Jungstötter is the solo project of Berlin-based songwriter and musician Fabian Altstötter, whose sounds linger in lyrical softness and formal fragmentation. Using voice as a centre point, as an axis that hinges off an assembly of instrumental experimentation, his work pulls together shifting lyric compositions with textured layering, and whispered moments of release.
Following the breakout success of his formative band project Sizarr, Altstötter’s first two solo albums, ‘Love Is’ (2019) and ‘One Star’ (2023) were released to critical acclaim. His new work reveals a particular rawness that reestablishes the strength of poetics, of vocal sound, and the softness of song when reduced, restrained, redirected, sustained.
Jungstötter has released two albums on [PIAS], and has played shows across Europe, at renowned venues and festivals including Volksbühne, Silent Green and the Zeiss Major Planetarium (all Berlin), Kampnagel (Hamburg), the Nuremberg State Museum of Art and Design, Palac Akropolis (Prague), Desertshore Festival (Vienna), and more. He’s supported acclaimed acts including Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy, Arcade Fire) and Petra Hermanova.
FACTS
1. I’m blooming awfully late.
2. I want rain that is mainly water and evaporated dream[s].
3. I make money as a sailor.
1. What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
All things in between. I’ve grown very fond of textures, extended technique, artifacts in every instrument or recording. I don’t know if I can name it yet or even want to but there is something in there (not the obvious rejection of objective beauty), that has a magical weight to it. It straps a world to sound for me.
2. How and when did you get into making music?
It’s a bit of a mystery really. There is no active music making in my family at all. My father however has this wholesome appreciation for it and quite an adventurous taste for someone who grew up in a small town. He has this comically large wall of CDs and whenever I stayed with him there was a selection of those playing in the car and at home. So being in sound became this place of longing. Then around 13 I picked up a guitar and started to write and I can’t really imagine stopping.
3. What are 5 of your favourite albums of all time?
Scott Walker – Tilt
Nina Simone – Baltimore
Hareton Salvanini – S.P/73 (I feel like this one flies under the radar, wildly)
Hildegard Knef – Knef
Eberhard Weber – Chorus
4. What do you associate with Berlin?
A city where Germanness is being morphed through international exchange and it’s prettier that way.
5. What’s your favourite place in your town?
My apartment.
6. If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
I would sit there waiting for its arrival.
7. What was the last record/music you bought or listen?
This is a lie but much more exciting than the reality: [a record by] my friend; Clothing – La Muerte En Realidad no Existe. I highly recommend.
8. Who would you most like to collaborate with?
All of my friends in one grand orchestra – which is sort of what happened with a project called Spydergum which you should look out for.
9. What was your best gig (as performer or spectator)?
I can’t name a best gig on my part so far, but [hopefully in the future] it will be me crooning, old and sodden on whatever a stage will look like then. Coming back to my dad’s wall of CDs, I got to see Neil Young last year and it was hits only, which felt unreal. I was stricken.
10. How important is technology to your creative process?
It acts to ensure immediacy and amplification of those in betweens so it works as a kind of scaffolding for me but the core will always be organic.
11. Please tell us a little about how your new album came about.
I had come back to Berlin from a 5 year period in Vienna unsure where to go musically. I had a mount of ideas and demos that didn’t feel connected and also wanted to play around with a different approach to me sitting there crafting. At first I did a string of studio days with my friends Ralph Heidel and Roui Zweifel, who are both amazing instrumentalists and I thought we were working towards an album based on really rough demos of mine. These songs are the invisible blueprint to this album in a way, but I haven’t managed to finish them yet (I will do soon I promise). This strange dynamic set in where life was demanding my attention in other ways (money, housing, future), and my mode of working changed with it. I went back to a more solitary way of doing things but really enjoyed it because I had gathered all this material to play with, from sessions with Ralph, Roui and many other friends. So these other [solitary] demos nudged themselves in the foreground. Songs I had written on the piano and was self-conscious about because I thought they needed more depth (Sunk and That Noise). Re-recording them and decorating them with bits of recordings of friends plus discovering the harmonica and bass harmonica for myself opened the floodgates for this album. After that I had found a real rhythm making song after song. Parts of them are old demos (Sunk, That Noise, Loud Fingers), parts are rearranged and tweaked improvisational sessions (Overturn, Elastic (Avenue)) and others are entirely new (Seaweed, Tell This Lover).
