ZAHN
ZAHN sound like infrastructure waking up — a humming, pressure-driven force shaped by Berlin’s underground. Formed by Chris Breuer (HEADS., ex–The Ocean Collective), Nic Stockmann (HEADS., ex–Eisenvater) and Felix Gebhard (Muff Potter, live Einstürzende Neubauten, live Tocotronic), the trio channel decades of experimentation into something both industrial and instinctive. Their debut ZAHN (2021, Crazysane Records) carved out a vocabulary of propulsion and abrasion, while Adria (2023, Crazysane Records) expanded that blueprint into starker, more cinematic terrain where krautrock momentum, dark jazz atmosphere, noise-rock grit, post-punk pulse and electronic undercurrents collide. Their forthcoming new album (February 2026, Crazysane Records) pushes this architecture further, tightening the tension and sharpening the emotional voltage running through it.
What makes ZAHN so compelling is the way their music suggests movement even in stillness. Breuer’s bass rumbles like an engine underfoot, Stockmann’s rhythms pivot with mechanical precision, and Gebhard’s textures blur the boundary between clarity and corrosion. Working from visual prompts — imagined structures, shifting terrains — they build tracks that feel like corridors or landscapes rather than songs. Patterns tighten, grooves bend under pressure, and tension accumulates with a kind of cold, deliberate patience. It is instrumental music that draws you inward, less performed than constructed around you.
WHAT TO EXPECT
A ZAHN performance feels like stepping inside a vast, waking mechanism. Frequencies gather at floor level, rhythms lock with mechanical inevitability, and flashes of texture sweep across the room like signals from an unseen grid. The momentum rises slowly but relentlessly, pulling everyone into the same deep, physical current. When the final surge collapses, the silence that follows feels altered — dense, charged, as if the air itself is still vibrating with what just passed through.
