Formula Indie Sessions _ Interview with Barbonus
What is your earliest memory connected to music?
Probably sitting on the carpet next to a radio that always hissed a little.
I didn’t understand the songs, but I liked the space they created.
If I’m honest, I cared about the hiss as much as the music — not in a Poltergeist way, just that the medium and the song always felt like one thing to me.
The sound around the music mattered as much as the notes.
How did your passion for creating music begin?
It started long before I understood what I was doing. I grew up in a small village in the Black Forest, and because not much happened there, I began writing things down — little stories, lines in shaky English, usually with my mother’s Cassell’s dictionary open next to me.
At fifteen I ended up in a school band almost by chance. I could barely play guitar, but I wrote all the lyrics. We rehearsed in a classroom in 1996 and recorded four songs on a borrowed cassette deck. I still have that tape.
A year later I left the band because I didn’t feel like a real musician. I focused on poems and short stories instead.
Funny enough, many of today’s songs still grow out of those early texts.
What’s the story behind your current music project?
It’s simply where writing and music finally came together. I spent years focused on poetry and short stories, and many of those early texts never really left me. At some point they began turning into songs — not planned, more like a natural shift.
So the project became a space where fragments can grow into something musical.
Some songs start with a line from the late 90s, others with a thought I had yesterday.
I’m not trying to write for algorithms — I’m trying to catch the things I don’t want to lose.
How would you describe your sound to someone who has never heard your music before?
I’d call it minimal, melodic electro-pop — songs with a quiet pulse, clear vocals, and enough space to breathe. I’m drawn to textures that feel atmospheric but still emotional, something between electronic and human.
Most of my Barbonus tracks live in that world: warm synths, beats that move without pushing too hard, and a production style that stays simple on purpose.
Some tracks lean more into a late-night, electronic pulse, while others stay slower and more reflective.
I also write in other constellations — BC25, which is very intimate and close-miked, and Klarstein.rocks, which is more playful and rooted in German lyrics — but Barbonus sits somewhere else: electronic, melodic, a bit atmospheric, and always focused on the moment rather than the spectacle.
If you like songs that breathe a little, that’s probably where mine land.
What is one thing you’ve learned that completely changed the way you make music?
That trying to fix a song can make you lose the thing that made it alive.
When I started working with the cassette fragments my late friend recorded in 1984, I spent years trying to “restore” every wobble and drop-out. Eventually I realised the imperfections were part of the truth — the feeling was already there in the first moment.
Since then, I’ve learned to stop earlier and listen more.
Working with Vela — my duo partner in BC25 — reinforced that shift; she has a way of recognising when a take is still breathing. That changed a lot for me.
What tools, instruments, or software are essential in your creative process?
I try to keep my setup simple.
A clear microphone, a clean preamp, a quiet room — the room matters most. I sketch ideas on a small MIDI keyboard and work in a DAW with just a few trusted plug-ins. Too many options make me lose the thread.
For electronic tracks I use soft synths and a bit of tape-style movement.
And when I’m working with old cassette material from the mid-80s or from 1996, I use modern restoration tools that can separate and clarify sounds in ways that weren’t possible before. They don’t change the music; they just help me hear what was already there.
Most of the time, though, the essential tool is still the note I wrote down before touching any gear.
Which indie artist or song are you loving right now?
Honestly, I’ve been listening to a lot of quiet, atmospheric stuff — Agnes Obel, Daughter, Novo Amor. They all have this way of letting a song breathe without losing the emotion, and that always pulls me in.
And then there are these smaller indie-electronic artists I keep stumbling across — people who build a whole mood with just a few sounds. Nothing big or polished, just something that makes you stop for a second.
I like music that leaves a bit of room. It stays with me longer.
How have your personal experiences influenced your music and artistic vision?
A lot of what I write comes from small things — moments that stayed with me for reasons I sometimes only understand years later.
I’ve moved a few times, lost people, kept old notebooks, and held onto lines I wrote when I was a teenager in the Black Forest. All of that finds its way into the songs, not directly, but in the way I listen.
I think my music is shaped more by memory than by events. I tend to collect fragments — a sentence, a sound, a feeling — and later they turn into something musical.
It’s less about telling my story and more about catching the atmosphere around it.
What emotions or messages do you hope listeners take from your work?
I don’t really think in terms of messages.
If anything, I hope the songs give people a quiet place to stand for a moment — some kind of pause. My music is fairly minimal, so there’s room for listeners to bring their own feelings to it. Every now and then someone tells me what a song meant to them, and that’s the part that stays with me.
Recently a listener wrote under Lines I Never Sent that it was “truly beautiful and meaningful” and that they were glad they’d found it.
That matters to me — not the numbers, just the feeling that a song found the right person at the right time. If the music feels honest and a little warm, then it’s doing its job.
What’s the most important lesson music has taught you so far?
To listen before trying to fix anything.
Whether it’s an old cassette fragment or a new idea, the first version usually knows what the song wants to be. If you push too hard, you lose it.
Music also taught me patience — the kind where you wait for something to reveal itself instead of forcing it.
And that honesty lasts longer than perfection, even if you only realise it much later.
What is a dream venue or festival you would love to perform at?
I’m not really a big-stage person. I’d probably choose a small theatre or an old cinema — somewhere with warm sound and people who actually listen.
There’s something about intimate rooms that makes the music feel closer to where it began.
A quiet space, good acoustics, no rush… that would be ideal.
And if it has old wooden seats or a slightly fading screen, even better.
If you could collaborate with any artist, past or present, who would it be and why?
I’ve always admired artists who leave room in their work — people who don’t fill every corner just because they can. Leonard Cohen comes to mind, not because I could ever match him, but because of the way he treated a line: patiently, quietly, with no need to explain everything.
But I’m also drawn to the idea of working with someone completely unknown — someone who has a handful of fragments on an old tape and no big story around them. There’s something honest in that.
For me, it’s less about the name and more about the conversation the music creates.
Where can our listeners follow and support your music? (Website,Spotify, IG, links)
You can find me on the usual places:
Instagram: @barbonuslyrics
TikTok: @barbonus_project
Spotify & SoundCloud: Barbonus
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/Barbonus
If you enjoy the quiet, electronic side of things, that’s where it all ends up.
Looking toward the future, what’s your dream for the next chapter of your musical journey?
I’d like to keep working in a way that feels natural.
The Barbonus tracks appear on their own — small electronic ideas that grow at their own pace. And with Klarstein.rocks I can write in German, be more playful, try things that wouldn’t fit elsewhere. There are a few recordings from the ’96 session I’d like to restore someday, too.
BC25 was supposed to be a closed chapter — just the eighteen fragments from a tape my late friend recorded in 1984. We never planned more than that.
But while working on those songs, something opened up in the way Vela and I created together. I’ve already written a few ideas that could belong to that world, even though she doesn’t know about them yet — she’s on tour with another band at the moment.
So my dream is simple: that we find our way back into a room at some point and see if that space still exists.
If it does, I’d like to follow it a little further.
If not, that’s okay too. The music will tell us.
What do you hope listeners will discover about you along the way?
Maybe that I don’t chase perfection — I just try to catch the moments that feel real.
If listeners sense that, I’m happy.
