product, without us planning it that way from the beginning. All our albums had a common thread, which we often only found during the ongoing creation process, without having to ‘bend’ the songs.

On “Storegga Effect” the mutual influences of environment and human beings on each other were the main theme. “Perpetual Beta” focused more on the mechanization of the world and the anonymization of the individual in society, but also on the simultaneous (self-zchosen) revelation of very private things, for example on the internet. “Urban Night Motifs” highlighted a modern and realistic, but also dystopian metropolis in the current time: psychological problems, pressure to perform, pollution of the environment, social injustice and increasing loneliness of people were the topics. “Mecanismos De Control” extracted this view on a political / social level, whereby we chose the situation in Argentina in 2001 as the main theme. “Brinkmanship” could now be interpreted as a once again ‘zoomed up’ view of the whole world politics and its influence on each and every one of us.

Q: “Brinkmanship” indeed appears to be a critical reflection about the world we’re living in. What’s your perception about the latest news events like the Covid-19 pandemic, the presidential election in the USA ao?

André: “Brinkmanship” is indeed a critical examination of the state of the world. The term means as much as the politics of absolute risk, the planning of one’s own destruction, the play with fire. There are many political examples, the policy of nuclear deterrence during the Cold War is only one of them. Even today, the term can be applied to many aspects. We have tried to cover some of the topics on the album, even if many things are missing (climate change, environmental destruction, etc.) There are many questions that most people are reluctant to ask, because the answers might question their way of living. Will artificial intelligence dominate us one day? Will we become slaves of omniscient networks and algorithms? How dangerous is genetic engineering? And is it ethically acceptable? What do animal experiments and factory farming and the perversities associated with them say about our humanity? These and countless other questions, some of them more or less philosophical, occupy our minds and are a recurring theme in our songs.

Much of this can be discussed controversially, and I too have no productive answers to many of them. Nevertheless it is important to ask these questions and to deal with them. Because if you don’t face it, you are much more receptive to ‘strong men with simple solutions’, which brings us back to the actual topic. The multitude of questions seems to overwhelm a large part of the people intellectually, there is no other way to explain, for example, a President Trump, Erdogan or Putin. In my view, Trump is one of the most stupid and incompetent people you can imagine at the head of such an influential superpower. But Trump is for me not the cause, but rather the symptom of a certain social and societal degeneration that can be observed throughout the Western world.

The most pressing current issue is the Covid-19 pandemic. The exceptional situation in which we are currently living is magnifying the acute social upheavals like under a burning glass and is a test of character for each individual. Whether and how measures to contain the infection will be effective will only be known when it is history, because much of it cannot yet be assessed. It is therefore easy to condemn decisions in retrospect and to know everything better. As a realist, I see the situation, recognize possible risks and try to avoid them without hysteria. In my opinion, it would sometimes be helpful for many people if they could look at things more soberly, abstractly and then stick to the facts. That way, prophets and conspiracy theorists of all colors would have less of an audience.

Q: Because of Covid-19 artists can’t no longer play live, which must be frustrating when you’ve a new album out. How do you try to face the situation and what do you expect from artistic activities during the next few months?

André: Of course this is extremely frustrating for us! Originally “Brinkmanship” was supposed to be presented at the “Elektroanschlag” festival or at the “Forms of Hands” and we had prepared some limited bundles with iron-on patches and stickers for the record release. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the restrictions, all this became obsolete. The release date was postponed to August, and unfortunately we had no chance to present the album live until now. And it’s through concerts that you can reach a larger audience. As far as that is concerned, we really fell victim to a bad time.

But it’s not just us! Much worse affected are artists who have to live from their art, who depend on the income. As far as that is concerned, we are well off as ‘amateurs’ and too much complaining would be somehow indecent. Well, what the future will bring, we will see. Maybe we will try ourselves as street musicians 😉 At the moment, it’s mid-October, the infection numbers are rising again and I don’t believe in a return of the festivals soon. What this means for the whole music industry, promoters and labels cannot yet be estimated, but the coming period will certainly not be easy. Many are acutely threatened in their existence. That is something you should bear in mind! Therefore: ‘Support your artists! Support your label!’

