Jennifer Touch

As a kid, Jennifer Touch recalls, she was approached by some already grown-up individual, arguing all the melodies in the world have already been used - and there are no more left. Hence, being a musician is pointless. What a twisted mind. But even being surrounded by spurious and disheartening bollocks like this, Jennifer's urge for gloves-off self-expression through music just had to prevail. Another thing that she recalls from that time at the end of the 80s when she was about 8 years old, was the self-recorded tape her father gave her, providing the introduction to synth-laden pop music. Another epiphany of a kindred kind followed shortly after - Depeche Mode in their most seminal era. And after the wall came down there was also Techno, bleak and rough, echoing through abandoned factory halls in a region longing for identity, but still carrying a promise of community and awakening within its 4/4 bars. All these light bulb moments led Jenny to one conclusion: There are machines out there that would enable you to make your own songs.

When shining a light on Jenny's artistic persona today, these childhood and teenage revelations still come through as moving cause, as her music feeds on both, the merciless dispute with present affective struggle and the processing of memories and observations from her upbringing in eastern Germany. She says, her music always relates to the social climate of that time or at least what is left of it when filtered through the perception of a young and naive mind. Naivety might even be an essential element in her songwriting, as much as brutal honesty and sincerity are. She sought realization in several band projects over the years, but from the moment she embarked on her solo career in 2011, those attempts gained an all-encompassing urgency.

Today, you would rarely find an artist as devoted to sound, as deeply immersed in the affective reverberation of old synthesizers, as her. You rarely come across someone who literally bleeds her heart into these bars of Postpunk- and Wave-kissed dreariness. That applies to all expressive means, her writing, producing, singing and live-performing as much as her conception of DJing. In all of these disciplines, she seeks to align the weird with the beautiful, the alienation with an embracing love, and the mystic depth with the formula of a perfect Pop-song. When writing songs, it is the refinement of restraining her inner chaos and carving a relatable and catchy tune out of it, that defines the nature of her signature sound. That and the sheer need to do it, her attitude and her intention to open doors with her music. To create a space for herself and others to sink into. And to never think that space as closed off, but as open to other spaces. Because in Jennifer Touch's world, music is like life - incalculable, rich in experience and emotion, and most of all unlimited.