Witte Write About the Moment You Only Recognize Afterwards
Punk Head: You started Witte in your grandfather's former electrical store. When did that building stop being a place you worked in and start becoming part of the band's identity?
Witte: At first, we made music there with other musicians, mostly as hobby projects. We would meet up, jam, play darts and just have a good time. Over time, something started growing between Marvin and me when we met there just the two of us. It felt different, almost as if the walls had breathed us in. What once was just our rehearsal room eventually became part of who we are.
Punk Head: The songs on Ich war nur kurz draußen explore moments that only acquire meaning after they've happened. Why are you drawn to that gap between experiencing something and understanding what it meant?
Witte: There is actually a philosophical approach to it, with a bit of anthropology in there too. Marvin is training to become a very progressive and people oriented Protestant pastor, and Kilian likes to read, especially books about philosophy. Even though we make the most of the little time we have, we regularly end up sitting in the living room of the August Witte Haus, having respectful discussions about all kinds of things. While making the record, we spent a lot of time thinking about when things actually break, not the process itself but the exact moment. If you could watch a situation like a film and watch that film four or five times, when would be the “so this is the moment it happens” moment? And why do we never recognize that moment while we are actually in it but only afterwards? We call it the tragedy of life, and that idea finds its way into our music too.
Punk Head: Silence and restraint seem important to your artistic identity. What does leaving something out allow you to express that a fuller, more explicit arrangement wouldn't?
Witte: The gaps leave room for the listener. We basically make our songs for ourselves. What is being said in them is us. The gaps are for the people listening. That way, they can make the song their own without us putting them in a corset. That is how we see music in general: it belongs to the artist in the lines, and to the listener between the lines.
Punk Head: Vögel and Glas und Steine occupy quite different emotional spaces. How do these songs relate to each other in your minds, and what do they reveal about the directions Witte could take?
Witte: “Vögel” is more of an inner vision, while “Glas und Steine” deals more with the relationship between two people. The two songs don’t exclude each other at all. The story of “Vögel” could happen on the night before “Glas und Steine” or the other way around. If you listen to “Vögel” first and then “Glas und Steine”, it could create a sense of hope. In “Vögel”, the protagonist is at rock bottom, while in “Glas und Steine” someone who seemed long forgotten suddenly reaches out and gives him hope. Or maybe that person reaches out first and then the protagonist ends up at rock bottom. The order in which people listen to our music is similar to the gaps I talked about in the previous question. It leaves room for everyone to create their own version of Witte.
Punk Head: Your music often seems to occupy a space between past and present, darkness and hope, intimacy and distance. Do you see those tensions as the subject of Witte's music, or are they simply the way you experience the world?
Witte: Everyone experiences all of these things. Nobody sits in the sun all the time and nobody sits in the dark all the time. We don’t plan to cover all these different sides of life, we just write about whatever is occupying us at the moment. That sentence sounds pretty worn out, but I think that is mainly because it is also used for pop songs written by 25 people in a room. We are two people, we write everything ourselves and when one of us has something on his mind, the other usually takes a step back. Maybe that is why the things we write about don’t get watered down.
