RELEASE CONCERT AT ZECHE CARL  (with SARA NOXX)
June 30 1998.  Essen, Germany

At the beginning, nothing happened at all. As usual, the concert began about an hour later than announced. At 9 p.m. there was fog on stage. The two keyboards were decorated with cobwebs (well, the cover of the new Psyche-CD "Love Among The Ruined" shows a beautiful spider - next to a rose ;-)). But it was only a kind of test - or a means to confuse the audience ;-) At quarter past nine, a man entered the stage and went to one of the keyboards. Then a woman appeared with long brown hair, black trousers, a black vest, a t-shirt without sleeves and a beautiful smile and started to sing. Really great. Name: Sara Noxx, maybe known from the Zwischenfall Sampler Vol. 3. She may have heard it once too often but she sings like Anne Clark (before she started to re-record her songs in this 'techno-version-way'). Unfortunately, she only sang 7 songs, the last one was 'Society', the song that can be found on the above-mentioned sampler. Before she started to sing this song, she thanked Mr. Zoeller with a smile - he stood right in front of her ;-) After about half an hour, 9:45 p.m., she finished and all 'encore' shouts were in vain.

Psyche - which means Darrin Huss and Per-Anders Kurenbach, supported by Stefan Rabura - started at 10:05 p.m. At first, only Per-Anders and Stefan entered the stage and the about 120 guests - i.e. we ;-) - heard Transcendental, one of the new songs from the new album 'Love among the ruined' and which is more similar to the older Psyche songs. After this, Darrin appeared, wearing make-up, black lipstick, a black string vest (???), black trousers on which the legs of a skeleton were printed. In a good mood he told  -  in English and German - something about the songs and to whom he dedicated them. ... The concert went on with Exhale, followed by Murder in your love, both new. Then we made a trip to the past, Darrin took off his t-shirt and gave his best as an actor: Brain Collapses. Which means: he was somewhere down on the bottom of the stage - if the guy in front of me were not that large, I would have seen more ;-) After that, the part of the trousers looking like a skeleton was hanging loose, but he fixed it again in front of his leather trousers. Later, Darrin said that he originally intended to take it off but somehow didn't find the time .

Next was Tears from the album Strange Romance followed by the new song Drowning Pool, then again, we heard an older song named Misery. Darrin said in the end of the song, that we were allowed to move and dance - as we were in a disco - the audience really danced very little ;-(. But after having said so, he put on his t-shirt again and played an 'industrial ballad' - a slightly different version of  Fallen Star (new). Really great, better than the CD-version (maybe because I like most of the bands I listen to live more than on CD ;-) ). Only for wild and crazy dancing, this song was a little bit too slow ;-))) The next song was Secret Angel, followed by a cover of Sex Dwarf, which was better to dance at and which again demanded Darrin´s abilities as an actor ;-) Then, they again - like on the Strange-Romance-Tour -  tried to prove that they are not only a Synthi-Pop Band, as lots of people claim and played Belong To You, Per playing a real harmonica. Somewhere inbetween, Per also played percussions next to his Keyboard labelled with 'huhu'. Wow, an all-round talent :-) After that, they played Sorrow  (new), Uncivilized, the cover to Good-bye Horses out of the movie "The Silence Of The Lambs" (which was the trigger for us to think about where in this movie was this song ;-) ) taken from Strange Romance and Land Of Broken Promises (new). Then again an old and slow song: Psyche played Eternal in a really great acoustic (sorry, piano ;-) ) version (which meant that Per's keyboard sounded like a piano and Darrin took a chair ;-)).

It stayed older with Unveiling The Secret and returned to more recent times with The Game. Then, Darrin said that Synthi-Pop was nevertheless a great thing and that the following song was one of the greatest of this genre: Screamin' Machine, deriving from old times with Stephen Huss and re-released on the'Love among the ruined'. Great!  After this, they played another very beautiful ballad, The Hurting, also from the new album.

After 20 songs and 1 hour and 50 minutes, the regular concert came to an end. But when someone shouted 'booh' as Darrin said that this was the end, he only said that it was up to us if this was really the end ;-) Of course they returned, Darrin with a new black shirt and played, well, I don't know what. Darrin told us that he wondered who recognised the song... that it was a defamiliarized version of a song originally by the Eurythmics: The City Never Sleeps (improvisional). I really would like to know if anyone recognised this song ;-) It was followed by Lonely One taken from the "Strange Romance" album. The first encore-set was finished by The Influence, an older song from the album bearing the same name and one of my favourites.

After new 'encore'-shouts from the audience they returned a second time - Darrin with a Tito & Tarantula-T-shirt - and invited Sara Noxx on stage. Someone out of the audience shouted: ' Hey, Anne Clark', but Darrin answered with 'No, Sara Noxx'. It's really unfair, somehow... but when she sounds like Anne Clark??? Somehow it's also a compliment ;-) Anyway, then we experienced the climax:a cover of Je t'aime sung by this French singer, whose name I always forget. Ingenious!! Darrin - about the size of Sara - was on his knees before her, who raised her eyebrows, made funny noises and who as well as Darrin, showed her abilities as an actress. Although she seemed to be a little bit shy at the beginning of the concert;-)

A furious end after about 2 hours at  00:05 h, which also the audience accepted, because after this, nothing else would have been appropriate; an ingenious ending to a successful concert.

Thanx to Darrin for the setlist

                                                                                                         Anja Tewes, 1998