Line-up:
Sascha Blach – Vocals, Guitar, Synth
Stefan Helwig – Drums
Georges-Emmanuel Schneider – Violin
Gabriel Wohlfahrt – Bass
Discography:
Time And Tide Wait For No Man (EP, 2018)
Antennas To The Sky (Album, 2019)
Summergloom (Album, 2021)
Reverberations Of A Gloomy Summer (EP, 2022)
Where The Deep Ends (Album, 2024)
Electric Mirror (Album, 2024)
Info:
The musical journey of The Halo Trees began sometime around the year 2016 in Berlin. Songwriter, guitarist and singer Sascha Blach – a creative shapeshifter who had already gone through different musical worlds – could not help but follow this new path into the unknown. The vision: deep and melancholic music with plenty of room for the voice and handmade instrumentation. A comforting sound universe, inspired by David Bowie, Editors, Mark Lanegan, The National or Nick Cave. A mixture of indie-rock, pop, wave and post-rock with many tom-toms, melodic basslines, atmospheric guitars, catchy violin and sonorous, warm vocals.
But it was a long and winding road. Sascha spent hundreds of hours in his studio trying to find the sound of The Halo Trees. Countless songs were written and discarded, sometimes more than twenty mix versions per song were created, until it felt right. On the one hand, the great vision and the will to realize The Halo Trees, on the other hand self-doubt whether the result is good enough. Euphoric moments, followed by weekends full of frustration. Listening sessions with friends. Trial and error. Years passed. But idealism remained. In 2018, the EP „Time And Tide Wait For No Man“ appeared to let the public listen to the first steps. In the meantime musicians came and went until Kathrin Bierhalter (violin, guitar, vocals), Serdar Uludag (bass) and Stefan Helwig (drums) finally formed a suitable band with Sascha, that releases the debut album „Antennas To The Sky“ these days. It is an honest and personal album and a distillate of the last three years. „If it’s good, let others decide. I can not judge that after such a long time, „says Sascha Blach. „Fact is: I had to make this album, had to make this band. And I am so happy that I finally am able to release these songs.“
What makes The Halo Trees authentic beside the music is that they are a real Do It Yourself band. „Antennas To The Sky“ was produced in the band’s own Winter Solitude studio in Berlin, all video clips were shot without external help, the artwork was also created single-handedly and the album is released on their own label Winter Solitude Productions. And „Antennas To The Sky“ is only the beginning. „I feel like more and can imagine making The Halo Trees long-term into old age. There are also countless new tracks,“ says Sascha, who notes: „By the way, meanwhile it’s very easy for me to write this kind of music.“ Thus another such difficult birth should not happen again in the future.
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Two years after the critically acclaimed debut album “Antennas To The Sky”, The Halo Trees releases their second long player, “Summergloom”. The dark and melancholic indie rock of the collective founded in 2016 has been further developed and now has a slightly more progressive touch. While on the one hand the emphasis is still on catchy melodies, now more challenging harmonic constructions and some rhythmic oddities add complexity. Even after listening to it several times, you can still discover new things. In addition, there is the more complex production, which was completed again under the care of singer/guitarist Sascha Blach in his own Winter Solitude studio and which brought many small details into the 14 songs. From acoustic elements to increasingly electronic influences to epic sound clusters with a post-rock touch, the pieces cover a broad dynamic spectrum. However, it is primarily the deep, warm vocals, the interlocking soundscapes of guitars, synths, violin and bass, and the drumming, which is heavily dominated by toms, that are the
defining elements. In short: A rock sound with a lot of depth, feeling and melancholy.
