Berlin Underground Pioneers hackedepicciotto Share Their Musical Evolution Since 2001

Transmission 124: Interview with hackedepicciotto

German experimental duo hackedepicciotto talks about Berlin’s underground scene, unusual instruments, and their upcoming live album recorded in Naples.

hackedepicciotto is a German experimental music duo consisting of Alexander Hacke and Danielle de Picciotto. The band started in 2001 as a multimedia performance project and later developed into a musical collaboration combining industrial, electronic, and classical elements with unconventional instruments. Alexander Hacke, born in 1965, is a German musician and producer known for his work with Einstürzende Neubauten since 1980. Danielle de Picciotto is an American-born artist, musician, and filmmaker who co-founded the Berlin Love Parade in 1989.

The duo began creating multimedia performances in 2001 and released their first album as hackedepicciotto, “Perseverantia,” in 2016. Their music, which they call “Symphonic Drone,” uses unusual instruments including the hurdy-gurdy, Turkish kemençe, and autoharp. Their discography includes “Menetekel” (2017), “The Current” (2020), “The Silver Threshold” (2021), and “Keepsakes” (2023). In 2024, the band will release ‘The Best of hackedepicciotto (Live in Napoli)’ through Mute on November 1, recorded at Auditorium Novecento.

Featured image: Hackedepicciotto credit Mara von Kummer
hackedepicciotto‘s official site, Youtube, Bandcamp, Instagram

Can you take us back to the early days—what first drew each of you to the world of music and performance art?

Danielle de Picciotto: I’ve been doing music since I was a little girl. I learned piano at six and violin at ten, but that was classical music. I never considered doing music until discovering electronic music in 1987 in Berlin when it started appearing. I was fascinated by how music was being deconstructed.

I started doing music with Gudrun Gut on her first album, Ocean Club. I created the first Love Parade with Dr. Motte to celebrate this new music style and era, which coincided with the fall of the wall. It was a completely new world that inspired me.

Alexander Hacke:  At 15, I would skip school to hang out at record stores, mainly the Senzor. That’s where I learned about fascinating new music in 1980 like Throbbing Gristle, The Plastic People of the Universe, the Nihilist Spasm Band, Suicide.

Learning about this music was a catharsis for me. My life changed because it went further than what I loved before—the Ramones and American punk rock. I’ve always been in love with music.

I joined Einstürzende Neubauten in 1980. I would release my own music, record it on cassette tape and publish it. That was 44 years ago.

Danielle, how did your experience co-founding the Love Parade influence your later work in both music and multimedia projects?

Danielle de Picciotto: The Love Parade influenced me because we did it with no money—it was all enthusiasm. When it grew to 1.5 million people, we realized you can do things without money. If it touches the nerves of a certain time and the feelings of many people, it can be successful. That gave me hope as an underground musician because I’ve never been into the mainstream. You don’t need millions of dollars to create an album. You can do something good with little money that still touches people.

What initially started your interest in combining unconventional objects with music, something Einstürzende Neubauten became famous for?

Alexander Hacke: Boredom. Also, lack of money. Trying to take things further and more extreme than rock music was at the time. Even punk rock wasn’t that revolutionary in its musical structure. Also, the spirit of pioneering, researching, and keeping ourselves entertained.

What was the atmosphere like in Berlin during the late ’80s, and how did that environment fuel your creativity?

Danielle de Picciotto: I came from New York in ’87 and was mesmerized by Berlin. New York was dangerous and expensive. Berlin was safe because it was encircled by a wall and extremely cheap. It had just as much creativity as New York.

I thought I was in heaven. I got a huge apartment, 600 square feet for 30 marks—about 15 euros. I decided to stay forever. I immediately met all kinds of artists and musicians. I got to know Neubauten, Nick Cave, and Crime in the City Solution. All the musicians and artists in that area. It was heaven.

Alexander Hacke: The good thing about West Berlin’s status was that it was a close-knit, tiny scene. Everyone knew everyone. There was great solidarity between people in the underground music scene. There was no division between art forms. Filmmakers were also musicians. Writers were also actors. Everything was mixed up with a great sense of solidarity.

Danielle de Picciotto: Everybody was interdisciplinary.

Alexander Hacke: The magic word here is solidarity. Everyone would help everyone out. It was no problem to borrow a guitar amplifier. With the fall of the wall, that all disappeared. Now we have competition—it’s very different.

When you both started collaborating in 2001, what was your vision for the kind of music you wanted to make together?

