The Hirsch Effekt: There Are No Rules
Going through the info sheet on the German experimental outfit THE HIRSCH EFFEKT‘s upcoming fifth studio album Kollaps, provided by Long Branch Records, one cannot help but think that due to its thematics and concept this release could not come in a more apt time. But the fact is that the group members finished the recording long before the virus outbreak that has been devastating the world over the past weeks.
Checking in from the isolation somewhere in Berlin, bassist and songwriter Ilja John Lappin explains, “we wrote these songs and themes were quite clear before Corona even existed. We wrote the album last year, so basically this album was mainly dealing with a general theme of economics collapsing. It’s safe to say that most of the album was kind of influenced by the Fridays for Future movement, and by the whole Greta Thunberg thing that came up last year. The whole movement had an impact on us and on the album and formed the main, overall theme of their theses and economic justice and where the world is currently going globally with what is happening.”
The album’s story being inspired by the systematic, economic collapse that future generations may experience has made the trio – comprised of singer and guitarist Nils Wittrock, drummer Moritz Schmidt and Lappin – inhabiting different musical plateaus once again. Coming roughly three years after chart-topping Eskapist, in no way the creative process for Kollaps has been seen as a burden. “We are not a band that is too fond of expectations because, to be honest, we’ve done very different things on different records,” Ilja went on saying and continued, “we will never really produce the same kind of album again, and we don’t just have fear of going into different directions and having a different concept. Eskapist has been our most successful album but that is not bothering us. We would just continue to do the stuff that we like. We don’t care that much about trends, basically we still do what we want. At the end of the day, you either like it or you don’t.”
For Kollaps, THE HIRSCH EFFEKT decided to go a different route than it was the case with 2017’s Eskapist, and that resulted in creating shorter, but concise songs this time around. “I would say that was kind of limitation that was going on in our heads and that led into development in the songwriting process to rethink how we write music,” Lappin admits. “But then again there have also been very short songs on our albums, so we didn’t in that way reinvent ourselves. There are also two songs on the album that are hitting our classical song lengths, being like six and seven minutes long. So yeah I would say not that much actually changed. We explored a few different areas and the album is this time a little bit less melancholic, but has more alarming, aggressive kind of urgency to it. And that’s why the songs are also shorter. That’s at least my perception of the way we did things differently this time.”
THE HIRSCH EFFEKT has always been a band where dynamic and contrasting elements are what builds the vertebrae of their sound. Because of that, it’s natural that heaviness and mellowness are equally presented on Kollaps too.
“Once we’ve written, as an example, four super heavy hitting tracks then we kind of start missing the other side that is also a big part of our music, like more mellow side or more harmonic side. So that’s why I would say it automatically happens that if we’ve written a hard track we start missing the contrast to it, and this process automatically comes in that we find ourselves writing more mellow stuff.”
Although THE HIRSCH EFFEKT are not strangers to conventional songwriting, according to Ilja they are mainly writing in teams of two people, something they realised over the years is the mode that gives the best outcome. As he puts it, “there are no rules, so basically somehow it all just evolves and develops, and then different elements come into the thing, and suddenly we have material that is a full album.”
Since their 2009 debut EP, the band always been a band that is very experimental in its nature, taking on multiple sonic influences and wide variety of contrasting elements ranging from prog rock to hardcore to punk and everything in between. With this continual tendency to evolve and explore different musical frameworks, Kollaps is once again THE HIRSCH EFFEKT at its most different.
Asked to comment if the new album represents a pinnacle of everything they’ve done so far, Lappin in a diplomatic way answers, “I find that question very hard to answer correctly because I don’t like to think of my or our work always being the best. I know that with each album we are creating very different stuff. Of course, Eskapist is a very different album because it’s centred more around dreamy, melancholic vibe or state, and loosing yourself in these long songs. And that’s the total opposite of Kollaps, because the new album is way shorter and there is a different concept to it. So I would just say we wrote different kind of music with our abilities and basically we have been doing the same thing during the couple of albums. It’s really a matter of taste, the matter of perspective. I’m sure if you would ask this question all three band members, everybody would say something different. That’s the lovely thing about music. I would love that our music is perceived exactly this way that there is no better or worse, just let it be another experience in the world we created.”