Thomas: Yes, it makes us sad not to be able to present the new material live and experience the feedback of the audience. But in the current situation we have the big advantage over musicians who have to earn their living by performing, that we both have regular jobs and therefore the band has been a pure hobby project from the beginning and doesn’t have to feed families. So we see the situation as very uncomfortable for us, but for the whole music industry, especially the independent labels and concert operators, with far greater concern and fear for the future of the many employees and enthusiasts.

We house label HANDS are also severely affected by cancelled concerts and closed clubs. This is the best way for each of us to help: Buy CDs and merchandise directly from the small, fine labels!

Q: Next to HEIMSTATT YIPOTASH you’ve been also involved with other projects. What can you express and maybe exorcize in these other projects –like TRACKOLOGISTS, and do you plan new releases?

André: I am cautiously optimistic when I say that there will be a sign of life from TRACKOLOGISTS in the near future. Optimistic, because all three of us have a great desire for it and already have concrete ideas for a release; cautious, because all three of us are involved in other projects and therefore many things simply go slower and need more time. It will probably be like with the first and so far unfortunately only TRACKOLOGISTS album: we will set ourselves a lot of goals, we will meet several deadlines and still get it finished. 🙂

Thomas: I think the chances of an upcoming release of the TRACKOLOGISTS are good. We love the project and the slightly different development process than at HYMSTATT YIPOTASH. TRACKOLOGISTS songs are much closer to the EBM and IDM than our own tracks, but working with Mike enriches our own way of working immensely as we benefit from his knowledge and set the bar high ourselves. Whether there will be another masterpiece of “No Go!” depends mainly on the simultaneous availability of (too) much time, extremely obscure sample collections and large amounts of alcoholic beverages…

André: Thanks for your questions and hopefully see you soon live!

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com

Genre/Influences: Industrial, Rhythmic-Noise, Experimental, Industrial-Techno.

Format: Digital, CD.

Background/Info: André Matthes & Thomas Niedballa are back in business, unleashing the first new opus of their Heimstatt Yipotash project in six years. “Brinkmanship” features thirteen new songs, which have been announced as a mix between different genres.

Content: “Brinkmanship” gives me the feeling of an album on, which the musicians tried to deal with an impressive spectrum of influences and genres. The common thread between all the different influences is the Industrial basis of the work, which remains a solid foundation. It has been mixed with heavy Industrial sound treatments and dynamic D’n’B rhythms while other tracks are featuring Technoid and even Trance passages. I also noticed a track carried by nervous Breakbeats while you’ll also notice some kind of Rap vocals on an Industrial composition. A very last and essential detail of the work is the use of spoken samplings, revealing a truly political perception of our world.

+ + + : If you think that this band has achieved a true cacophony, mixing everything that comes into their mind, you’re definitely wrong. They create a perfect osmosis between all their influences, revealing an intelligent writing, which is excelling at “Fix, Find, Finish” and especially at the genius cut “Recoil”. I think we can speak about ‘power, melody and intelligence’! The samplings are like hiding a message or at least a critical perception of our Western World. Vocal samplings of Kim-Jong-Un and Donald Trump are there to remind us of the madness of leaders and dictators. This album is complex and yet accessible!

– – – : “Brinkmanship” is the kind of production you’ve to listen a few times before you can get an idea about it. It might sound as a mishmash of music genres… or it can be love at first sight!

Conclusion: Heimstatt Yipotash has accomplished an astonishing return. This album is a true masterpiece revealing an ‘industrial free-style’ or simply the sound of modern- and progressive Industrial music!

Best songs: “Recoil”, “Fix, Find, Finish”, “Synthetic DNA”, “Trigger”, “Step Into The Void”, “Progress”, “Brinkmanship”.

Rate: (9).

Artist: www.heimstatt-yipotash.de / www.facebook.com/heimstattyipotash

Label: www.handsproductions.com / www.facebook.com/hands.official

About Heimstatt Yipotash

Heimstatt Yipotash is the duo of André Matthes and Thomas Niedballa, who started making music together in Germany in 2001 and signed to HANDS a few years later. Their album chronology runs from the debut “Storegga Effect” through “Perpetual Beta”, “Urban Night Motifs” and “Mecanismos De Control” to “Brinkmanship”, each built around a unifying narrative theme. Matthes and Niedballa also record together with Mike Erkau (The_Empath) as Trackologists.

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com

Genre/Influences: Industrial-techno, IDM, rhythmic-noise.

