Dana Schechter, Paul Wallfisch

Paul Wallfisch has played in bands like Firewater and Little Annie, while Dana Schechter has logged time with American Music Club, Angels of Light and her own Insect Ark, among others. They’ve been friends since meeting in New York in the 1990s. Years later they forged a stronger connection as bandmates in Botanica and palying with Swans.

Over the years Paul Wallfisch has been a prolific composer for film and TV, including Dummy, with Adrien Brody and Milla Jovovich (which the musician also appeared in). After spending years splitting her time between New York and Berlin, Dana Schechter settled in Berlin in 2020 and is currently a fix member of Swans. They renewed their artistic partnership in 2021, when Paul invited Dana to Vienna to help him develop the music for a multimedia theatrical spectacle called Die Politiker written by Kleist prize winner Wolfram Lotz. The music from the production provides the foundation for the duo’s first album, The Heart of A Whale. Across its six intense tracks one can detect a subtle homage to storied Berlin musical traditions, as the pair puts a raw, often brutal veneer on songs steeped in Weimar cabaret (a la Tom Waits) but updated with a visceral mixture of noise, post-punk, and industrial elements.

Performed on a panoply of instruments from bass, organ and lap steel to SOMA Synths, Guitaret, a variety of electronics and a grand piano hammered with a shoe, the music reflects the New York-Berlin nexus they’ve both been part of for decades. Echoes of Swans, Einstürzende Neubauten and The Birthday Party, but also hints of Throbbing Gristle, Eno and even William Basinski and Michael Gordon. The music can’t be contained by any single tradition, with a decidedly experimental bent that ruptures the fixed rhythm of rock for something more theatrical and emotionally harrowing.