That’s how it was with DEINE LAKAIEN

October 16, 2024, Hamburg, Planetarium

If we were a magazine for cooking recipes, we might start like this:

The ingredients we need: A big pot, some eighties electric music, a good portion of synthesizer and piano sounds, a handful of melancholy with appropriate lyrics, a touch of avant-garde, a little drama and the most important ingredients: A very talented opera singer with a strikingly deep and velvety voice, preferably Alexander Veljanov, with a penchant for dark soundscapes.

An experimental musician and multi-instrumentalist with classical training and a lot of creativity. We recommend Ernst Horn.

Preparation: Take the pot, put Alexander Veljanov and Ernst Horn in it and mix them together with the idea of creating something completely new. Let them both unfold with a lot of experimentation and passion for dark, emotional sounds. Now, inspired by the dark wave of the eighties, add powerful synthesizers, a little piano and electronic beats and stir everything until the perfect harmony of sound and melancholy is achieved. Finally, I embellish everything with poetic and very profound lyrics with themes such as love, a lot of longing and even more transience. To keep the whole thing exciting, refine everything with occasional acoustic and avant-garde elements.

To soak up the unique atmosphere and depth of this extraordinary dish, it is best served hot and live!

That would be our recipe for the perfect avant-garde/dark wave band: Deine Lakaien.

Sometimes even the perfect pot needs a lid. And this was found when Tim Florian Horn, head of Berlin’s planetariums, asked Deine Lakaien whether they could imagine giving a concert at Berlin’s Zeiss-Großplanetarium. The answer came surprisingly quickly, but perhaps not so surprisingly. After all, the infinite vastness of the universe, the darkness that prevails there, the light of the stars and the birth of entire galaxies offer the perfect symbiosis for the strikingly deep voice of Alexander Veljanov in combination with Ernst Horn’s fine piano playing.

Tim Florian Horn then contributed the visual effects with a specially designed 360° fulldome projection for three wonderful acoustic concerts that took place in October 2023 in Berlin’s Zeiss-Großplanetarium. The interest in these three concerts was so huge and the response so enthusiastic that the decision was made to continue this success in 2024. In the planetariums in Jena, Bochum, Hamburg and Münster. And once again this year, all planetarium concerts were sold out within a very short space of time. We were there in Hamburg and were able to look forward to a unique concert evening.

First of all: The special thing about a planetarium is that you are lying down rather than sitting and you are looking into a 360 degree hemisphere on which various projections of the universe, planets, landscapes etc. are projected.

In combination with Deine Lakaien, this resulted in a very special concert evening, as each song was given its own visualization, which was projected above the heads of the audience in the dome. These spherical projections, in combination with the melancholy music typical of Deine Lakaien, immersed the audience in a universe of light and color, inspiring the imagination and the associated feelings many times over. You bathe in the depths of the universe, let yourself fall, carried only by Veljanov’s voice and Ernst Horn’s playing on the grand piano. The unique acoustics of the planetarium, designed for clear, direct tones, enhanced the emotional impact of Veljanov’s voice and brought out even the slightest nuances in his singing.

The setlist – played in two blocks of around 60 minutes each – offered a mixture of classics and newer songs. Many of them newly arranged in more minimalistic versions, fitting the special acoustic environment of a planetarium and perfectly suited for a journey through the depths of the universe, darkness and light.

Such a journey into space naturally needs a proper start, which began appropriately enough with “Walk to the Moon”, followed by the first classics “Gone” and “Over and Done” in the first block, taking us into a dream world full of glowing star fields, pulsating suns and huge universes. Always our anchor: the central sound of Veljanov’s deep, distinctive voice and the often restrained accompaniment by Ernst Horn on the grand piano. The first block closed appropriately with “Love Me to the End” and, after so much visual and acoustic beauty, released us into a 30-minute break.

The second block then began and again appropriately for the further musical journey through distant galaxies with a Pink Floyd cover of “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun”. This was followed by pieces from the last albums, but also other classics such as “Return”, “Where You Are” and “Dark Star”. Alexander Veljanov’s deep and almost hypnotically haunting voice was always impressively present, allowing us to glide through a sea of stars, incessantly through familiar soundscapes and unknown cosmic landscapes.

Even the most beautiful things come to an end at some point and came to a magnificent conclusion with the encore “Bei Nacht”, played in almost complete, but fitting, darkness and crowned only by the moon and stars, leaving behind … a dignified silence, a spirit disconnected from reality, which slowly gave way to an enthusiasm that was at first internal, but increasingly pushed outwards. This was no ordinary concert evening, it was more a cosmic panorama of an extraordinary band, in which the audience, always deeply impressed, had the feeling of floating in the middle of the universe. It was an immersive experience and pure beauty for the eyes and ears.

Text & Photos: Thomas Friedel Fuhrmann

Setlist:
“Walk to the Moon” – “Where the Winds Don’t Blow” – “2nd Sun” – “Gone” – “Down Down Down” – “Unknown Friend” – “Because the Night” – “The Game” – “Over and Done” – “Follow Me” – “Love Me to the End” – “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” – “Without Your Words” – “Where You Are” – “Don’t Wake Me Up” – “Sick Cinema” – “Return” – “Eternal Sun” – “Mindmachine” – “Dark Star” — “Bei Nacht”