Stigmata Presents

Diary Of Dreams

The Electronic Duet

Plus Special Guests

Diary of Dreams is the darkwave project of Adrian Hates, formed in Düsseldorf, Germany in 1989. Built around Hates’ voice, programmed rhythms and guitar, the project became one of the central names in German dark-scene music across albums such as “Cholymelan”, “Bird Without Wings”, “Nigredo” and “Nekrolog 43”. Hates has run the project through its own label, Accession Records, and remained its constant creative centre while the live line-up changed over the years.

Recent Diary of Dreams activity includes the orchestral reworking “Under a timeless Spell” and the “Dead End Dreams” series on Accession. The electronic-duet format adds another live configuration alongside the full band, applied to shows billed specifically as Diary of Dreams – the electronic duet, beginning with the project’s announced 2026 dates.

Diary of Dreams have announced a new live format. Adrian Hates and Felix Wunderer will appear on selected international stages as Diary of Dreams – the electronic duet, focusing on the purely electronic side of the project.

As Adrian Hates comments: “the Electronic Duet” concerts are additional to playing live with the normal line up – NOT a replacement! – I was just sick and tired of not touring anymore in so many territories due to generally rising costs. This is my way of dealing with it. of course you still have a point here: after all, concerts are essential to survive as an artist, by slowly more and more unaffordable for so many of us. dead end dreams.”

The explanation is honest enough. Rising costs for flights, hotels, travel, crew and staff have made some international shows difficult, sometimes impossible, to finance in the usual full-band format. According to Hates, the alternative would be fewer concerts, fewer countries, fewer chances to reach people outside the safer touring routes. So the project is being reduced for certain shows, at least physically. Smaller team, lower costs, more mobility.

What I appreciate about the announcement is that it does not dress the problem up too much. This is not presented as a sudden artistic revelation after decades of misunderstanding. It is necessity. And maybe because it is necessity, the phrase “back to the roots” lands in a more complicated way.

In a sense, yes. Diary of Dreams were never far from electronics. The programming was always there, under the voice, under the drama, under that particular DoD sadness. The band’s early identity was already built around atmosphere, pulse, repetition and a very controlled kind of darkness. Nobody can seriously argue that Diary of Dreams are now discovering machines for the first time.

But still, I hesitate.

For me, Diary of Dreams always worked on several levels at once. Adrian Hates’ voice, of course. That voice is almost a genre in itself: severe, elegant, wounded, commanding without ever becoming theatrical in the cheap sense. Then the lyrics, often more intelligent than the usual dark-scene vocabulary allows, full of inner conflict, accusation, distance, self-observation. But the guitars mattered too. They were not decoration. They gave the songs a body, a pressure, a grain. They stopped the music from becoming too smooth.

That is probably why this news produces mixed feelings. Electronic music is not the problem. It would be absurd to complain about electronics in a scene built on synthesizers, programming and machines. The problem is different. There is a difference between choosing electronic reduction because the songs demand it, and accepting electronic reduction because the economics of touring have become brutal.

Adrian Hates has experimented before. Coma Alliance with Torben Wendt of Diorama opened a different shared space, more collaborative, more cross-pollinated. .com/kill with Gaun:A moved into a colder, more direct electronic form. Some experiments worked better than others, which is normal. What they all showed is that Hates is not an artist trapped inside one fixed arrangement. He can strip things down, bend the language, move sideways from Diary of Dreams and still remain recognisable.

But Diary of Dreams is not just another vehicle. It carries history. It carries the weight of rooms, tours, records, line-ups, arrangements, expectations. It carries that strange bond between programmed melancholy and live force. A Diary of Dreams song can survive in a purely electronic version, yes. The question is whether it changes character when the physical band body is reduced.

And it will change. Of course it will. A live guitarist is not just the guitar sound. A drummer is not just the beat. A musician on stage is movement, friction, timing, small mistakes, resistance, heat. A laptop can carry the arrangement. It can do it cleanly, sometimes more reliably than a tired band in a difficult venue. But it cannot look back at the singer. It cannot push against the room. It cannot make the same kind of risk.

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