London, 2026​

 

During this interview, I swap seats with another artist and ask the questions I wish I were asked. Today, I meet German musician Tom Blankenberg following the release of his third album le son.

 

Tom, tell us again about yourself. 

 

Thank you for having me again. Since we had a conversation about me already in 2021, I guess I will keep it brief and bring up the things that happened after that. I am now — five years later and fifty-six years old — still a musician, audio engineer and sound designer from Düsseldorf, Germany, with a growing interest in filmmaking and also writing. But at the moment I am kind of struggling. Since the pandemic years, my creativity has increased very much, but it feels like my output has decreased. There are so many projects I am working on, mainly video and art projects, and so very few that have been released in recent years. I would like to work on that challenge and start finishing stuff and releasing it. My upcoming album Le Son might be an important step in that direction. It is the most important collection of music that I have been working on over the last couple of years.

 

Tell us about the le son, your latest release.

 

"Am Algorithmus vorbei geschrieben: composed by missing the algorithm." I do not know if this translation from German to English gets the point, but that is the way I feel. I composed the album just going my way. And by doing so, accidentally ignoring the algorithm completely. In 2022, I began working on my third solo piano album with the intention that it should be solely about the music. No concept, no guiding theme, no album narrative. I was tired of the industry's album-story-mechanisms. My driving force was: "Making music for the sake of making music." And so "le son pour le son" (French for “sound for sound’s sake”), the planned album title, was a deliberate nod to Théophile Gautier’s concept of "l’art pour l’art" ("art for art’s sake"). But it wasn't that simple. The album took on a life of its own. And it took its time. Fast forward to 2026. It is still only about music, but I realised just how much the present reality, the status quo of making music today, had manifested in my head and heart. And so, while working on them, these pieces took the liberty of having an attitude of their own. After four years of composing and arranging — following initial recording sessions and long periods of letting the material rest — music emerged that, by all rights, should not exist. At least not according to the standards of an efficient music-exploitation machine. The eight pieces were composed, in a sense, by bypassing the algorithm. Music that defies listening habits. Streaming-service suicide. Too long, with unnecessary intros. Featuring pieces that consist of just two chords for what feels like an eternity, or pieces where no single chord is heard a second time. With long, near-silent passages and titles/names that hint at nothing, that no one can remember, and that get lost in search engines. I guess, Spotify radicalised me! And I could not be happier. To me, this is what music feels like when it is not trying to sell you something. It relies on the listener's free will. This is somehow an interesting and also an important part and aspect to me, since I was working on audio projects in the advertising industry for a long time. And with this act of economic disobedience, "le son" becomes an exercise in "listening to music for the sake of listening to music."

 

What are some of your artistic and musical influences, and how do you feel they have impacted you?

 

My most recent influences are very personal. It feels like I influenced myself. The main influence and driver of my music today is not a composer, a genre or an art form. It is my confidence in my music. I am very confident in the way to do the music and the projects I do. It took me some time to get there but now I am here. I feel safe and also free with it. That is something that I just recently discovered about me. And it feels like a superpower. But of course there are still thousands of doubts left that I struggle with. But if you asked about external influences, I can surely name Ryuichi Sakamoto, for example, and Japanese culture in general.

And I am very influenced by the numerous encounters and interactions with a lot of musicians and composers I had the pleasure to share the stage with or to work with, like with you, Doug, on the X compilation album. All of this I could not have imagined fifteen years ago, when I started this path into my music. So, thank you. You are a part of it.

 

How would you describe your creative process?

 

I do not know how to describe it. When I finished composing a piece and I look back, I almost never could tell how I did it. It feels like the piece is telling me what to do. The start may be a mood or mathematical structure I lay out on the keys or some letters or initials, but once I start working more on a piece, it takes over control.

I am the tool, the piece is the master. “Dahlem”, for example, started on a broken piano. When playing the G, the G-flat was also being hit and sounding. That was the starting point. Then the piece took over and I do not have any memory of composing it. I do not have any memories of deciding what to do, but maybe a few of deciding what not to do…

 

Tell us about the other activities that you do — running a record label, being a filmmaker etc. — and how these influence your work as a musician. 

 

I am running a record label with my brother and two friends of mine — Less Records. It is mainly made for our own music.

My brother and the other ones are more interested in guitar-driven music and we also have ties to Düsseldorf electronic musicians, so it is a pretty unfocused and varied label. Besides that, I am making music videos and films. Fully independent, short documentaries about the music and art scene here in Düsseldorf.

But the one big film is not finished yet. I told you in 2021 about a short-movie-trilogy… that idea changed a lot. It is more like short-movie-octology now or more…

I am constantly shooting stuff meant to be in one big movie at the end. A lot of editing is still to do. But two chapters are already finished and also out: the THE PIANOWL short film and the SLAS music video. And besides that, I have been running a festival for 10 years now, the Piano Days Düsseldorf, a short film cinema row called Düsseldorf Indie Shorts with films by directors coming from this area, I am starting a new concert concept this year hosting concerts with a big and clear focus on also talking about the music, and I am also having a radio show with my Less Records colleagues. And I am secretly working on a book with short stories. These are the reasons why I am so slow in releasing albums.

 

What is it that excites you the most about being a musician in our time and age?

 

I am happy that I found something that I love so much and that I feel confident in. That is so, so good. And it kept me alive and helped me stay sane. That is an important part in our time and at my age. But trying to get heard today and find a place in the music industry itself is a hard business and maybe too hard for me. Adding streaming policies and AI to that… I am often very frustrated. Performing live is a lovely counterbalance to that streaming-AI-frustration, but getting gigs is also not that easy. So exhaustion is part of the game of making music today. But I make music because I cannot not do it. And I realise when I sit at the piano all pain seems to go.

 

So after le son what’s next?

 

le son took years to complete and I wrote many more pieces in that period. Soon to be released, I hope, with a slightly different approach. And the film and the book and some audio/video art are coming too. Someday…

 

Thanks very much Tom. A last one for the road — one book, one album, one film —, tell us about your latest cultural findings?

 

Book: I recently enjoyed the book Die Ausweichschule (The Emergency School) by Kaleb Erdmann, a young German author. It is about coping with a shooting at a German school. Sounds hard and depressing, but it is more. Album: Ruth Maine, Found Keys. It is a lovely album with an interesting artist released in 2025 on Sonic Pieces. Film: After Sun by Charlotte Wells and Perfect Days by Wim Wenders came to my mind directly. And in addition, one very special short film. Haulout by Maxim Germanowitsch Arbugajew and Jewgenija Germanowna Arbugajewa. This one got me. I saw the film at a Film Festival being fully unprepared and uninformed about it. And I was totally blown away. And that’s the way everyone should see it. Do not read the synopsis, do not watch the trailer, avoid looking at the thumbnail. Ask someone to find it, download it and prepare the player for you and then see it on a big screen with proper sound.

 

Drawing on Blankenberg’s words, le son emerges as a meditation on music for music’s sake; a quiet act of economic disobedience where sound, silence and space converge, leaving behind the expectations of the algorithm and allowing the music to exist entirely on its own terms. Read my review of le son.