The two new albums, ‘Confessions & Doubts’ and ‘TanzZwang’, will be released on the 28th of September 2018 at RCA Deutschland / Sony Music Germany. PETER HEPPNER is back! He is undoubtedly one of Germany’s most charismatic voices and one of the pioneers of the New Wave genre. Heppner is bursting with creativity and this huge output is reflected in two independent albums that will be released parallel on September 28th: the pop album ‘Confessions & Doubts’ and the dance album ‘TanzZwang’. The first single, ‘Was bleibt’, was released on the occasion of the pre-order launch on August 10. Just 20 years after the duet, ‘Die Flut’, with Joachim Witt, he is back on board. The two presented the song exclusively live at the M’era Luna Festival 2018.Two new albums by PETER HEPPNER inevitably raise the question of whether the man with the characteristic voice and the thoughtful songwriter handwriting has become megalomaniac. You do not make it today: let go of a lot of music on the eternally rushed humanity! Usually... But the Hamburg-based artist has always made a wide creative circle about the standard, which has drawn far-reaching interest in his music. The answer to the question is accordingly a clear no. With his new pop album, ‘Confessions & Doubts’, and the new dance album, ‘TanzZwang’, Heppner does not indulge in an exaggerated urge to craving for recognition. Rather, in the six years since his last solo album a potent song-material-cornucopia is accumulated, which shows Heppner in its diverse essence. Accordingly, it is a good luck that the man who does not like to be fixed in his creative expression, this essence with his two new albums so consistently revealed as never before.
At the beginning of ‘Confessions & Doubts’ and ‘TanzZwang’ stood two dozen songs that Heppner had mostly written with Dirk Riegner. One half showed in the romantic-melancholic direction of pop. The other half kept the bodies of the two authors dancing. Whenever Heppner felt that a song should be danceable, he called Riegner the term “TanzZwang!” “This should force us both, who really are not dancers, to dance,” he laughs. The highlights of the album are not just the pulses, which can sometimes even be located in Hip-Hop. The actual production also underlines the exceptional status of ‘TanzZwang’ in Heppner’s career. Each of the ten songs is placed confidently in the hands of another producer; the only requirement given by Heppner was to design the piece according to the record title. The result is a kind of extremely exciting dance sampler that serves as a thread between the ideas of the producers (including APOPTYGMA BERZERK, PIXTOM, SCHILLER), Heppner’s songwriting and his voice.
‘Confessions & Doubts’ is a classic Heppner: romantic in the melody lines, deep in the beats and cathartic in the vocals. Heppner designed the album’s today sound together with Alex Lys, whose sound director’s sensibilities he enthuses about. In the form of intermediate tones that clearly make up the tonal appeal of the record, ubiquitous in the album’s 10 songs, whose roots in electronic music keeps ringing: KRAFTWERK, JEAN-MICHEL JARRe, Moog and Prophet Synths, all the great signet sounds of the 70s, carries new DNA in Lys / Heppner sound art. The record’s attitude pays homage to London’s scene of the early 80s, which could have been raised “off Portobello Road”. Or under the aegis of 4AD and the many other seminal indie labels of the time that spawned today’s British Pop national shrines such as THE CURE and NEW ORDER. It is the democratic view of music production equipment that makes ‘Confessions & Doubts’, sounding contemporary, draw a line between Early 80's and 2018. At that time, as in today’s music, it did not take expensive technical gadgets, but ideas and visions to find real musical alternatives for the eternity and wide-ranging artistic coordinates.
The single ‘Was bleibt?’ can be ordered here: https://PeterHeppner.lnk.to/WasBleibt
For people who are 25 years old today, there has never been a time without PETER HEPPNER. Always on the move, never stepping on the spot, the 50-year-old has not set a dusty mark on more than three decades as a multifaceted music-producing force… maybe because he remained a curious man. If you ask ten people who PETER HEPPNER is, you also reap ten different answers: singer, producer, composer, radio play speaker, painter, the voice of some hits of the electronic project SCHILLER, much played duo half of WOLFSHEIM and WITT / HEPPNER. If you ask him directly about who he is in terms of his self-image, you get a laugh: “I tried very hard not to commit myself as an artist,” he says. “I did not even commit myself to a language, in spite of all odds, sing in English and German, which I’m a bit proud of. If you make honest and authentic works of art, they always say something about the artist. They’re like confessions. You can learn a lot about me and my character, if you deal with my music. Doubt is also a central to making art, and I find that the album title ‘Confessions & Doubts’ describes me well as an artist at this point in the snapshot”.
