We Collide, We Shatter, We Grow - Hainbach & Simon Spiess

There is a third contributor to this record, but it’s not a human, it’s a space. In one of the stranger live sessions I've ever had, I broadcast music from my studio to an abandoned water tank on the outskirts of Colorado. The goal was to test its resonance before conducting an actual session inside “The Tank.”

With my phone zoomed in on the crew in the control room and my studio computer connected to the interior of this metal monster, I experimented with no-input feedback, test equipment, piano, and many other instruments — playing and waiting for the sounds to return. And I was captivated. My sounds folded into phasing fractals, bouncing from top to bottom.

After recording, I assembled the pieces by simply following the movement of the echoes. An accidental album took shape, but something was missing.The next day, I was playing basketball at a nearby playground with my kids. In a typical Neukölln moment — where you can’t throw a stone without hitting a musician — Simon was there with his family, too. We started chatting about music while shooting hoops, and that same evening, we did a session together.

A few weeks later, as I sent Simon’s live saxophone performance into the tank, he became the voice that had been missing on the record. We Collide, We Shatter, We Grow is an album that embraces both accident and experience. It’s about the random encounters that shape our lives, enrich them, and help us grow as artists and as humans. Abstract pings and drones flirt with wafts of jazz, as electricity and breath float through cosmic emptiness. Yet, there’s a sense of gravity that keeps it emotionally grounded, even in its freest moments of improvisation.