Drangsal

In the organizer's words:

Drangsal

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"A phoenix has never risen from any of my bridges that lie in ashes"

"You sing and it becomes": In the wake of a breakdown, Max Gruber killed off solo artist Drangsal and founded the band Drangsal. At the end of the tunnel is the album "A phoenix has never risen from any of my bridges that lie in ashes", which will be released in June 2025.

Max Gruber has been navigating the zigzagging path of Drangsal through the German pop landscape for over ten years now: "Harieschaim" from 2016, "Zores" from 2018 and most recently "Exit Strategy" - which took him to number 6 in the album charts in 2021 - were largely conceived by Gruber single-handedly. And then there was something after his "Exit Strategy": a breakdown. Max Gruber no longer knew whether and, if so, how he wanted to continue making Drangsal, published his literary debut "Doch" with Ullstein-Verlag, founded Die Benjamins, brought Hans-A-Plast frontwoman Annette Benjamin out of retirement together with Charlotte Brandi, Thomas Götz and Julian Knoth and recently reactivated the duo Die Mausis, which he founded with Stella Sommer in 2016.
And yet, from inside and outside, the question of a new Drangsal album keeps coming up. If there was to be another one, Gruber realized, he would have to fundamentally change the way Drangsal songs are created. All the struggle was followed by what was unavoidable: the reset. Max Gruber killed the solo artist Drangsal and founded the three-piece band Drangsal - together with two fellow musicians who broke him out of his habits: Lukas Korn and Marvin Holley. The former is a guitarist and producer, plays in the band Lyschko, most recently produced the album "silber" by Mia Morgan and has played bass in the Drangsal live band since 2020. The latter studied jazz and classical guitar as well as composition in Stuttgart and Vienna, performed on stage with Sam Vance-Law and Fil Bo Riva and arranged for film and theater. Lukas Korn and Marvin Holley have ensured that the central figure in the Drangsal cosmos is split into three.
Making songs in a band constellation burst all fear: Buoyed by euphoria, Gruber, Holley and Korn recorded a number of song sketches from the end of 2022 and thus the substructure of a seventeen-part album. After creative vacations on the Polish border and the Baltic Sea, a fourth Drangsal LP was produced by Max Rieger and co-produced by Lukas Korn. It bears the heavy title "From none of my bridges that lie in ashes has a phoenix ever risen" and will be released in June 2025. Gruber, Holley and Korn have agreed on the credo "as little as possible, as much as necessary" - and thus manifested a radical change in Drangsal's sound cosmos that brings with it completely new dynamics. "From none of my bridges that lie in ashes has a phoenix ever risen" holds out voids, at its center are acoustic guitars instead of synthesizers, which repeatedly walk on the border to blues and jazz. Where on "Exit Strategy" in particular there was over-sugared synth-pop, there is now piano; organ, clavinet and harpsichord; xylophone, violins and cellos; flutes and saxophones played by Ralph Heidel. Inkomplett" meets storm clouds à la "Mein Eid" and the Sophia Blenda feature "Mein Mo(nu)ment". Along rigorous gutting and witch hunts, "Bergab" goes downhill - for you, for me, for Max Gruber anyway. For large parts of the record, he is on the run from himself, the old ghosts, the tiresome waking state: "If only I had never awakened, I would sleep in eternal happiness". Gruber searches and searches: For inner peace, for grace, for unburnt ground, for new versions of himself - and in vain. After all, memories seem to blur with time: Gruber's words - to himself and to the world - sound softer, more forgiving, more summing up in the back of the record. A key moment? The monologue-like sound poem recorded by the actress Rosa Lembeck

"Rosa" - "It's like this: you sing and it becomes."
"From none of my bridges that lie in ashes has a phoenix ever risen"