With "Blank," BONGEN'S present their fourth album. The band from Cologne, Olpe, and Wuppertal creates German-language music somewhere between singer-songwriter pop and indie rock. The group, led by brothers Mario (vocals, guitar, keys) and Oliver Bongen (guitar), usually performs as a four-piece in the classic band format—with Theo Weber on drums and Jens Grebe on bass—but recently they've also increasingly performed as an unplugged duo. The new album reflects the latter. The instrumentation is largely reduced to acoustic guitar and piano.
"Damals überm Steinbruch," for example, consists exclusively of vocals and piano. The fact that some of the songs come across as "unfinished" was entirely intentional. They were meant to appear sketchy. Rough. Naked. "Blank," in other words.

After the multi-layered arrangement of the previous album »Fragebuch« the question this time was: What can we leave out?
A minimalism that reveals the core of the music: unfussy, earthy, at times gruff storytelling. The stories speak of the failure of everyday life. Of survival in a consumer society. Of renewal and forgetting. And of the good sides of the apocalypse. There are memories of a village youth, a (fictional) family history spanning decades, and finally the comforting view of a chaise longue in a retirement home. All the pieces are united by a subtle glimpse into the depths of human nature, only to discover a spark of hope somewhere. For example, in lines like this: "In the graveyard of opportunities, a light still burns." Or: "Heaven is a stain on my chest somewhere."