Dana Schechter is a musician, composer, visual artist and animator based in Berlin. Originally from New York, she founded her band Bee And Flower there in 1999. In 2011 she started the cinematic doom project Insect Ark, initially solo but now a duo with Khanate drummer Tim Wyskida. New Noise Magazine described their 2024 album Raw Blood Singing as “a fearless foray into a dark forest.” She has played bass, lap steel guitar and keyboards with American Music Club, Swans, Angels Of Light, Zeal And Ardor and Wrekmeister Harmonies. Her album with Paul Wallfisch, The Heart Of A Whale, is released in May 2025.
At the Kiezsalon Dana Schechter and Paul Wallfisch present their new collaborative project, the soundtrack to Kleist prizewinner Wolfram Lotz’s play Die Politiker. Recorded live at the Volkstheater, Vienna, the surrealistic, doom-metal, existential romp soundtrack will be released by Vienna label Trost Records in May 2025.
FACTS
1: Music / sound are invisible, borderless, therefore the truest forms of pure communication
2: You can use anything as a vehicle for writing
3: Inspiration = lifeblood, and should be nurtured and protected
QUESTIONS
1. What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
I’ve always had sounds playing in my head, they swirl and compete with much more rational thoughts. A sense of freedom is incredibly inspiring, that what I make can be anything I dream up.
2. How and when did you get into making music?
I started playing flute at age 9, upright bass age 12, bass guitar at 16, then flooded by a slew of other instruments like piano, lap steel guitar, drums, vocalisations, and so on.
3. What are 5 of your favourite albums of all time?
N/A
4. What do you associate with Berlin?
A place that will make room for those who are willing to struggle to change, offering a sense of wonder, a sense of traditions being challenged; of turmoils both visible and hidden, of meeting people who truly believe in and desire a sense of goodness, of great creative diversity, of paradoxes that boggle the mind like those in all the world’s great cities.
5. What’s your favourite place in your town?
Tempelhofer Feld.
6. If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
I would read, imagine, draw, paint, and create shapes from witnessing nature.
7. What was the last record/music you bought?
Oranssi Pazuzu, “Muuntautuja.”
8. Who would you most like to collaborate with?
Arvo Pärt.
9. What was your best gig (as performer or spectator)?
A recent favourite was with my band Insect Ark at Roadburn Festival, April 2025.
10. How important is technology to your creative process?
I use technology as part of my tool set, but I aim to not overuse it. I enjoy the experience of playing instruments physically — the tone, texture and feel of them, and how they resonate. My favourite instrument is an upright piano. Still though, working digitally can bring elements of surprise, which can keep the creative process fresh. Digital is of course incredibly important in the later stages of realising/finalizing a piece of music.
11. What can we expect from your Kiezsalon concert with Paul Wallfisch?
Swinging moods, dramatic waves, tonal washes, deep roars, delicate breaths, blasting noise, total chaos, a whisper and erasing of memory.