What are your hopes in terms of what you want to achieve with Kollaps? Where do you think this record in particular will take you?
Ilja: The future is very unsure at the moment. [laughs] I don’t know, and I don’t think any of us know where this could take us in the future. That’s impossible question to answer. But of course I hope that more people, now that we’ve been a few years around, that people will give it a listen and will be more excited to check out our new stuff. We know that with Eskapist, internationally we achieved a different level than we did before with our records, or that there is development happening. I hope that people will like Kollaps and be excited; it will be great if they buy the record and if it will have a positive futuristic outcome in terms of that more people will show up on shows and maybe it will open up a few festivals. But at the end of the day, you can never know. You just have to hope for the best and be happy about every possible development and every next goal you achieve. Keep your feet on the ground. Don’t expect too much in the first place. [laughs] Just be nicely surprised. I think that’s a good way to view things because then we will be less disappointed. Just be realistic about the world today. The competition is high. I know it’s a good record that we did. If it’s perceived as that in a big way, it’s not for me to decide.
As a group with lyrics sang in German, do you think that it is an efficient way to kind of complement the concept and music?
Ilja: In this sense it’s very natural. I think it has a realness to it because our lead singer Nils, he would says the same. He kinda sounds bad in English when he sings. [laughs] That’s why he always said, “German is our mother tongue, so why would I start singing in a different language where I wouldn’t sound as good.” And it was kind of a natural thing. The lyrics come from the natural way you learned your language from when you were a kid, and the way you express yourself. It also sets us apart from other bands in the genre who maybe come from America or England and are already singing in English, but making maybe similar music. So I would say yes – it’s original because of that, and because we have stuck to that. It has the originality and that’s where maybe it makes the band weird, maybe in some countries it’s perceived as a boundary which makes it a little bit harder accessible to understand because it’s not in a generally understood global language like English, but that’s why it sets it all apart.
You have five studio albums and a few EPs under your belt. How do you feel you’ve evolved as musicians and songwriters, and also as a band, across those recordings?
Ilja: Basically I think as a musician you always evolve and you develop. Other music, other musicians, different things in life influence you. I guess influences have changed a little bit throughout the band’s history in terms of songwriting. And that, I’m sure, comes also with the certain musical influence from outside, but also maybe with the influence of natural ageing. When you are in your early 20s you are just writing different music with the different vibe, and I would say we are better players today that we were ten years ago. We are more sure about the thing that we do, we know what are we good at, we know what are we not good at. And that’s why we know how to use our skills and our methods when writing our songs and our music. Having written long songs, short songs, having that different concepts, we at least sort of understand how an album cycle of songs works. What has to be done to make the songs work or stick together, and how they will fit to each other. I would just say it’s more experience. Maybe our focus is a different one nowadays. If that’s better or worse – I don’t know.
With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, touring is currently out of the question. Many bands that are about to release an album embark on tours in order to promote their new release live. How has this whole situation affected THE HIRSCH EFFEKT in that manner?
Ilja: We had to delay our release tour. That was the thing that affected us, of course. It’s not nice because we are releasing this record in May, and nowadays it only makes sense to release a record and go on tour with it, because you will sell in the first week and the charts will be relevant, so there are actually a few things that have turned out as a major fuck up. The thing that Amazon currently is not taking any new music products and these big music companies are not producing anything, so yeah, it has had a negative aspect absolutely. It’s a good thing that we only had to postpone our tour for the autumn, and we hope that it’s happening. What would be a really huge problem is if the development of the virus and the pandemic is so bad that the states and countries would say concerts are not allowed in the autumn and winter. That would be a huge fuck up. It would mean we released an album in May and we are just not able to tour with it. Which of course means we are missing a lot of money and income as nowadays all the money and income for the musicians and everybody is in the touring business, and not in selling records.
Kollaps is out now via Long Branch Records.
Like THE HIRSCH EFFEKT on Facebook.
