VOLTARENES is a minimal wave trio, intermittently active since 2004, with its members scattered between hamburg-altona and munich. their debut album, proceedings, was released in 2009 and features the track 'altona city' a tribute to their hometown. in 2012, they followed up with 924, a concept album centered on the porsche 924, for which they acquired the vehicles themselves. the liner notes fittingly include not only a saxophonist but also an auto mechanic.
after a decade-long hiatus, VOLTARENES reemerged in 2023 with a set of new tracks for a concert in rural middle franconia. concurrently, an idea emerged to fuse the voltarenes' characteristic pragmatism with the approach of matthias schuster (geisterfahrer, bal paré, im namen des volkes, producer of the 'fraktus' soundtrack) and finalize the new songs in his geisterfahrer studio, guided by his creative philosophy: "allow the machine to play with you."
the result is the WAVE ep, a tribute to the iconic machines minimoog, minikorg, 505 / 606 and catching the mood of 1980s electronic pop music - moody, minimal and raw. they sing about train journeys and nothingness und use it as lyric poetry within their songs. voltarenes crafted a soundtrack that was perfectly captured in super 8 film, blending playful melodies with a cold, semantic edge.
credits
released November 11, 2024
voltarenes are lars schneider, mawe n. klave and flori™.
sound engineer: matthias schuster
produced at geisterfahrer studio, hamburg 2023
artwork by stefan alt