Q: How would you describe your sound? 

Elena: I think it’s a mixture between kraut rock and electronic music, where you can really dance but also with a punky edge. Now, with the new album, it’s more psychedelic electronica.

Joseph: We often describe our main instruments to give a sense of our sound: analog drum machines, analog synths, electric guitar, and vocals.

Q: Is there anything you can’t live without in your live setup?

Elena: Since it’s just the two of us but we have a full band sound, every instrument is essential.

Joseph: We have to carry everything ourselves, which means that we are very particular about it. It’s an electronic live setup, so we need 14 power circuits to make AFAR work. It all weighs around 80 kilograms, which is what we can carry.

Q: It’s been a while since your last release. What’s been going on this hiatus? Did you know the new album was coming?

Elena: I don’t think there was ever a time when we thought, “Oh, now we need a break or something.” It’s just that when you release something, there’s a period where you’re playing live and sharing the work you’ve done. While we were producing the old album, we actually already produced a new song that would be on the new album. We jammed on this song while recording our new album last year. The jam we did became the song itself; we didn’t change anything afterwards. Since then, we envisioned this new album, which would explore a certain mood and a fun side. That mood from this song influenced us even more. We didn’t make decisions like, “Now time has passed; we have to release more content.” It was more like, now we have time, the old material is out, and we’re inspired to create something new. Even with the old album, we already had a vision of where we wanted to go with the next one.

Joseph: Basically, we never stopped creating. The only reason we paused recording was because we were on stage or on tour. For the last album, we recorded in the south of France in the Pyrenees. For the new album, we had a gap in touring, so we had about one month of recording time in Ventland, a region in West Germany that feels very remote. It’s a place we always love and need to escape the city noises and everything that constantly surrounds us. After all the touring, we felt ready to start on the new material.

Foto: Sophia Hegewald

Q: You’re primarily a live act. Does that influence your studio work?

Joseph: When we set up to produce something new, our setup is exactly the same as on stage. This is how we produce music as well. It’s a jam session where we just jam around, and in this process, we create every song. The good thing is that when we think, “Oh yeah, that was a nice song,” we can play it live immediately.

Elena: Of course, we have some additional studio equipment to experiment with. We use microphones that are a bit warmer than normal stage mics. In the studio, we also have the chance to try out overdubs without worrying about how to perform them live. Afterwards, during rehearsal, we figure out how we jammed the song in the studio and how to recreate it. But it’s still very close to how we create songs live, and we can use the fancy heavy preamps that we don’t have on stage.

Q: You’ve worked with Laut & Luise for a long time. What makes that collaboration special?

Joseph: There are some early adopters for sure, and they are friends. It’s the greatest support you can wish for. From a very early stage, we checked in on each other. They believe in us and in us as artists, and so we trust each other. We also like to handle cover design ourselves and create a full package, and with them, we have the trust and freedom to do that. It’s really cool to work with them, and they give so much to enable us to make our art.

Elena: It’s funny that we’ve always been released in the electronic music scene, because we really feel like a band. When we started, the underground electronic music scene gave us a platform. In live music, it’s sometimes harder, you don’t always have the network, but in electronic music, people come together in collectives that release things. Laut & Luise is the same. It’s a platform that truly believes in the artists they work with, and they’re very open. They give you all the freedom you want. For us, it’s always important to work with people we like, where we have the freedom to express ourselves, and no one tells us what will or won’t work. That can kill creativity. With them, it’s just so much fun, and they’ve supported us from a very early stage.

Joseph: Even though our style doesn’t perfectly blend into the label’s catalog, it’s hard to put us in a single genre, we have complete freedom. It’s so important to work with people you can align with and who are sympathetic.

Foto: Sophia Hegewald

Q: What is your musical background and inspirations?

Joseph: For me, it started in this subcultural electronic scene. We organized so many open airs, raves, and techno parties, I come from the techno scene. I was producing back in the day and performing as a techno DJ. That’s my background. But before that, as a child and teenager, I was just listening to Nirvana. That was everything I did.

Elena: And I come from the live music scene, and it’s so interesting how we met. I was making music from a very early stage, experimenting with guitar, tapes, overdubs, and finding new sounds. I played guitar and sang, and then I found my place in jam sessions. I went to every jam session in Berlin at night and became part of a collective that embraced all kinds of genres. I loved it. Blues, rap, electronic, you name it. I loved music, where anything could happen, without strict genre boundaries. That’s when I realized I’d found a home. I was in a few bands before that, which was more soul, experimental, and psychedelic. I was a singer-songwriter. Then, with the techno scene, I found a sense of freedom, especially as a woman. I could dance and express myself without limits. Joseph and I met at a jam session at a friend’s place, which was also very open-minded and genre-free. This freedom from categorization has always inspired me because I’ve listened to so many kinds of music my whole life. I never wanted to stick to one style. I just make music and improvise whatever comes out. When we met, he had all this electronic knowledge I hadn’t encountered yet, and we were so curious about each other. I think it matched perfectly, because we both loved Nirvana-style rock and kraut rock, but also the Fever Ray electronic sound and Radiohead.

Joseph: Sometimes, when we’re in the studio, we like to listen to really hard breakbeat techno.

Elena: We also enjoy experimental ambient music. It’s all about being open and making music freely, mixing all these influences together. That’s how we found each other: two people open to just jamming and seeing what happens. We never talk about genres or what we “want to do.” That’s the most important thing for me when I make music.

Q: How improvised are your live shows?

Joseph: It’s a bit different each time, because we make mistakes each time, different mistakes, and we have to work them out. But working around these happy accidents is always the magic that holds everything together. It’s what glues the song structures, and I really like it when we get out of the box. Sometimes, for certain songs, or for transitions and endings, we keep some jammy parts where things just happen in the moment. That’s actually the most special part.

Elena: Yeah, we never really talk about the in-between parts in particular. I mean, we want to make it work, but we don’t really know what will happen because it’s live. You never really know with live music. In some songs, of course, we know the structure and it stays kind of similar each time, but the voice is always different. Sometimes I tell the story a little differently, depending on how I feel, and then the synths come in, and maybe I feel like, “oh, now he’s really into it, this part needs more time”, and so it will last longer. Nothing is pre-recorded, there’s no laptop on stage, so everything just grows out of the moment.

Q: The theme of Detect Classic Festival 2025 is ‘the meaning of live,’ and the spirit of the festival is genre-fluidity. Is there anything you expect from your Detect performance that will make it stand out from the other shows on your tour?

Elena:
Yes! Sometimes (not often anymore, but sometimes) you play somewhere and you wonder: if we play this song, will they appreciate it or be completely shocked? You think about it, and then you remind yourself: I shouldn’t care, and I don’t care, because I do what I do. But here, that’s what it’s about. It’s about genre fluidity, about bringing things together. I don’t need to think about what will happen, it just is what it is. And you don’t need to worry so much about what the audience thinks, because the audience here is open-minded. That gives a real sense of freedom. They don’t arrive with strict genre expectations, because they know that here, with so many different styles already, they’ll just see what happens.