Name: Hope
Members: Christine Börsch-Supan (vocals), Phillip Staffa (guitars), Martin Knorz (keyboards, synths), Fabian Hönes (drums)
Interviewee: Christine Börsch-Supan
Nationality: German
Current release: Hope's Navel is out via Haldern Pop.   
Recommendations: I just finished the book Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. It’s sincere, funny, bad-ass, and utterly and deeply touching.
And then, the Siluetas by Ana Mendieta, works of art, in which she placed her body into the landscape, sometimes sand, sometimes grass, sometimes stone, and left the imprint there, which would change over time and eventually dissolve.

If you enjoyed this Hope interview and would like to keep up to date with the band and their music, visit their official homepage. They are also on Instagram, Facebook, twitter, and Soundcloud.  



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

I have a physical full-body response. It`s similar to jumping into water and being surrounded by it.

When I listen with eyes closed this feeling is more intense.

What were your very first steps in music like and how would you rate the gains made through experience - can one train/learn being an artist?

Yes, one can definitely train, and I love the things learned and revelations I had from training and practicing.

The first intuitive, naive responses were in early childhood, singing along with children’s tapes, listening to them over and over again, performing them together with my siblings.

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

I started by (re-)discovering singing then, joining our school’s theatre group and our school’s big band.

It opened up a whole new possibility to what my life could be and how I could feel like. It meant the world to me.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and what motivates you to create?

The motivation to create is, again, a very physical feeling, almost like hunger. I just need to make something.

Sometimes it will be an urge for sound, sometimes words, sometimes this hunger for jumping into that water of sound. I always try to create that big water with our music.

To quote a question by the great Bruce Duffie: When you come up with a musical idea, have you created the idea or have you discovered the idea?

I discover the idea. Most of the ideas have been cooking or lying somewhere, and in the moment I discover them, sort of hover up to the surface.

Paul Simon said “the way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics - my first impression is of the overall sound.” What's your own take on that and how would you define your personal sound?

It’s special to listen to my own music because I can hardly switch off the critical ear while doing that. But nevertheless, I always look for that jump-into-the-water-feeling.

On the good days I get it, and it makes me really content.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

I am in the countryside in Southern France right now, surrounded by a 360 degree sound landscape of birds, insects, wind, animal cries, sometimes rain, sometimes thunderstorm. Oftentimes I close my eyes and realize how much it calms and fulfills me.

I don’t think of music while doing this, but every time I am aware of the sheer beauty of it.

From very deep/high/loud/quiet sounds to very long/short/simple/complex compositions - are there extremes in music you feel drawn to and what response do they elicit?

It very much depends on my mood or on my momentary need. I love the physicality of a deep bass.

These last days I have enjoyed lightness though, high-tuned percussions and 80-ies synths got me hooked.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of one of your pieces, live performances or albums that's particularly dear to you, please?

“Shame:” Phillip wrote a guitar riff. This evoked one very particular memory in me, and I started writing the lyrics. Then put melody to these lyrics, which then again changed the form of Phillips riff.



I took that outline of a song into rehearsal, and then everybody of us four created their own parts to the music, making the song whole together.

Do you conduct “experiments” or make use of scientific insights when you're making music?

In Hope, we're always searching for an overall balance of how we make use of the sound spectrum from high to low, and how we distribute these frequencies between the four of us.

Maybe that is somehow scientific, always trying to figure out this equilibrium.

How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

I think music has oftentimes allowed me to live aspects of myself or my life that elsewhere were hard to live out fully.

So I would say, it has been the other way around: making music teaches my things for my life.

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

Making music is just this all-sensoric activity/experience, and, most of the times (!) it makes you inhabit the very immediate moment.

I have experienced that when making a cup of coffee as well. Which are beatuiful moments. I guess, it’s just a matter of the degree of zen, that I am able to be in at any particular moment.

Every time I listen to "Albedo 0.39" by Vangelis, I choke up. But the lyrics are made up of nothing but numbers and values. Do you, too, have a song or piece of music that affects you in a way that you can't explain?

Yes, many. They shift, and come and go, though. Last week I cried, when I listened to Madonna’s “Lucky Star“.

I was driving the car over this beautiful French landscape, and there was a freedom in that music, that flooded me entirely.



If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

I am open to be surprised.

That’s what is so truly beautiful about art, you could have never imagined the things that blow your mind and heart.