hackedepicciotto

Hackedepicciotto comprises the longtime creative partnership of Alexander Hacke from Einstürzende Neubauten and American-born multi-hyphenate Danielle de Picciotto, whose work spans music, visual art, writing, and film. Their primary output revolves around immersive soundscapes that fuse violin, hurdy-gurdy, and autoharp with deep bass guitar lines and layers of electronic feedback. Vocals alternate between de Picciotto’s vivid, poetic recitations and Hacke’s occasional throat singing. Although the pair characterize their sound as “cinematic drone,” both The Current from 2020 and the broader, orchestral The Silver Threshold of 2021 introduced postindustrial rhythms, while Keepsakes in 2023 turned toward intimate subject matter and enlarged the roster of guest musicians and instruments.

Born in Berlin, Hacke joined Einstürzende Neubauten in 1980 at the age of fifteen. De Picciotto arrived in the city in 1987, fronted the Space Cowboys, and co-organized the inaugural Love Parade alongside Dr. Motte in 1989. She later partnered with Gudrun Gut, an early Neubauten member, to launch the recurring Ocean Club events beginning in 1993. During the 2000s she directed videos for Hacke and Neubauten, and together the couple hosted Bada Bing, a monthly showcase of unconventional sounds and imagery. They married in 2006. Their first joint release, the 2008 audiovisual work The Ship of Fools on Neubauten’s Potomak label, reinterpreted Sebastian Brant’s 1495 novel. Another Potomak project, the largely acoustic Hitman’s Heel, appeared in early 2011 and blended ballads with Western-tinged material.

In 2010 the duo abandoned permanent residence in Berlin to pursue a nomadic existence. A three-month residency in Prague followed, along with Eastern European tours alongside Julee Cruise and Kid Congo Powers and participation in the Crime & the City Solution reunion, which yielded a Detroit-recorded album in 2012. The instrumental Perseverantia emerged in 2016 after sessions in California’s Mojave Desert. Later that year Unity (Meditation Soundtrack) presented three twenty-minute pieces designed for yoga practice. Menetekel, their first album issued under the hackedepicciotto name, arrived in 2017; its vinyl edition added the twenty-minute bonus track “The House of Shadows with the Sound of Light,” originally created for a sound installation inside an Austrian church. The 2018 meditation soundtrack Joy featured New York no-wave and noise-rock veterans Vincent Signorelli and Eric Hubel. The Current, tracked in Blackpool, England, and shaped by that city’s working-class milieu, appeared in 2020.

An hour-long drone collaboration with Mick O’Shea titled Tricephalus surfaced in 2021. The Silver Threshold, the duo’s debut for Mute, followed in November of the same year and featured more expansive string arrangements. The three-track EP hackedepicciotto (Remixed by David Harrow) arrived in 2023. Keepsakes was captured at Auditorium Novecento in Napoli, Italy—one of Europe’s oldest studios—where the pair employed tubular bells, brass, and a celesta once belonging to Ennio Morricone. Released in July 2023, the multilingual album explores themes of friendship and human connection.