hackedepicciotto’s Alexander Hacke & Danielle de Picciotto Talk New Album ‘Keepsakes’

For over 20 years, hackedepicciotto, the musical project of Alexander Hacke (Einstürzende Neubauten) & Danielle de Picciotto (Love Parade) have forged their own unique musical path, mixing the electronic and the analog for emotive and haunting listening.

And now the duo have returned with Keepsakes (out now via Mute Records), an album they declare as their most personal album. It’s a fascinating listen: immersive, soothing yet ominous, a sonic collage/tone-poem that ranks among their best.

I recently had a chance to discuss the new album with Hacke and de Picciotto, covering its unique conceptual nature, the iconic location where it was recorded, its diverse instrumentation, and much more. So enjoy the Q&A that follows:

You’ve been recording and performing together for 20 years now. How has your creative partnership evolved, and how was the writing and recording process similar/different this time around?

Danielle: Originally we started doing audio /visual projects. I had experienced some bad things collaborating with former bands so I was skeptical about trying again. But after a while it became obvious that my part of the music was missing in our projects. Alex encouraged me to do more and so we started composing music together. It seemed a little daunting at the beginning because I basically come from a classical background and Alex from Neubauten but after a couple of years it suddenly clicked and we found our signature sound recording in the Mojave desert. Since then we have been composing our music which comes together very naturally and magically.

This record was a little different because we dedicated it to the idea of friendship and some of the songs are dedicated to specific friends that are also musicians. Because of this we had to find a way in how to keep our signature sound but add the friends sound as well. It was an interesting experiment and widened our musical sphere in a wonderful way.

Alexander: Generally we start with a subject matter, an issue, a theme that we want to explore. We create sketches, discuss approaches and create a rough outline of what it is going to be. In producing an album there are always two sets of parameters we have to keep in mind though: one, time and budget.

We usually have little time and therefore have to be very effective in the whole process. Ten days of recording and ten days mixing has been the average so far. Secondly, we have to keep in mind that we’ll want to perform those pieces on stage and so we have to plan not only what we can play live and how, but simply just what we can carry, as normally it is just the two of us traveling by train.

An artist’s work is always a personal process, but in your press release you emphasized that aspect is more pronounced on this album than past works. And this album is unique in that each song is dedicated to someone you know. What inspired that concept and did it lead to any interesting experimentation or revelations?

Danielle: During the pandemic we realized that the only thing we missed was our friends. This made us think about friendship and what it truly means. We also lost a lot of friends and realized that even death cannot erase the impact a person has had on you.in spiteWith our songs we wanted to thank certain friends for their friendship , show our gratitude. Whilst composing we realized that dedicating a song to a friend somehow brings him/her even closer. It is a wonderful way of always having them around you.

Alexander: All of these friends are musicians. By invoking their respective characters into our compositions we were faced with the challenge of doing them justice by incorporating elements of their particular style, while staying true to our own unique voice.

The place you recorded the album is fascinating: Auditorium Novecento in Napoli where some of the earliest recordings were created. What led you to choose that space to record and how did that inform the record?

Danielle: Napoli used to be quite a dangerous place. I was there in 1998 for an artist exchange and I swore never to go back because so many violent things happened, so when our booker had us perform there last February 2023 I was very worried.

Imagine my surprise when we entered the beautiful space where we were to play. It looked straight out of a 70’s Visconti movie. We were told that it was not only a concert hall but actually a recording studio.Alexander never forgot this and insisted we ask if we could record there. When they said yes we told MUTE that we had decided to record there in December and the wheels started rolling.

Alexander: The traditional recording studio is about to be extinct. That is a natural development due to the high technological standards of current digital devices, which make the old school facilities obsolete. But places like Abbey Road in London, Sun Studios in Memphis, Tennessee, Hitsville in Detroit, Conny Plank’s Studio near Cologne, or “The Big Hall by the Wall”, Hansa Studio in Berlin all have a measurable spirit about them. They are sacred places, where the ritualistic work of creating music is accomplished on a completely different level due to the sheer magic they inhabit.

Unfortunately most of the studios I mentioned above are mere tourist attractions now, venues for corporate events or just gone. When we stepped into Auditorium Novecento, I realized that we had discovered one of these rare and wonderful locations. Their collection of vintage microphones, outboard gear and this incredible live room in combination with modern digital workstations made it a no-brainer for me to want to record there.

Many songs like Troubadour or Mastodon are almost like sonic collages—the diverse instrumentation really creates unique soundscapes. What made you decide to experiment with so many different instrumentation (tubular and celestial bells, strings, brass, etc) and was it challenging marrying these types of instruments with your signature electronic style?

