Anyone up for German Darkwave music? The computer says ‘yes’! Rightio then, today’s song is called Dream of a Ghost released on German Darkwave band Diary of Dreams‘ 2014 album Elegies in Darkness. The lead singer and founding member Adrian Hates has produced most of the albums. He is a classically trained guitarist and pianist who started out as the guitarist for Garden of Delight. He initiated the Diary of Dreams project in the late 1980s, taking the name from one of his early classical guitar compositions, “Tagebuch der Träume.”

Don’t say it’s getting better
The ghost of you – unborn
Am I blind enough to see?
We’re running out of time

Don’t say it’s getting better
All those endless days go by
A wishful dream comes true
We wasted so much time

When all is gone
I wonder what is left for me
When all is gone
I wonder what is left of me

Hates claims he was influenced, both lyric wise and artwork wise, by German 1909-1935 expressionism and the “beauty of ugliness” in the course of his work. His recollections below when he was in New York 35 years ago reminded me of when I took some classical guitar lessons in Mornington, Victoria Australia.

‘I was living on a farm in upstate New York. I had two pianos, and one of the kids in the house played piano and that totally got me hooked. I really started taking lessons during my time in New York…I started to get forced into playing classical guitar…We played the stupidest lines for weeks and weeks and weeks, just finger training. It was not like learning classical guitar at that point, at least not with the teachers that I got to know. It was not about having fun with an instrument, but about being very intensively trained‘.

Adrian Hates observations below about the state of music today in this social media circus are revealing:

I feel very sorry for today’s artists that are getting started now because they need to be A&R specialists, graphic specialists, and need to be perfect in studio work. I don’t think I could sell our first album today because I think people would be so specific and would be so much more into criticizing something. Imagine all these Amazon reviews that you get. People are so brutally honest and so brutally destructive at the same time. I think in the ’80s and ’90s you could do a debut album and people would say, “Hey, this is quite a cool album. There’s some really good stuff on there. We’ll give this band one or two albums to develop and to grow up a little.” I don’t think anybody gives bands these days a second shot or a third shot even. So you do your debut album, people like it or not, and then then the subject is over. That’s really, really sad. And I really think that bands today have to deliver too much and offer too much. The whole social media stuff is, in my eyes, insane. Sometimes I read the stuff, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I’m angry, sometimes I’m not. Sometimes I try to give the person that writes these lines a face and then I try to make this person look really ridiculous. Then it’s easier to digest that. But I think 99% of what is said online would never be said face to face, and that’s a shame.

Reference:
1. Diary of Dreams – Wikipedia
2. Adrian Hates Discusses His Odyssey With Diary Of Dreams – Brian Reesman