Their new home is on the outer edges of Berlin, close to nature with fields not far from their garden. They explain, “The album is called LICHTUNG, which means a clearing, a place in which you can suddenly see the light in a dark forest, a place to rest. As the world seems to be spinning ever more quickly into a place of madness, being in this quiet place helps us think about how to deal with it all.”
The neighbourhood is close to where Alexander grew up and, crucially, where age 14, a mere 12 months before he joined Einstürzende Neubauten, he began experimenting with electronics. In a perfect circle, this being the first music he’s released since departing Neubauten, both he and Danielle found themselves experimenting with electronics as well as with their usual composition structure, and language. These eight new songs are characterised by a new, elegiac form, with long, interconnected pieces that suggest a larger composition, and the album’s lyrics, written by Danielle, are entirely in German for the first time.
For Danielle, an American who had already lived in Berlin for several decades, (co-founding the city’s famed Love Parade) before setting off on her world tour with Alexander, this was a deliberate challenge that forced her to engage intensively for the first time with the German language and its historical connotations – a stark contrast to the freedom she had grown accustomed to in writing in English. Danielle explains, “I usually read and write in English, but this time I told myself: you have to make it happen: an entire album in German language and syntax. A suite of songs in the language of my adopted home.”
Alexander expands, “I’ve revisited electronic elements, moments of experimental electronic music, just like back then in my childhood bedroom in Lichtenrade, when I was still Alexander von Borsig. And once it was clear that Danielle would be writing lyrics and singing in German, I subsequently moved beyond many of those Anglo-American conventions that we had worked with in the past quite naturally, almost without ever questioning them.”
A sense of place has always been important to the duo, and their nomadic life is marked by each release: Menetekel was recorded in a medieval church in Krems on the Danube; The Current was recorded in Blackpool, on the northwest coast of England; Keepsakes was recorded at Europe’s first recording studio in Naples. Silver Threshold broke from this pattern, and was instead associated with a historical phase – namely, the pandemic.
Alexander goes on to explain, “Back then, we called it ‘the principle of liminality’ – a phase of transformation in which the everyday order, its values, and symbols are temporarily destabilised, suspended, or turned on their head. Without the journey - the trip around the world, the nomadic life - arriving at the clearing, and thus the new album, would never have been possible.”
Looking back, it becomes clear just how much hackedepicciotto, since their inception as a duo, have dedicated themselves to a larger narrative that is as personal as it is romantic, and at the same time worldly and introspective.
hackedepicciotto have announced a series of German and Portuguese dates for spring. The tour will include a celebration of LICHTUNG at Berlin’s Silent Green on 27 June, with very special guests – details below. In addition, Alexander’s biography, BLAST: Distorted Memories from Einstürzende Neubauten to Symphonic Drone has been translated to Polish and he will be presenting the book at Festival Inne Brzmienie (Different Sounds) in Lubin on 4 July and at Poznan on 27 August.
LICHTUNG is out on 10 July 2026 on limited-edition candy coloured vinyl, CD and digitally.
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