The recording project of Nashville-based Paul Kintzing since 2004, German Error Message has developed an atmospheric and ever-changing style which manages to bridge the gap between intimate bedroom folk and transportive ambient experimentalism. Take 2019’s Mend, an album which contrasted loneliness and peace to evoke “the seclusion and stillness of an empty house,” as we put it, “intertwined feelings of isolation and tranquillity snaking around each song.” The result, as with much of the German Error Message oeuvre, evaded simple categories of mood. Neither wholly sad nor affirming, but rather everything at once. As though life were a coin to be constantly flipped. “Joy and dread creeping side by side,” as we wrote of single ‘Murmuring‘, “twin forces of transcendence that promise to lift us from the contemporary loneliness.”
This style can be traced back through the German Error Message catalogue. A clear through-line exists between Mend and the anxious longing for epiphany on ‘2017’, one rooted in the developments first seen on 2014 album, Haunts. The latter, released on Furious Hooves, itself rose from the cold and melancholic After the Warmth, as though the seasons were reversed and winter broke to a golden autumn. This progression is telling, for it fits within the overarching thematic concerns of Kintzing’s work. Epiphany and transcendence are not as forthcoming as one would wish, and when change does arrive, it is not guaranteed to last. A winter curtailed by a new autumn is a tenuous relief. A season glorious perhaps, but fading all the same.
Though preceded by a number of releases, After the Warmth therefore represents something of an origin point for German Error Message. A record rooted in the isolation of iced windows and early dark created by an artist realising their direction. “I had moved to a new city for school the year before and didn’t know many people and all of my free time outside of school was spent working on it,” Kintzing explains. “My friends would sing with me and add parts when we were home for holidays. The songs came out quickly, many close to fully formed, and I’d rush to get them recorded while they were still fresh. I was still figuring out how to record, and these songs bounced around between an early digital multitrack, a four track cassette recorder, an ancient PC, and finally a Macbook.”
The album never got an official physical release, but in recognition of its eleventh anniversary, Furious Hooves have stepped in to put this right. On February 15th, exactly eleven years to the day since the original release, a cassette edition of After the Warmth will be available. It’s an exciting announcement, not only because it celebrates an incredible record, but because cassette feels like its perfect medium, the enveloping ambience and murmured volume accentuated by the warm organic hiss of a tape deck.
Today we’re delighted to share a video for single ‘Discontent’ to celebrate the announcement. Filmed by Furious Hooves’ Ryan McCardle, the video is the perfect encapsulation of After the Warmth. The sensation of being cut off in a world slowed down by the cold, the only company the small lights peeking through closed blinds across the way. Kintzing’s words are candid in the manner one can be in an empty room. Promises or threats offered to the quiet stillness like prayers. But no matter how sorrowful things sound, there’s something almost magical in the sharing, and the very fact that you’re there to hear it begins to feel miraculous. A reminder of the lights beyond the immediate present, and of the importance of lighting your own lamp too.
After the Warmth is out via Furious Hooves on the 15th February and you can pre-order it now from Bandcamp.