That Pop music is not only recorded for people whose hormones play circus, PETER HEPPNER has long been a concern. He would not even have touched ‘Die Flut’, ‘Wir sind Wir’ or ‘Kein zurück’ if, as a songwriter, he could not gain the consciousness of writing outside the slipshod-lyrics-factory. “I’m not afraid of difficult topics, I’m not afraid of adult titles”, he emphasize, pointing to ‘Was bleibt’, the first single release of ‘Confessions & Doubts’. Similar to the hit ‘Die Flut’, Heppner and Witt also take in the new duo recording ‘Was bleibt’, in the singing mutual characters. Transience is the topic here. Many things are in an appealing contrast by Heppner 2018. Not only the “normal” LP ‘Confessions & Doubts’, but also the dance record ‘TanzZwang’ itself. The dark side of the great power is marked ‘Unloveable’, while the music offers something hopeful to the minor notes. The self-lore in ‘Gib mir doch ‘n Grund’ may actually find a reason in the chorus, flirting with reggae, to be able to permanently put the miner’s lamp out of service.
‘Nebel’ from the Dance record remove the darkness of a musical version of a Herman Hesse text with warm sounds. The breath-taking ‘Theresienstadt hinter der Mauer’ was inspired by the music drama ‘Die Kinder der toten Stadt’, for which Heppner took the patronage - knowing that the eyewitnesses of the madness would die off more and more. ‘...und ich tanz’ is the self-empowered hymn of a person who opposes a feeling to the functionality of the present. Heppner has separated the songs of both records “according to feeling,” as he tells, as well as you should grab to ‘Confessions & Doubts’ or ‘Tanzzwang’, after feeling good. Great that PETER HEPPNER did not compile a double album out of the wealth of material. Although the two separate albums originate from the same house, they work well as counterpoints to one another, like everything in life, in art, in love, in ‘Confessions & Doubts’ and ‘TanzZwang’.
Both albums can be pre-ordered here
PETER HEPPNER Live
15.11.2018, Hamburg (Markthalle)
16.11.2018, Rostock (Mau Club)
17.11.2018, Berlin (Huxley’s Neue Welt)
29.11.2018, Hanover (Musikzentrum)
30.11.2018, Leipzig (Haus Leipzig)
01.12.2018, Glauchau (Alte Spinnerei)
08.12.2018, Magdeburg (Factory)
09.12.2018, Nuremberg (Hirsch)
11.12.2018, Stuttgart (Im Wizemann)
12.12.2018, Zurich (X-tra)
14.12.2018, Oberhausen (Kulttempel)
15.12.2018, Langen (Stadthalle)
16.12.2018, Cologne (Live Music Hall)
Configuration und Track listing
HEEPER feat. Joachim Witt – ‘Was bleibt’
Release: 10 August 2018
Label: RCA Deutschland / Sony Music Germany
Configuration: digital
HEPPNER – ‘Confessions & Doubts’
Release: 28 September 2018
Label: RCA Deutschland / Sony Music Germany
Configuration: CD, LP, digital
01. Unloveable
02. Was bleibt? feat. Joachim Witt
03. Nothing Ends
04. Viele schöne Stunden
05. Good Things Break
06. Gib mir doch'n Grund
07. You Don't Love Me feat. Kim Sanders
08. Herz (Metropolis)
09. Chance
10. Theresienstadt: Hinter der Mauer
HEPPNER – ‘TanzZwang’
Release: 28 September 2018
Label: RCA Deutschland / Sony Music Germany
Configuration: CD, LP, digital
01. ...und ich tanz’ (Latches Mix)
02. ...und ich tanz’ (Pascal Reinhardt Remix)
03. All Is Shadow (Apoptygma Berzerk Remix)
04. Best Things in Life (Salt & Waves Mix)
05. Fremd in diesem Land feat. Volkan (VItaliZE Remix)
06. Hermann Hesse: Im Nebel (Dirk Riegner Mix)
07. I Will Hurt You (Temple. Mix)
08. Just One Word (PixTom Mix)
09. Once Again (Schiller Remix)
10. Sedate Yourself (Yann Lauren Remix)
11. Standing Tall (Sand & Pfeffer Mix)
HEPPNER – ‘Confessions & Doubts’ Limited Box
Release: 28 September 2018
Label: RCA Deutschland / Sony Music Germany
Configuration: CD, LP, digital
Content: ‘Confessions & Doubts’ Album, ‘TanzZwang’ Album, plus Bonus Audio Content
Source: Press Release / Photo Credit: Mathias Bothor
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