Hailing from Berlin, we find two liminal, creative figures, committing themselves to nostalgic synth-pop and haunting, obscure new wave references. In fact, there’s almost a timeless quality to them, a quality that’s very representative of the artistic force behind Slate Blue. Formed by Dr. Stef Huber and Dr. Hardy Smieszek, the talented duo favours gloomy synth arpeggios, nocturne textures and striking drum machine grooves, with Huber’s evocative and luscious vocals providing the perfect counterpoint.
‘Crossroads’ is their debut single, the perfect example of what we just declared above. Packed with aural charisma, the piece is also quite catchy and relatable, echoing an empowering, fierce state of mind that’s hard to ignore. Taken from the duo’s forthcoming album ‘The Fragile Order’, ‘Crossroads’ provides a deep look into Slate Blue’s ghostly, otherworldly character, one that’s vintage-lenient, yet fully placed in modernity.
Intrigued by the project, we caught up with the German duo to learn more about their artistry and future goals… Interview below!
Hey Slate Blue, how is it going? Thanks for chatting with us! You have just released your debut effort, a striking and haunting synthwave/synth-pop jewel steeped in sonic nostalgia. First of all, I’d love to know what motivated you to set up the project and release music in the first place. Can you take us through it?
Hardy Smieszek: For my part, I’ve been making music since I was 6 years old. I learned to play the accordion, later the keyboard and in 1998 I started making electronic music and producing my own tracks. Having someone with whom I can make music has been my dream ever since, having someone who shares the same love for making music. I have always wanted to professionally produce a song or even an album and release it to the public. With the release of our first track and album at the end of the year, I can rightly say that a childhood dream is coming true for me.
Stef Huber: Like Hardy, I learned to play my first instrument – the organ – at 6 years old and wrote my first song when I was roughly 10. The first singing lessons I took were during my teenage years. I went a bit off track learning how to sing opera and only reoriented myself towards pop in recent years. Music has always been an essential part of my life, but it has only been recently that I rediscovered the importance of being a part-time singer/songwriter and getting an album out – call it an epiphany or mid-life crisis, if you will (laughs).
Taking a cue from the previous question, I guess it’s pretty empowering to express yourself through an artistic medium. Were you both always in love with music making? Did you take part in any past projects? If you haven’t mentioned it yet, how did you two first meet?
Hardy Smieszek: As I said, making music is kinda part of my DNA (laughs). I was always in love with music, of course. Starting with the early electro and eurodance hits of the early 90s, I discovered the beauty of the 80s music pretty late and especially the ingenuity that lies behind it. In 1998, I started learning how to make my own music. With very simple equipment only (my keyboard and a MIDI programming tool), I produced my first own techno/eurodance tracks. It was mostly about discovering on my own how music works – how it is structured, how to arrange a song, how to create tension and use different instruments and synths that harmonise together. I oriented myself very much in the techno tracks that came out in the late 90s, early 2000s. This way, I created two albums that were never released, of course, because it’s very experimental stuff and very badly produced (laughs out loud).
After 2001, I took a long break until 2010, when I discovered the DAW Reason, and this multiplied my possibilities and with that my creativity a thousandfold. I started working on a third album when I met Stef at work in 2010 and we immediately got along pretty well and discovered our passion for music. I showed her what I was doing, she saw the potential and from that moment on we made our tracks together. This was also the time we recorded our first three tracks in the studio, which we never published. In 2012 the project somehow fell asleep until 2023, when Stef started again to make music herself. Finally, in 2024, we reunited as Slate Blue.
Before we jump into the specifics behind ‘Crossroads’, let’s take a look at the city you call home, Berlin. We all know that’s an incredibly creative and electronic-driven place. Was there a particular artist, local scene, or venue that inspired you to develop the Slate Blue project? Do you feel as though your music would be different if you weren’t living in Berlin?
Hardy Smieszek: I would say my music would be different if I hadn’t met Stef (laughs). So I would say it’s definitely influenced by the huge electronic scene here in Berlin and the proximity to Berlin. My passion is Techno/House music, and I also play a DJ set here and there. In the late 90s, the Berlin Loveparade inspired me a lot (though I’ve unfortunately never been to one) and the DJs associated with it – Dr Motte, Westbam. But also DJs like Paul van Dyk, the very early David Guetta before he became commercial (Stef laughs) and especially the later Berlin DJs like Paul Kalkbrenner, Marusha, Oliver Koletzki, Oliver Schories, later also Jan Blomqvist – I can’t name them all. There are a lot.
But there is one special act that is not from Berlin but from Australia that has inspired me a lot in recent years and I admire their music and style – Rüfüs du Sol. If you listen carefully you can also hear some references to their music in our songs.
Besides that, with Stef I also share the passion for the 80s, especially Depeche Mode but also other synthwave acts from that time. Kraftwerk, for example, as the pioneers of electronic music. I am very much impressed by the unique sound those bands created back then, especially how Depeche Mode managed to stay successful and always relevant within the British music scene. This is something that you don’t see very often, especially in recent years.
At last, ‘Crossroads’. Marking your debut effort, the piece is fierce and nostalgic, even partly industrial as I see it. There is a lot of hard-hitting energy in it. Does the ‘synth-pop’ label feel close to what you do? Will your future releases be similar?
