Berlin-based artists Alexander Hacke and Danielle De Picciotto make music together as hackedepicciotto and will be releasing their new album, Keepsakes, on July 28th. They usually intentionally allow a particular location to influence them when they are writing and recording an album, tying that music and place into a philosophical concept that they want to explore an comment on, like 2016’s Perseverantia, which was recorded in the Mojave Desert and 2020’s The Current, which had the sea and dilapidated amusement parks of Blackpool as a backdrop. This time around, with Keepsakes, they set themselves an even more experimental task, to create each song around a particular friend who had made a serious impact on their lives. The challenge was even bigger than they expected, since many of the friends they chose were musicians, and they needed to thread in musical elements to suggest sound as well as personality.
For a recording location, they chose a place with lots of music history, an old studio in Naples with its own stock of unusual instruments and a room with an excellent live sound, and got to work. Now, as audiences explore Keepsakes, they can ponder what kinds of personalities prompted Hacke and De Picciotto to bring in their signature layered instrumentation in particular ways. Hacke is one of the founders of Einstürzende Neubauten and De Picciotto (Space Cowboys, Love Parade) is a multi-disciplinary artist with a particular love of antique instruments and sounds, but this collection of songs pushed them into new sonic territory as part of the experiment. I spoke with the duo about the ideas they explored for Keepsakes, and they revealed the inspiring character and true life story behind their new song, “Troubadour”.
Hannah Means-Shannon: I understand that you usually have an overarching idea or theme to your albums, and often that is linked to a particular location, but this time around, you took a more song-by-song approach with a more general idea of storytelling about your friends.
Alexander Hacke: Usually, we are dealing with philosophical questions. This time, we were not concerning ourselves with universal or spiritual themes, but instead did a record where we dedicated each piece to a friends who had an impact on us. Those are people who we have dearly loved. Just as places are entities to us, these people are also entities and they made themselves known to us while we were working on the pieces. It felt like they were in the room with us when we worked on that music.
HMS: Did that cause any interaction with the actual individuals at all? Did you show them the pieces you were working on, if they are still with us? Or was it more of a secret?
AH: Oh, no! [Laughs]
Danielle De Picciotto: It wasn’t supposed to be a collaboration. It was supposed to be our “Thank you” to them. Someone we were trying to describe the impact that their souls or their music have on us. It’s kind of like drawing a portrait of somebody.
AH: Which is very difficult!
HMS: It is very difficult, and often people don’t see themselves the same way that they are seen by others. If you’re making a painting of someone as a gift, you wouldn’t ask for feedback.
DDP: The friendship might go awry!
HMS: It’s also a lot about you, and your expression that needs to be there, since it’s about how they’ve impacted you as well. To talk about the studio side of things, I understand this was quite an hold, historic studio space that you worked in for the record. Do you think that impacted your sound to record in the Auditorium Novecento in Naples?
AH: Yes, certainly. Firstly, it’s a wonderful sounding live recording room with a fantastic atmosphere and sound. That’s very hard to come by these days. The traditional studios don’t exist that much anymore since people record at home. We played a show there in March of last year, and I asked the house engineer to show me their microphone collection. It completely blew me away, since they had 1920s and 1930s microphones. Efficiency is one of our key elements, so we decided not to use their reel-to-reel machine, but it was great!
HMS: There was one song where I felt particularly like it was recorded in an old studio, and it was “Schwarze Milch.” There was a softness to the way the sounds worked together that had an analog feeling. But I’m sure there are elements throughout. I know you’ve always liked older instruments, but this album may have more than usual based on what was in the studio.
DDP: I’ve always played the autoharp and hurdy gurdy and violin. I always look for unusual instruments. I have a Turkish cello and flute. In the studio, they had a grand piano and tubular bells. I love bells. They also had a little celeste, which is like a piano with bells, that had been left by Ennio Morricone when he recorded there. I played that!
The one thing that we had to be really careful about is that since most of these songs are dedicated to musicians who have influenced us, and since this studio influenced us too, we needed to make sure not to lose our signature sound too much. That’s one thing that we always have to be careful about since we like all kinds of music. This time it was especially tricky, to find that balance. Sometimes if we felt like doing something, we had to ask, “But that does that take us away from our sound too much?” It was a weighing process.
AH: One thing about “Schwarze Milch” is that the room had a really great PA system, so even with the electronic sounds, we would run it through the PA into the room, so it had the air of the room and was recorded with vintage microphones.
HMS: Maybe that’s why I thought there was an older feeling to that song! I can see how this was a creative challenge for you. It’s such an interesting prompt, though, almost like a writing prompt, to say, “What about this person? What are they like?” But it must have been an overwhelming set of options to choose from.
DDP: Absolutely. An abstract theme is often there on our albums, but the music is something that we do quite instinctually. This time, we had to work differently. We had to ask, “What does this person do in music? How are there similarities with what we do in music? How can we make sure that anyone who knows their work can find little, secret nods to their work?” But even if the audience didn’t know the person’s work, it still needed to sound like it was ours.
