Text and MachinesPotsdam, 06.02.2026
When we (DIET) met this time, we had set ourselves ambitious goals – and failed at most of them. In retrospect, it was really about two things: first, the question of how to connect text and music. And second: building, playing, discussing, and getting desperate over machines.
Since October, we’ve been carrying around the “finished” interviews with us. In Italy, the interviews were actually supposed to be the main focus, but in the end the discussions got stuck on side issues. That was extremely enriching, but it still leaves open the question of what we are actually supposed to do with the interviews. Where is the closing line? Where are the derived theses? And what would be the point if the interviews hadn’t brought about some kind of change in our ways of working and thinking?
We had great plans. From the interviews and discussions, Julian created a fancy word cloud, which was meant to serve as the basis for musical text work. An artist couple was given that word cloud and thought they were supposed to come up with some killer lyrics based on it. That was difficult, and the frustration in the session was basically inevitable. You could also describe it as a permanent crisis.
Instead, a verbal therapy session took place, which mentally overwhelmed everyone completely (see Track 5). In further recordings, the speakers were then allowed to react vocally to their own former vocal recordings (aka reaction audio).
After that, Horst went to bed, and we improvised while Isa was reading poems from a book she had gotten recently (see Track 1). Everything was rather accidental – Isa was apparently looking for a textual basis and had the poems with her because she was actually supposed to paint pictures to visualize them.
The next day, two friends dropped by; we cooked, drank wine, and recorded a session. Here, the guitar imitated the modular synth (Track 4). The guitar sings the text of the modular synth. But when Julian started asking all his questions, everyone got tired and went to bed – except for us. We were disillusioned, but somehow also amused, and completely unprepared we recorded a track in which the text was simply improvised and mumbled live, which, in a funny way, sums up the discussions of the previous days (Track 2).
Track 6 is a recording with Minus, who played a New Year’s Eve gig for us. For this track, he improvised freely with lyrics from his own songs, and unlike the rest of the texts, it is directly political.
In summary, you could say: our wish to bring more text into our music has somehow been fulfilled – but in a completely different way than we had imagined. In the end, there’s probably nothing left for us to do but finally write our own lyrics to the music.
Thanks to everyone who took part. Despite all the ups and downs, it was an exciting round.
#liveset #2026