Danielle: I have always loved bells. We often went to Austria when I was small and rented a small apartment next to a church and I would stand transfixed listening to the chiming bells for hours. My father gave me my first vinyl record which was The Good, The Bad and The Ugly by Morricone. There were a lot of bells on that album as well and again I was transfixed. In the studio in Naples there were tubular bells which are usually quite expensive.I took the opportunity of playing these instruments that I had always dreamed of. To be honest I would like to work even more with bells. I think they are truly magical. Especially the vibrations that they trail

Alexander: As the Auditorium Novecento is also used for a concert venue, they have a proper state of the art P.A. set up in the live recording room. So we had lots of fun running digitally sampled brass instruments and various other electronics through that equipment (at an ear-splitting volume, of course) and re-recording them with vintage microphones in that beautiful room. With this method we could breathe life into otherwise pretty static and antiseptic sounding material.

There is this discourse analogue v. digital. To me it doesn’t matter that much whether something is recorded to tape, or not. The physicality of something shaking up a room by its sheer pressure and the resonance of actual architecture gives me a much higher degree of listening pleasure, than the forming and reforming of metal particles on a plastic tape. But who’s to argue? Maybe the digital Zeros and Ones have a soul as well, we just haven’t discovered it yet.

You also used the celesta of iconic film composer Ennio Morricone. What did it feel like performing an instrument so steeped in history?

Danielle: I could not believe that I was actually touching something so closely related to my hero. Alex had taken me to a Morricone concert shortly before Ennio died and I cried throughout the concert. Being able to play this instrument on an album dedicated to friendship seemed especially meaningful – as if he were reaching out and offering his friendship through this instrument. It touched me very deeply.

Alexander: It’s like in the real world: we don’t need to own these things, we have access to them. Of course I would like to own an instrument, which once belonged to the Master, or one of his disciples, but where would I put it? I would have to work more in order to be able to afford the rent for a room to store and display it. Coming to think of it, that was probably his problem as well. That’s why he left it there.

Speaking of films, I also really like La Femme Sauvage and the combination of spoken French lyrics and English vocals. It has a decidedly cinematic quality. Are you ever inspired by film or think in terms of visuals when creating music?

Danielle: Personally I am always inspired by literature.The song La Femme Sauvage is dedicated to our dear friend Francoise Cactus, the Singer of Stereo Total, who passed away two years ago, and as my first language was french I thought it could be interesting to write french lyrics. It is interesting that you think it has a cinematic quality. We are often asked to compose film soundtracks and we enjoy doing this very much.

Alexander: I love movies and like with music, I associate certain periods of my life with the films I worshiped at that time. Dialogue in a film always has a musical quality to me, it’s like singing. There’s good and bad, complex and minimalistic. The audible elements of a movie are traditionally undervalued. I like to see the world around me as I was looking through the lens of a camera, but I’m mostly a listening person.

Anthem is a particularly interesting track—the spoken word accented by dreamy atmospherics. Am I correct for thinking you included the motif of Blondie’s Rapture towards the end of the song?

Danielle: To be honest I am not firm on Blondie music, I never really listened to it much and I do not know if I know Rapture…

Anthem has two stories. My love to NYC and our dear friend, the experimental musician Michael Evans. I miss both very much. Musically I had been asked to compose music for a documentary on Michael Caine the year before and when I think of the wonderful actor I always think of jazz. So the film score had a lot of jazz elements which surprised me because I had never really listened to jazz before. But it was so much fun that I suggested to Alexander whilst composing “Anthem” to add a jazz beat, thinking of Woody Allen’s Manhattan that is very much part of NY for me.

Alexander: There’s something about New York City. My heart skips a beat when I’m thinking of the place and I feel an unbearable sense of longing whenever it is shown or mentioned somewhere. I have spent a lot of time there, before and with Danielle. Never was a New Yorker proper, but together we would go almost every year for a while and since the early Eighties I’ve had that special connection. Maybe I lived there in a previous incarnation…

Are you thinking about going further in this expanded musical direction for future works?’

Danielle: We will definitely be keeping some of the influences.

Alexander: There’s always development and there’s always change. Hopefully we will evolve in a way that is appreciated by our listeners.

Any plans for any live performances?

Danielle: We will be touring all fall and probably most of 2023 in Europe. We have just done some shows in Canada and are hoping to be able to perform in the US again.

Alexander: Yes!

Thanks so much for taking the time out for this interview, and best of luck with the new album!

Danielle: Thank you!

Alexander: Thank you for having us!

You can order Keepsakes here.