AH: There are three elements: What we want, what the subject matter demands (which here is the person we are dedicating the song to), and then, what the music, as an entity in itself, demands. Usually, we take orders from the entity which is the music. Sometimes I want to do something and the music, as an entity, says, “Nah”.
DDP: And I might also do that, too! I might say, “No!” [Laughs]
AH: Or maybe I want to be a purist, but the music says, “No! I want to go crazy!”
[Laughter]
DDP: But something that was interesting about this project is that it opened new doors for us. The Jazz element that we brought into this album is something that we really want to keep, and the bells. We wanted to see how our music would evolve through this experiment, too. It’s dangerous, in a way, to have a signature sound, and then you just do that. You could go on doing it forever. But this was a way to learn some new things.
HMS: Something that’s cool about the “Schwarze Milch” video is that we can see a lot of the different instruments that go into making a complex, robust song like this one.
DDP: As performers, we usually play a lot of instruments, and people comment on that, but we are just very used to it. I play the hurdy gurdy, put it away, play the autoharp, put it away. I’m drumming, singing, playing the violin. Audiences can see all the different instruments. That helps everyone understand what goes into it. But this video does that, too.
HMS: The physicality of the making of music is something that people can lose in the digital space. The video brings that home.
DDP: We try to play as much as we can when we are live. The more complex our music has gotten, it’s impossible to do it all.
HMS: It’s a cool thing that most audiences won’t know anything about your friends, but after hearing one of these songs they might wonder, “What is that person like? What does the song say about them?”
AH: That’s one of the reasons we haven’t really announced the protagonists’ names at this point.
DDP: They can have that universal feeling.
AH: Then they can do excavation and find out.
HMS: People could potentially give these songs to others and say, “Here, this reminds me of you.” Something that touched me about this project is that it reminds us that people have impacted our lives in massive ways and do have these remarkable personalities that stick with us. It’s an uplifting thing to say how significant even one human being is.
DDP: Absolutely, and that is, really, what it’s about. We underestimate how much someone is there is in our lives. Even if you don’t see them every day, their essence impacts you, and you don’t even realize it sometimes. People are special. We noticed that, particularly, during the pandemic, and lockdown. Sometimes it was a certain kind of laugh or mood that you noticed, somehow, contributed to the fabric of your life. That was on our mind when we were recording.
HMS: One of the songs I particularly liked is “Troubadour” since I love medieval history and literature. I felt like it combined many historical elements but was also delicate and charming.
AH: Should we reveal who the person is for that song?
DDP: A lot of people don’t want to know, but want to keep that open.
HMS: Sure! I’d be happy to know who the song is about. It’s totally up to you.
AH: The person that “Troubadour” is dedicated to is someone who’s portrait is on our wall. This is Dorothy Carter. She used to announce herself by saying, “Oh, I’m just a little old lady from New Orleans and I play that plinkety-plonk music.” She would tour all over Europe with a hurdy gurdy, a dulcimer…
DDP: She had a whole suitcase full of antique instruments. She was originally from Boston but had such an adventurous life. She was in a hippie commune in the 70s in Massachusetts, then ran away to New York with her kids, because her husband was abusive. She opened a gallery in New York. Then she went to Mexico and had an affair with a Catholic anarchist priest until he got excommunicated. Then she went an worked on a boat on the Mississippi until it sank!
AH: She worked on The Mississippi Queen. Her gallery in New York was called, “A Bird Can Fly But A Fly Can’t Bird.”
DDP: Then she came to Berlin because a friend of hers was living here. She started playing with a band called Mediaeval Baebes. She founded them together with Katherine Blake. They sang madrigals together. She was already in her 70s back then. She was so fearless, it was incredible. She influenced me in so many ways, not just through her instruments. She had inherited her instruments from a student of hers who died of AIDS, who specialized in medieval instruments. Then she had all the medieval instruments. She influenced me with that. She’d go off busking to Italy. She was tiny, with this huge suitcase full of instruments. She’d say, “I’m bored!”, and she’d go off to Italy, with only these instruments. She’d come back and go off on a headliner with Mediaeval Baebes.
AH: She was amazing. She could also drink all us Rock dudes under the table.
DDP: She was also really against owning things. She didn’t really own anything aside from the medieval instruments. She owned a couple of shawls, she owned two or three dresses. She had a mushroom that she took with her wherever she lived, a Kombucha mushroom.
HMS: She needs an entire book about her life! This is incredible.
DDP: She does. She went back to New Orleans at one point, and she died there, too, a couple of years later. I think she died about 15 years ago. She left an impact on everybody. She was an influence and impact on both Alex and on me, before we were even a couple. She would sometimes start playing her instruments in some Punk club in Berlin and everything would just go silent. Everyone would just stop and listen to her. She had a voice like it came from another time. We knew she was definitely “number one” for this album.
