DANCE by The Interlaken Tapes
The Interlaken Tapes is the project of bedroom producer Gorden Spangardt (ex-Kirmes). Gorden also releases left-field electronica under the moniker GRDN. You may have heard his 21-minute ‘vapour kraut’ mini album titled 2 fly by in the summer of 2025. A new release for The Interlaken Tapes is ready for summer 2026: DANCE.
“DANCE treats the past as a structurally unfinished business; transformation as a method, with guitars dissolving into textures,” according to Gorden Spangardt, “with only fleeting traces of rock music remaining”.
Still, some traces of Gorden’s Gainsbourg-infused Can cocktail remain in DANCE. In this Q+A I ask him how he keeps ‘krauty’ sounds fresh. (: you’re welcome :) He also reflects on two tracks from the new album, plus music and sound design in the age of AI. You’ll also get the story behind the album artwork for DANCE (there’s a super-limited number of LPs available with glow-in-the-dark screen printing).
Keep it krauty,
Wendy
What are the stories behind tracks “mAd/CHSTR” and “F|oa+ing”?
I always start with a simple idea where I then build the track and also the lyrics around. The lyrics are usually very associative, so they often reflect the mood and feel of the music more than anything. That is especially true for mAd/CHSTR and F|oa+ing. The first one develops a decent early Madchester feel and the second one has a pretty airy vibe - at least for me.
The above two tracks sound the most ‘krauty’ to me despite one referring to a different place and time. How do you create fresh krautrock? Are there things you try to avoid or things you definitely like to include/refer to?
I am not willingly trying to be krauty, that sometimes just happens, maybe because I build my music with loops and repetition. However, what I try to avoid is the use of the “motorik beat”. That is a very cool beat but a bit overused in the last wave of krautrock.
How did you decide on the title DANCE for this album?
The title was there before I even made a single track. But it stands for the general idea to move The Interlaken Tapes even further away from rock music sounds and pop song structures into more electronic areas. To move from songs to tracks and somehow also a bit to move from music to sound.
In terms of the sequence of the tracks on DANCE, is there a concept or idea that you had in mind for the listener?
There is a certain flow that I wanted to create by the track sequence, with a wake-up track at the beginning and the final track fading away into eternity and a lot of space for sometimes very experimental stuff in between.
Related to the following quote, where is it that you think music might still go?
“DANCE is less concerned with where music has been than with where it might still go.”
That is an interesting point. Like most musicians I observe the development of AI music closely. Therefore another central idea of the album is to develop the tracks into directions that an AI wouldn’t. To combine ideas and flavours from the past like an AI would do, but to do it in very unusual ways. That not only refers to the songwriting and arrangement but also and maybe even more importantly to unusual sound design. I am pretty sure that no AI would sound-design a track like “do you believe in ❤️“. As far as I can see this is a path that quite some musicians are considering right now.
Interesting…almost to trick or challenge AI? Can you give any examples? Also, is the spelling of the tracks on DANCE related to an attempt to resist AI?
An AI nowadays can easily generate a Foo Fighters song while it might struggle with say a My Bloody Valentine kind of song. So, my goal is not necessarily to trick the AI but at least to sound as different as possible, to cut through the noise of the sea of AI music.
My path is too allow imperfection more than an AI would do. Distortion and wild effect chains for example. Also, most of the vocals are recorded without headphones with all the sound of the backing track bleeding into the recording, causing a lot of artifacts when applying additional effects on the vocals.
The track names stem from a similar idea of imperfection. However, I won’t do that again, it causes a lot of technical issues when releasing the tracks and a lot of requests from the press as the most of these special characters are not allowed in file names.
How do you think music press or promotion outlets can best utilise AI when promoting music and artists?
AI can be used to refine texts, however, this only works when you already have a storyline outlined. Otherwise, it ends up to be something pretty generic, which might sound good, but does not mean anything.
However, I don’t see any reason for blank mood to use AI in such a way. For such a niche blog like yours, the whole thing lives from your taste and feelings towards the music you write about. AI is not particularly good in that.
I am absolutely not against AI and use it for more mechanical tasks, but I am skeptical when it comes to more creative tasks.
Can you tell us about the album artwork and the screen-printed LP sleeves?
The original photo on the front cover was taken by my wife and and my daughter from our dog Valentin. The Dutch-German print artist Henning Rosenbrock developed the artwork from there and manually screen-printed all the covers in his atelier in Enschede. Thirty of them even have a second print layer with a color that glows in the dark, which is a pretty spooky effect. They are only available on our Bandcamp page.
Tell us about your garden shed.
We live in the outskirts of the Ruhr region of Germany in a pretty remote area with a lot of space and few neighbours. That gives me the opportunity to have my home-studio and rehearsal place in our garden shed without disturbing anyone. It is a wonderful and quiet place with a nice view.
Do you have any live shows coming up?
We play a small sneak preview gig on June 13th in Henning Rosenbrock’s atelier in Enschede and a handful of gigs in Germany in late 2026 and 2027. However, we are still open for booking requests via email or DM on The Interlaken Tapes’ Insta page.
Read about Gorden’s earlier work titled 2 by The Interlaken Tapes - summer 2025’s perfect vapour kraut meltdown soundtrack.