Lyrically, the songs cover a wide range of topics. If there is a subtle thread, then these are reflections of being human in the midst of an increasingly technological, self-alienated and depersonalized society, which can be heard in pieces like “Invisible”, “Algorithm” or “Hologram”. But also subjects such as mortality (“This House Of Sadness”), tendencies towards division (“Cardboard Cities”) or poverty and homelessness (“Marihuana Kid”) are touched upon. Everything is framed in a summery panorama of longing – that tempting “Summergloom”. Between the lines one often reads the fantasy of simply stepping out of an increasingly complex world and to follow the „Wanderlust“. A metaphysical image with symbolic character, because the music of the album – despite the critical lyrics – promotes escapism in one’s own head.
As with the predecessor, everything was again created in a DIY manner. In addition to the production, The Halo Trees also create their own videos and artworks and release the albums on the band’s own label. Thus, „Summergloom“ is a headphone album with a lot of attention to detail, which is also extremely authentic.
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After three meticulous years of work, the new The Halo Trees album “Where The Deep Ends” is finally finished. It’s a beautiful headphone album for melancholic hours with a rather calm mood. Deep male vocals and a sad violin go together with atmospheric guitars and groovy bass and organic drums. Indie Rock meets some Post-Punk vibes and some Progressive Rock elements that are subtly woven in unusual harmonies or crooked bars that make the songs interesting. What the band calls Deep Dark Indie Rock is an eclectic sound that should appeal to listeners from The National to David Bowie to Nick Cave.
The previous two albums „Antennas To The Sky“ (2019) and „Summergloom“ (2021) could also convince the media. The album „Summergloom“ then even stayed in the German Alternative Charts (DAC) for the maximum duration of 8 weeks. And also the most recent singles “Big Bang Coming” and “Escapism” all made it into the DAC charts.
With „Where The Deep Ends“ The Halo Trees present a rather quiet album that goes into great depth both musically and in terms of content. Singer Sascha Blach asks many questions about meaning and deals with topics such as feeling strange in the world, happiness, truth, love, nostalgia and longing in poetic texts. He has also written a book that will be distributed alongside the album. Both are only available in physical form as a package.
In this book, Blach presents images, short stories, philosophical texts, poems, and commentaries that expand on the ten songs of the album „Where The Deep Ends“ in various ways. The texts are dark, hopeful, ironic, emotional, thoughtful and enigmatic all at the same time. Blach delves deeper into the content of the songs, but does not shy away from giving them new layers of meaning. A little gem for anyone who likes to philosophize and for whom music is more than just background entertainment.
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Half a year after the release of their latest album „Where The Deep Ends“, the Berlin-based dark indie rock band The Halo Trees announces their next release. To coincide with their European tour as support for Front Line Assembly, the band is releasing an album with electronic remakes of their songs – a kind of alternative path parallel to their rock releases.
„Electric Mirror“, the title of the upcoming album, is not a classic remix album, but was produced entirely by the band themselves. All songs that are known as rock versions from the formation’s previous albums have been given new electronic arrangements, remodeled and with re-recorded vocals from singer Sascha Blach, presenting a completely new facet of the band’s sound. It will be released on November 22, 2024 as a digital release and CD via COP International.
The album’s musical spectrum ranges from clubby, driving numbers to quiet, ambient tracks that sound spherical, wide and weightless. There are always interesting sound experiments in the songs – and not everything is purely electronic. The band’s new violinist, Georges-Emmanuel Schneider, ran his violin through endless effect chains for various songs to transform its sound into spacey soundscapes that sound truly timeless. Guitar textures and percussion were also recorded to refine the new song versions dominated by synths and drum machines.
Sascha is also accompanied by three guests on the microphone. A new version of „Cardboard Cities“ was recorded with the Berlin choir Stimmgewalt, in which Sascha and the choir embark on a powerful duet that gives you goosebumps. In the super-melancholic „In This House Of Sadness“, Behind Your Fear singer Stefanie Duchêne can be heard as a guest singer, who some may still know as the singer of Flowing Tears. In „Time And Tide Wait For No Man“, however, things get clubbier and harder and Sascha delivers a striking duet with Die Kammer frontman Marcus Testory.
It will be interesting to see to what extent electronics will continue to find their way into the band’s sound in the future…