Hardy Smieszek: Most definitely yes! Of course, there will be songs that differ a bit in style, as we are trying a lot of different things. For example, ‘Coffee, Black’ is more of a summer dance track, and ‘Greener’ – our featuring with S.P.Y. – honours old-school rap. That said, the style of the first album will be mostly like ‘Crossroads’.
Stef Huber: We simply like to bathe in the nostalgic, desire-driven and dark sound of the 80s, and we love to play around with synths and especially arpeggiators. Nothing is more satisfying than exploring different arpeggiator patterns! So be sure, you will get more of this! Although the unreachable Depeche Mode is the biggest inspiration for us, and for me personally, Dave’s voice is the guide to my own vocal expression, you will find references to other artists, as Hardy mentioned: Rüfüs du Sol, but also Röyksopp, Goldfrapp – and the occasional Harry Styles or Christian Marchi with Fast Cars and Superstars (laughs); or the soundtrack of Super Mario Brothers with ‘Greener’, which will be released in August.
From a lyrical standpoint, what does ‘Crossroads’ mean to you? What should the listeners take away from it?
Stef Huber: ‘Crossroads’ is a song that can be taken quite literally (in contrast to some of our other upcoming releases). You are standing at a crossroads and you need to decide: The safe, known path or the unknown, risky one, the ‘one less travelled’? ‘Crossroads’ is a reference to Robert Frost’s famous poem. It is a plea for taking a risk, exploring the unknown, and just trusting (mostly yourself) that it all will turn out well in the end. This, too, reflects how I personally go through life: with the courageous spirit of a discoverer and explorer of the world. I prefer to choose the unknown, risky path over the known one, the one everyone else goes on. And I want to encourage everyone to have a bit more courage in their lives. This is by the way also what my main profession is: I am an executive coach supporting leaders in leaving their comfort zone and unfolding their full potential.
Take us through your creative process; do you usually work and write together? Do you have any favourite synths or drum machines?
Hardy Smieszek: Most of the time Stef is the creative part behind our songs, coming up with lyric lines and melodies from nothing – there’s a lot of music in her, I think (laughs). Then she either plays it with chords on the keyboard and sings to it, or she improvises a lot, already putting her ideas in Reason and making a basic demo with several vocals and a selection of instruments. I then take over on Reason and arrange a whole song out of that. Maybe I’ll add synths here and there, try some other melodies and come up with the general structure of the song based on the parts Stef already provided.
Sometimes – and this was the case with ‘Crossroads’ – I request missing parts. In that case, there was no verse in the beginning, but Stef created an intro that worked very well as a verse when arranging it, so I used it for that. Step by step, the whole song emerges, and Stef works on the lyrics and perfects them in the end. At the beginning, we mostly work with dummy text.
Stef Huber: So true! We are basically following what David Bowie has described before: In the beginning, the deeper meaning is never there. It emerges through the creative process, often only at the end, after finishing the song.
I do have a lot of music in me – well said (laughs)! I basically come up with song snippets all the time, here and there, everywhere and I immediately need to record them, otherwise they are gone. Strangely enough, I do not have a ‘musical memory’ – I can hardly remember melodies, even for our own songs, and I struggle to know how they start or what the refrain sounds like. I do need to listen to the song again to remember it! Hardy’s brain works way better in this regard! He even remembers how a song transformed from the beginning to the end – believe me, I have no clue!
Hardy and I really complement each other greatly! I couldn’t have wished for a better partner on this joint journey! As he said, I usually come up with song fragments – never complete – an intro, a verse, and I also try to engineer the mood of the song in Reason – meaning I give it a basic instrumentation that reflects the atmosphere and mood I want to convey. Without this, it is hard for others to understand and feel the song.
One thing I want to add, though: While this setup works perfectly for us, each one of us can do the full process from start to end ourselves. Meaning: Hardy and I have both written songs on the upcoming album that are from start to end out of one hand: ‘Soaked’ is solely out of my hands, and ‘Total Stranger’ is solely out of Hardy’s hands.
Artistically speaking, what challenges have the last two years presented you with?
Hardy Smieszek: As we only reunited last December, I would say there are 3 challenges so far. First: To get started again together. Second: To recycle stuff that we have lying around from 2012 into something that fits our current style and requirements. Third: Especially for me, freeing up time besides my full-time job and family.
Stef Huber: I feel like another challenge of ours was to select the songs for the first album, and the challenge still persists. You need to know: We have a repository of more than 30 songs, all in different phases of development. And we need to pick the ones with the most potential. This is almost like deciding who’s your favourite child of the 30 that you have?! Almost impossible.
What are the next steps for your project? Anything exciting on the horizon?
Hardy Smieszek: Yes, a lot. As mentioned, we are planning to release a full album at the end of the year. We’ll do it with a step-by-step approach, meaning that we will release one track of the album every 3-4 weeks. And after that – let’s see where it gets us. We will definitely take a longer break afterwards, but then there might be some ideas already in the drawer for the next album…
Stef Huber: Adding to this, for our first album we not only plan to release the songs, but also a few music videos. Right now, we are preparing the first video for Run, which is the next song on our release list, but we are already generating some ideas for the next videos, featuring some creative artist collaborations from Dubai! So to wrap up: Nothing but excitement on the horizon! Stay tuned for everything that’s coming your way! Whoop whoop!
