Q&A by Artists

Ben Osborn:  Your music can reach some dark and melancholic emotions but your performances have a playful quality, and show a sense of humour and fun. What emotions do you feel you are putting into the music when you perform, and do you feel the same as the emotions the audience experiences?

Thank you very much for this finely observed assessment of our music. We indeed strive for exactly this intelligent balance between seriousness and self-irony. And we think our audience also understands this juxtaposition. For us, a good film is one that makes us laugh and cry at the same time. It’s the same with our music.

You play classical instruments but also a collection of unusual synths from another time, almost like you were curating a museum of sound. Is it important to you to preserve these sounds, or is it just about what sounds good?

Yeah, we’re a bit “nerdy” like that. But just as Sebastian’s Klingenthal cello is a bit like Frankenstein’s monster, composed of different wood from past centuries and tells its story with every note, our synthesisers do that too. We’re now starting to go a little easier on the very old ones and only have them occasionally in concerts. But we’ll probably still be able to record a few albums with these electronic primeval monsters. Still, the choice of devices, cables, tools, and instruments has for us either a historic or personal background. In our concerts we always like to talk about them and it makes us happy to see the smiling, sometimes thoughtful eyes – and, of course, ears.