Background/Info: Hands label has used to release this annual compilation, which is a look back at the “Forms Of Hands”-festival each year reassembling some of their hottest bands. Fourteen artists who contributed to the festival have been featured at this sampler.

Artists: S.K.E.T., Mono No Aware, Heimstatt Yipotash, Gatto Nero, Supersimmetria, Geistform, Winterkälte, Tomohiko Sagae, ICD-10, Katran, 16Pad Noise Terrorist, Sans-Fin, Yura Yura, Talvekoidik.

Content: Even if Hands remain one of the uncontested leading labels from the industrial music scene, industrial music has seriously evolved. The music style has been progressively, but severely contaminated by techno music, resulting in a harder, darker and underground format of industrial-techno. Most of the featured bands are clearly experimenting with techno while remaining faithful to darker influences. But a few die-hard bands or call them ‘purists’ are still into the familiar industrial format.

+ + + : If you compare early “Forms Of Hands”-compilations with this latest one, you only, but have to agree this is a label in progress. This is the new standard of industrial-music, one that will bring people to dance a frenetic way till reaching a state of trance. From the minimal-like techno format of Supersimmetria to pure techno by Gatto Nero to an experimental format by Mono No Aware to the sound intelligence of Geistform, the techno heads will be ravished. Sans-Fin, Yura Yura and even Tomohiko Sagae bring us a more ‘classical’ industrial style.

– – – : I sometimes ask myself what early Hands fans would think about this industrial (R)evolution! I’m not sure it will please all fans.

Conclusion: This is the kind of sampler simply confirming each year again that the label from Dortmund remains ‘the’ absolute reference in this kind of music!

Best bands: Geistform, Yura Yura, Sans-Fin, Katran, Heimstatt Yipotash, Talvekoidik.

Rate: (8).

Label: www.handsproductions.com / www.facebook.com/hands.official

About Forms Of Hands

“Forms Of Hands” is the annual compilation the Dortmund label Hands ties to its own festival of the same name, gathering acts from its roster each year. Later editions continued the series with “Forms Of Hands 20” (2021), “Forms Of Hands 21” (2022), “Forms Of Hands 22” (2023), “Forms Of Hands 23” (2024) and “Forms Of Hands 24” (2025). This 19th edition features several artists reviewed individually by Side-Line around the same release window: Geistform, Talvekoidik, Supersimmetria, Sans-Fin and ICD-10.

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com

Genre/Influences: IDM, industrial.

Background/Info: Trackologists is a brand-new sound project consisting of Mike Erkau (the_empath) and André Matthes plus Thomas Niedballa (both involved in Heimstatt Yipotash). The band name sounds like it was inspired by the last album of the_empath (cf. “Trackologie”).

Content: “No Surrender, No Retreat” sounds like a determinant title symbolizing a great sound production. The influences are clearly into IDM while there also is an impressive arsenal of industrial sounds that has been used. It injects a hard and unpolished touch to the work. But it also creates a modern IDM interpretation, which is carried by low, broken rhythms. Some passages are even into a surprising sensual format, which is accentuated by intriguing Eastern-like sounds (cf. “Bayt Al-Hikma”).

Another and essential surprising element is the vocals running through this album. You don’t really expect vocals when listening to UIDM and/or industrial, but Trackologists incorporated meaningful vocal parts to the composition. Most of the vocals have been produced like a sampling effect, which totally fits with the modernism of the sound. The lyrics reveal a rather abstract content, which seems like a self-reflection and a critical view upon society and life generally speaking.

The last two tracks reveal remixes by the_empath first and then by Heimstatt Yipotash.

+ + + : Trackologists is much more than simply a project between two bands. This work reveals an impressive sound creation and a sophisticated IDM exposure characterized by raw sound treatments and intelligent industrial sound elements. This is a brilliant electronic composition revealing multiple exceptional songs.

– – – : I don’t see real minus points although the remixes of both bands don’t really add a bonus and are the less convincing cuts.

Conclusion: Trackologists is a successful fusion between two established and recognized names from the German industrial scene. This work is an intelligent exposure of their creative brains.

Best songs: Boötes Vid”, “Suicide With Plastic Gun”, “Modified Newtonian Dynamics”, “No Surrender, No Retreat”, Bayt Al-Hikma”.

Rate: (8½).

Band: www.trackologists.de / www.facebook.com/trackologists

Label: www.handsproductions.com / www.facebook.com/hands.official

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

www.side-line.com