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Chris Imler - The Internet Will Break My HeartWir freuen uns, Chris Imler mit seinem neuen Live-Programm zu Gast bei uns im Synthesizer Museum zu haben. Am 16.10.25 um 20:00.
Nicht verpassen! Tickets (15 €) gibts auf unserer Webseite oder im Museum.
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Chris Imler - The Internet Will Break My Heart
We are delighted to welcome Chris Imler to the Synthesizer Museum with his new live program. On October 16, 2025, at 8:00 p.m.
Don’t miss it! Get your tickets (15 €) on our website or at the museum.
For the last decade or so, the free fall of the world has coincided with Chris Imler's - perhaps not quite as rapidly, but equally unstoppable - rise.
„The Internet will break my heart“, his latest album to be released on 28.02.2025 on Fun in the church in cooperation with Moli Del Tro from Brussels, marks the steepest artistic stage to date. We see a man whose entire solo oeuvre (not to mention all the bands he's been providing drums for, from legendary 80ies Postpunk outfit The Golden Showers to Peaches, from Maximilian Hecker to Oum Shatt) is a late work, at the dizzying heights of his game. “So so, the internet, that's a really hot topic,” I can already hear blasé hisses here and there in the boxes.
But the truth is that the topic is annoyingly topical. Because only now is the world wide web unfolding its full disappointing potential. All dreams of an emancipatory power of the digital multitude (remember Negri/Hardt, haha) are as completely extinguished as the Arab Spring was swallowed up by the pre-nuclear winter. While they are capped from above in authoritarian states, social media in the so-called free world are primarily used by lumpen capital to undermine humanist standards and by the remnants of the left for self-destructive polarization. But the cute animal videos! They too have their dark side, which Imler brings up in the title song: "Die Tiere in der echten Welt stehen unter Druck" ("The animals in the real world are under pressure”).
So what is an aesthetically adequate way of dealing with this new digital version of the frustration of progress? Can it still be the old cold sounds of defiant adaptation to alienation? In the introduction to an exclusive session that Imler recorded for the innovative London station NTS, the presenter placed him alongside Kraftwerk, DAF and NEU! That's not entirely wrong. But it's only half the truth at best. This becomes particularly clear during his live shows throughout Europe. To a certain extent, they are public rehearsals. Sketches that he notes down on his laptop on long and numerous travels are rehearsed on stage on the same evening, with ad hoc cobbled-together lyrics and drum work that he himself describes as “sloppy-emotional”. His performance is deliberately chaotic, impulsive and, for all its Berlin street toughness, heartfelt. And although Imler - even with his occasional trumpet interludes - never has direct jazz references, one can just as easily think of Thelonious Monk's unruly boldness or Ornette Coleman's aggressive dynamics as of those aforementioned representatives of Teutonic robotics.
One thing is certain: the improvisational charm of his concerts cannot be captured one-to-one on record. But perhaps this album succeeds for the first time in achieving the same intensity of experience by other means. For example, on “Let's not talk about the war”, which by Imler's standards is almost forbidden to dance to. The micro-social tensions and unrest in the face of the divisive debates of the last few years are fizzled out here into something completely rousing. “Agoraphobia”, on the other hand, strikes the listener with an opium-intoxicated dimness. The sonic complexity is almost reminiscent of monster productions such as Talk Talk's “Spirit of Eden”, but the atmosphere is even more dazzling, more dangerous, and it is crowned by the enchanting voice of international underground shooting star Naomie Klaus. The most fascinating soundscape, in my opinion, was created by Imler and his brilliant co-producer Benedikt Frey with “Liturgy of Litter”. Although predominantly electronic, you get the feeling of being in the same room as the sound sources, as if you were standing in front of an otherworldly gamelan orchestra, whose iridescent tinkling drives you into the most beautiful, serious serenity.�
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Skalitzer Str. 135a, Berlin, Germany
Tickets
