Dana Schechter & Paul Wallfisch

When the team behind the 2021 Viennese premiere of »Die Politiker« – directed by Kay Voges, then artistic director of Vienna’s Volkstheater and now head of Schauspiel Köln – went looking for expert support for the soundtrack, they turned to the two American artists Dana Schechter and Paul Wallfisch.

The pair’s friendship stretches back to the 1990s and has repeatedly resulted in collaborative projects. Paul Wallfisch, for instance, previously contributed to Schechter’s noise project Insect Ark – just one of the many outlets of the bassist, who now lives in Berlin. For more than a quarter of a century, she has been a core figure in a rock and improvisation scene that has always fiercely preserved its marginality. Alongside collaborations with, among others, Wrekmeister Harmonies, she also caused a stir between 2020 and 2025 as part of the no-wave noise icons Swans.

Meanwhile, Wallfisch – in addition to his work as both sideman and bandleader in numerous projects – has built an outstanding reputation as a soundtrack composer. All threads eventually converged at the Viennese theatre, and the results of this special collaboration were released last year as an album titled »The Heart of a Whale«.

What emerges is a post-rock prism that kaleidoscopically fuses deeply resonant drone ambient with fragments of text: raw, dramatic, noisy.
What a piece of theatre.