The horror came on the way back. They had met their manager in Munich, who wanted to introduce them to a woman from a larger music publisher. But that didn’t happen – and so they sat back on the S-Bahn, back to the house where all the musicians in the band live together, a band commune. On the bench across the way sat a weird guy, a bald guy in a worn branded suit and an eye patch. He stared at the musicians, not taking his eyes off them until they got out. Even in their home town, they felt as if they were being watched. “And a short time later someone suddenly appeared out of nowhere. A beefy guy with a bomber jacket and sunglasses.” Welcome to the band history of The Holy Loneliness Collective.
For a few months, the story of this band has been appearing on Instagram, a series of drawn images, a graphic novel on social media. It is the story of a Munich band, as one can conclude from individual episodes. Musicians who, however, nobody in the Munich music scene knows – even though some concert organizers and music critics follow the band on social media. Nobody has ever seen a concert by The Holy Loneliness Collective seen. Does this formation even exist? And who is behind it? A search for clues that leads from Bavaria to northern Germany.
A link on Instagram takes you to the band’s Spotify page, at least three songs can be heard there. Emotional piano pop, the acoustic guitar kept in the background, as well as the strings, a bit of synthesizer, subtle drums. Catchy, but nothing for the big concert stage or format radio. The songs are about sadness, mistakes, about Mariupol – everything is performed in dialect, the finest Upper Bavarian. Bayern pop. Could fit.
The musician Christoph Klinger lives in Hamburg. There he feels the “homeland longing of the exiled Bavarian,” he says.
(Photo: Ingo Stahl)
If you search the internet The Holy Loneliness Collective, you will quickly find what you are looking for on the US online platform Substack: “The story of a band on the way to inevitable world fame”, it says – the stories are told in episodes and sent as a newsletter to all subscribers. And the editorial takes you to Christoph Klinger, the “creative mind behind The Holy Loneliness Collective”. He writes all the lyrics, composes and produces the music. Klinger is a professional musician, pianist, composer and producer. A phone call in Hamburg, in his studio.
Does the band even exist? “That’s an interesting question,” says Christoph Klinger. “In the virtual space, she exists in a way. She has social media profiles, you can interact with her, listen to the music, follow the story. There’s just no equivalent in the physical world.”
Klinger was born in Tegernsee in 1983 and grew up in Rosenheim. He has had piano lessons since he was six and played in bands in his youth. After graduating from high school, he studied philosophy in Tübingen and moved to Hamburg in 2011 – not primarily as a philosopher, he wanted to see “if I could get by there as a musician”. Since then he has had his studio in Hamburg, working with musicians like Alin Coen and Fynn Kliemann. He arrived a long time ago, but what remains is the “homeland longing of the exiled Bavarian,” he says. And so he brought a piece of Upper Bavaria to Hamburg with his “Heart Music”.
“The only thing that gets us out of our dark musings, at least for a few hours, is making music together.” “The Holy Loneliness Collective” in the fireplace room.
(Photo: Franziska Blinde)
“It must somehow be possible to remove the brand from Till’s cheek.”
(Photo: Franziska Blinde)
But without the opportunity to go to concerts, it’s difficult to draw attention to yourself and your music. That leaves the social media – but Christoph Klinger can’t do much with that because of the self-portrayal that is required of artists there. And ultimately, it was precisely this dislike that gave him the idea of a band graphic novel. His approach: “It’s better to tell a fictional story right away. And a band with different characters and the resulting conflicts is simply better for an exciting story.”
Franziska Blinde studied illustration in Hamburg. When Christoph Klinger saw her drawings, he knew he wanted to work with her.
(Photo: Philipp Kruse)
The readers have the opportunity to influence the course of the story – and thanks to the drawings by Franziska Blinde an exciting fantasy story is created here that goes far beyond the music. If the individual band members are introduced at the beginning, the whole thing gets its own momentum. In the library – a room that nobody else ever enters – suddenly there is a small book on the table with a mysterious message on the open page. There are occult signs, nocturnal ghosts, hallucinations caused by mushrooms collected in the forest, the syndicate – and then these shady characters, on the train, in the hometown: “Since yesterday there has unfortunately been another chapter in this whole unfortunate story. Till was in the evening cycled to the hardware store for firewood. When he came back he was badly beaten up. Dirty and muddy, he hobbled in the door. His face was puffy and somehow asymmetrical, his lip was split, bright red blood ran down his chin. And on that an ugly black mark on the right cheek, almost like a brand.”
How it goes on? The next newsletter will come in a few days.