When YEDM initially interviewed German darkwave powerhouse and multimedia artist Anne Wichmann mid-pandemic, we coated a bunch of matters, from the COVID lockdown to her movies to her usually “tough” psyche, however the truth that she had additionally made music together with her brother, guitarist Volker Wichmann, within the early 00s. The partnership presumably ended when Anne moved to Brooklyn from their native Hamburg, Germany. Now, virtually 20 years later, the duo have reunited (though they nonetheless dwell on completely different continents) to create SuperWAV, a stripped down rock venture that simply launched its second EP, aTypical.
Given Anne’s largely darkwave and electro background and the truth that the siblings doubtless had to make use of a number of digital tech to create the music collectively resulting from their bodily distance, SuperWAV is surprisingly sparse in the case of digital musical components. They’re current, however the pair has been decidedly targeted on brass tacks with each their debut EP, Parts, and the just-dropped aTypical. In accordance with Anne:
We needed the songs to be easy, direct and in your face. Principally: Let’s take out every thing that the track doesn’t want. Scale back it to pure guts! The theme of (persona) archetypes is a fancy one, and its exploration is including a considerate layer to the music.
Regardless of the stripped-down, naked bones rock really feel to aTypical, it’s additionally definitely true that it’s a really nuanced EP. One might count on nothing much less from Anne Wichmann and her blood kin. Every observe is called after one of many 5 persona archetypes; each the lyrics and music are supposed to be an interpretation of every one. “The Lover,” for instance, is tough and passionate and explores the previous adage, “love is blind” within the lyrics, whereas “The Harmless” is stuffed with ambient echo and the lyrics focus on the inevitable destruction of innocence.
Dubbed “stoner rock” by the band themselves, followers of Anne’s former initiatives will battle to seek out the connection to her previous darkwave work however it’s there in delicate methods. Whereas they needed to maintain the music on the punk fringe of submit punk or the minimal fringe of grunge, there are nonetheless components of drone and darkwave within the background manufacturing and tone of the album, respectively. SuperWAV’s first EP, 2018’s Parts had extra apparent connections to electronica, however the backing manufacturing, association and engineering of aTypical relied on that darkwave information from previous initiatives, in line with Volker.
It’s a lot enjoyable to work collectively once more, and thrilling to seek out new methods of collaborating throughout such an extended distance. For ATYPICAL it seems like we picked up the place RAWJAW (the Wichmanns’ earlier band within the early 00s) ended – but discovering our personal sound of at this time in each tune.
It doesn’t matter what you name this new Wichmann venture, followers will doubtless see the sister-brother duo going forwards and backwards over the traces of analog and digital in some ways because the proceed to develop the venture. It appears to be a focal point for each of them. Within the meantime, SuperWAV are constructing an excellent wave of a discography and followers ought to count on the surprising from this dynamic musical duo.
aTypical is out now and may be streamed on Spotify.
