Hello Jochen, I am glad that the new Dornenreich album is finally finished! How are you doing? I guess for you it will be a relief that it is finally out as well?
Yes, it is a big, big relief without any doubt. We have worked on this album for many years and we had to have a lot of patience and had to keep up our endurance.

Seven years passed by after ‘Freiheit’, but we were warned J since you announced ‘Freiheit’ at that time as the last Dornenreich album for a long time. Why did you need that break?
You are right: you were ‘warned’ back in 2014 (laughs), however, it was quite surprising to me that it really took that many years to reveal this ninth album eventually. In the first place back in 2014 I felt that it would be wise to take one step back consciously and to communicate that, too. After eighteen years, eight albums and countless concerts and tours I deeply felt an urge to examine and realign my artistic approach. I wanted to gather at the original source of my creativity and motivation to express. And I wanted to do so in all consciousness and in all silence (apart from some further concerts and tours that we played in the course of the last years).

Well, seven years is a long time, so what did you do with the spare time that was coming after the work for the ‘Freiheit’ release was done? Did you travel or did you take a rest or did you explore other hobbies than music?
You are right again. Seven years are quite a long time span, some spiritual traditions would even speak of a whole phase of life (laughs). Well, after our release tour we had played for ‘Freiheit’ in May 2014 I had to set the direction for some professional tracks in addition to the music as I also work as an academic librarian at the university in part time. I did all that to create a solid fundament for further artistic adventures and projects, too. So, the break from studio work was a conscious decision we made in favour of Dornenreich and artistic expression in general in the end, even if that meant that we had to reframe and refocus certain areas and aspects of our lives primarily. During this first phase after the ‘Freiheit’ tour I watched and observed narrowly how my love for artistic expression would appear anew in the light of the pause that we had communicated publicly. And I did not have to wait long as new ideas just came into existence in 2015 already as naturally and intuitively as it has always been in my/our case whenever I – I would actually put it that way – dream actively on my guitar. And it was a very important experience for me to perceive in all clarity how interwoven my personal life and my urge to express existential thoughts and feelings are.

But you did not say goodbye to the music scene completely during that break I think, because you were active as live session guitarist for Empyrium and Sun Of The Sleepless (and maybe more?). Can you tell something more about that involvement?
Yes, I also played and toured with Empyrium and Sun Of The Sleepless during these last years and I even wrote lyrics and recorded guest vocals for an Agrypnie song. With Sun Of The Sleepless I started to play live in 2017 as Markus offered me to join the band as live guitarist, which wasn’t that surprising to anybody I guess as we are like-minded friends that had experienced a lot together as I used to be the live guitarist for Empyrium since 2011 whereas Markus, in turn, has been Dornenreich’s main producer and sound engineer for the last twenty years. In particular all these live adventures kept me in touch with all the people out there and with all my creative mates and companions during these last seven years and that’s what I appreciate, especially when it comes to concerts and tours – as these experiences tend to weld together as the years go by and many other things change ceaselessly in all our lives.

And Dornenreich would keep on playing special gigs. Did that happen during those seven years?
Yes, we played numerous concerts since 2014 – and even another tour to celebrate the band’s twentieth anniversary back in 2016 and that’s also what I communicated in 2014. We have never intended to stop the band and we assumed that live experiences with all the camaraderie involved would be something that would strengthen the band as whole during these years of realignment and change. And that’s how it turned out.

When did you actually start thinking and writing for the new album ‘Du Wilde Liebe Sei’? Was there a click when you suddenly felt the urge or did it smoothly and slowly start again? And what about the recording process?
It came to me by and by as I grabbed the guitar more frequently since 2015. Moreover, we intended to do justice to the fact that we had established our own home studios over the years which enable us to work on new songs whenever mood, magic of a moment or simple focus urged us to do so. Therefor we could really aim at the best takes and atmospheres when it comes to our mind-set and our performance on the one hand, but we really had to prove a long wind on the other hand because as we integrated the recordings into our personal lives and home settings we could not record for weeks in a row. However, some deliberate phases of distance we wanted the entire process to rely on anyway – especially concerning the final arrangements and instrumentation of the songs. So, more and more songs were elaborated between 2015 and 2018. Then, 2018, we headed out in order to play some of our very special ‘Mystic Places’ acoustic concerts. Within the frame of these shows we played song 4, 5 and 6 of the album that used to be ready instrumentally back then and as an effect of this experience the songs developed even further regarding tempo and structure in particular. It worked very inspiring upon us to experience this new music in progress while being on stage. The actual recordings were done between early 2019 and June 2020 and consequently the songs and its final shapes evolved over the whole course of these eighteen months of recording.

But – as I found out – originally the album was supposed to come out in 2020. What caused this delay? (probably covid-19?)
Yes, it was due to the pandemic and due to the fact that we really felt that the initial perception of the album would benefit from a release during spring or summer. Because of the pandemic we had to postpone the mixing and mastering of the album from April to August 2020. Actually, in April we all had to live through the first lockdowns and Markus’ studio is located in Germany. So there was no possibility to leave one’s country at that specific time. But, finally, in August we seized the opportunity and finished the album together with Markus by mixing and mastering it in his ‘Klangschmiede Studio E’.