Danielle de Picciotto: Originally we were doing multimedia interdisciplinary performances where I did visuals and Alexander did music because we wanted to combine art, music, and literature. We did many projects based on books, mainly shown in cultural spaces and theaters.

Only after some time did I start doing music together with Alex. It was a work in progress. We didn’t know how it would fit together because I come from classical electronic music, Alex comes from experimental Neubauten music. We experimented for many years to see how it would work.

The Best of hackedepicciotto (Live in Napoli)” spans over two decades of collaboration. What does this album represent for you personally and artistically?

What we’ve developed with hackedepicciotto since releasing “Perseverantia” in 2016 is about the interaction between two people and the high sense of concentration—this language communication we’ve developed. What we do in studio production is one thing, building arrangements. But when we’re on stage playing music, that interaction between us is apparent.

That cycle with the people in the room, which is almost ritualistic—everyone experiencing that high concentration and intensity—you can only feel during live shows. It’s interesting how the material has changed since we recorded it.

The music has changed significantly. For the album, we chose songs that changed the most and worked best live, ones the audience really liked. We thought if these songs feel good for us and the audience and they’ve changed, it’s interesting to release an album of those pieces.

The live album includes pieces from various records, including “Keepsakes” and “The Silver Threshold.” What you see is what you get. It’s just the two of us, and everything we do is live. We work with minimal backup.

We’re both multitasking. Danielle sometimes changes instruments four times in one song. I play bass, do percussion, and start electronic sequences. It’s the two of us being very busy.

You both explore a wide range of instruments and sounds. How do you decide what new element to incorporate into a piece or a performance?

I love strange sounds. I’m not interested in pop music or pre-recorded sounds. I like rough, live sounds. That’s why I’m interested in unusual instruments and unusual electronic sounds. That’s how I choose my instruments.

I chose the kemençe, a little Turkish cello with a rough sound. I have a Turkish flute that sounds like a dying duck, the hurdy-gurdy that sounds like the voice of God, and the autoharp, which is like a lyre. My violin is the only conventional instrument, but I can make melodies that sound strange. I always try to add a strange element.

They call me the Ariana Grande of industrial music because I’m so young and pretty.

Danielle de Picciotto: Yes, and you play percussion and bass.

Alexander Hacke: I might be perceived as a rocker, but I’m also a nerd. I like tweaking electronic sounds, writing patches. Electronic sound design is something I’m good at, so I work in this field aside from hackedepicciotto.

Danielle de Picciotto: He’s a total nerd. He likes reading manuals in bed. We’re actually complete opposites. Alex likes doing things really loud, I like things very quiet. He likes percussion, I like melody. At first, it was difficult—how would we fit these things together? But it worked. Everyone has their area, and it comes together magically.

Alexander Hacke: She cooks, I do the dishes.

Danielle de Picciotto: Exactly.

Has traveling and playing in different countries influenced how you approach your live shows or compositions?

Alexander Hacke: It’s just the two of us. We travel mostly by train to maintain a small carbon footprint. We prefer trains to cars because of crazy drivers. Flying isn’t fun anymore. I love the actual experience of flying, but everything else connected to it, I hate. So we mostly travel by train, even though German trains are extremely late.

Danielle de Picciotto: We carry 100 kilos with us.

Alexander Hacke: We’ve learned to organize our infrastructure and be as effective as possible with our equipment. Traveling to these places has influenced our output—we can’t bring a brass section, string section, backup singers, or percussionists. It’s like guerrilla warfare. We have our ammunition cases, we open them, go bang bang bang, pack up, and move to the next front.

Danielle de Picciotto: It influences the music too. For our next album, we’re considering going more electronic so we might keep one instrument at home instead of carrying seven. We’re not very practical, but we’re thinking about it.

Alexander Hacke: Getting better though.

What direction do you see your music taking in the next few years? Are there any new ideas or concepts you are currently developing?

Danielle de Picciotto: As mentioned, we’re thinking about making it lighter to carry, so we’re considering going more electronic. We’re also thinking about including more visuals for live shows because we’ve only done music for a long time. We completely stopped being interdisciplinary, but we’re thinking of doing something more interdisciplinary again with visuals and maybe including a couple of people to make it more interactive, just for fun, because it’s a different world. We want to take time to think about that. We’re not saying too much, but that’s the direction we’re considering.

Photos courtesy of hackedepicciotto

Matteo Damiani

Matteo Damiani is an Italian photographer and author. Curator of the sites Retrofuturista.com; weirditaly.com; china-underground.com and others