Vlimmer releases new album ‘Kiemenatmung’
Berlin darkgaze project Vlimmer released the twelve-track album ‘Kiemenatmung’ on Blackjack Illuminist Records on 13 November 2026, its sixth full-length.
Berlin-based darkgaze project Vlimmer released its sixth full-length album, “Kiemenatmung”, on 13 November 2026 via Blackjack Illuminist Records. The twelve-track album is the work of Berlin musician Alexander Leonard Donat, who also runs the label.
The title translates as “gill breathing”, the way fish extract oxygen from water, used on the album as a metaphor for rising deadlines, shifting relationships and mounting anxiety. Donat describes the record as resilience shown through endurance, not triumph, with water imagery of diving under, resurfacing and swimming against invisible currents running through all twelve songs.
Musically, “Kiemenatmung” continues Vlimmer’s blend of post-punk and darkwave, folding in shoegaze guitar textures. According to the label, tracks including “Atemdauer”, “Lockenkopf” and “Besitzergreifung” lean toward techno, while “Augendrang” and “Wasserstand” move into melancholic wave-pop. The album closes with “Lavalunge”, in which the record’s water imagery gives way to fire.
“Kiemenatmung” is available as a name-your-price digital album on Bandcamp.
About Vlimmer
Alexander Leonard Donat founded Blackjack Illuminist Records in Berlin and has released Vlimmer’s music through it ever since, across singles, EPs and now six full-length albums under a self-described “darkgaze” label spanning post-punk and darkwave, with shoegaze and industrial textures layered in.
Side-Line has tracked Vlimmer’s output across several releases, including the 2021 Nirvana cover compilation “Nevermind Reworks”, the 2022 two-track single “Noposition/1979”, the 2023 album “Zerschöpfung”, and, most recently, “Augendrang”, released in October 2026 as the final single ahead of “Kiemenatmung”.
With “Kiemenatmung” now out in full, that single’s b-side cover of The Bangles’ “Eternal Flame” and the “Augendrang” single both take their place within the complete twelve-track album.
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