STYLE...... Synthpop LABEL...... Town And Towers Records
QUALITY..... 320kbps / FLAC
COUNTRY... Germany
Music that demands attention is everywhere. HELDAUTOMAT is different. HELDAUTOMAT do not make things easy. No quick resolutions, no obvious messages, no hooks that immediately tell you how to feel. Instead: analogue synthesizers, a restrained piano, a stoically working drum machine and that voice, which does not ask whether you are ready, but simply exists.
ZWISCHEN DEN LICHTERN (Between the lights) moves exactly where its title suggests: between states, between emotions, between light and darkness. And sometimes also between hope and the quiet suspicion that none of it may make much difference at all.
Sonically, ZWISCHEN DEN LICHTERN is remarkably timeless almost defiant. No one here was trying to emulate influences or write a hit. Quite the opposite. The result is not a retro exercise, but rather a kind of memory of something that may never have fully happened.
For all its weight, something else occasionally surfaces something you might almost miss: humour. Very dry. Very well hidden. For example, in the booklet itself, where listeners are advised not to explore the duo s other band PURWIEN & KOWA, as they only make music for retro nerds with impaired hearing. This is no accident. It is a quiet indication that HELDAUTOMAT are fully aware of their own seriousness and are not entirely unwilling to undercut it.
The same principle applies musically: melodies that almost feel accessible, only to slip away again. Song structures that take their time, as if anyone still had any.
ZWISCHEN DEN LICHTERN is not an album for the background. It is an album for people willing to steal an hour from themselves not just for the music, but for what it might stir.
These songs do not function as answers. They function more like questions you have been carrying around for a long time, without ever quite being able to phrase them. In the end, what remains is an album that refuses to settle. Is it sad? Yes. Is it beautiful? Also. Is it hopeless? Perhaps. Is it honest? Almost certainly.
Tracklist:
1. Liebe ist endlich (5:48) 2. Am ersten Tag (5:04) 3. Anders Sein (3:46) 4. Page Of My Diary (3:26) 5. Und jetzt (3:00) 6. It Always Rains in Berlin (5:01) 7. Ungesagt (4:36) 8. The Grass Is Greener (3:45) 9. Hurt (3:38) 10. Manchmal (3:31)
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