Diary Of Dreams

Stigmata presents Diary Of Dreams – The Electronic Duet plus special guests at Corporation on 12/03/2027.

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.”

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.

In a sense, Diary Of Dreams were never far from electronics. The programming was always there, under the voice, under the drama, under that particular Diary Of Dreams 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.

For many listeners, Diary Of Dreams work on several levels at once. Adrian Hates’ voice, of course. Then the lyrics, often more thoughtful 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.

Electronic music is not the problem. It would be strange to complain about electronics in a scene built on synthesizers, programming and machines. There is a difference between choosing electronic reduction because the songs demand it, and accepting electronic reduction because the economics of touring have become difficult.

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.

Diary Of Dreams carries history. It carries the weight of rooms, tours, records, line-ups, arrangements, expectations. It carries that bond between programmed melancholy and live force. A Diary Of Dreams song can survive in a purely electronic version. The question is whether it changes character when the physical band body is reduced.

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.

This has been happening for years with drums. Many bands in the darker electronic scene no longer tour with live drums. Some never did, some use hybrid setups, some rely on backing tracks, and in many cases it makes sense. Nobody wants to be naive about money. But now one wonders whether guitars are next. Is this where underground touring is going: two people, a laptop, a few controllers, and the ghost of a full band behind them?

Their announcement is interesting because it says aloud what many artists are probably already calculating in private. How many people can we still afford to take on the road? Which parts of the live sound are essential? Which parts can be programmed? Which parts will the audience miss? Which parts will they accept losing because everyone knows how expensive everything has become?

There is sadness in that. Not melodrama, just sadness. Artists who spent decades building entire musical worlds now have to redesign those worlds around hotel prices, flight routes, fuel costs, crew fees and promoter risk. That is the part that hurts. It is not the laptop. It is the reason the laptop becomes the solution.

Diary Of Dreams have an electronic root. Adrian Hates can stand inside that reduced format without betraying the project. Felix Wunderer is not a random technician added to make the files run. If the duet is carefully shaped, it could become something strong: colder, more intimate, perhaps closer to the skeleton of the songs. Less rock pressure, more nerve. Less full-band drama, more exposed architecture. But if it becomes simply the cheaper version of the full show, people will feel that too.

The important detail is that Diary Of Dreams are not announcing the end of the band. Hates makes it clear that the full line-up continues to exist, and that the duet format applies when the show is billed specifically as Diary Of Dreams – the electronic duet. That distinction matters. It keeps the door open. It says: this is another form, not the final replacement.

The announcement leaves a question hanging over the scene. What do we lose when live music becomes more portable? What do we gain? More countries, more shows, more chances for people to see artists who might otherwise skip their region completely. That matters. But we may also lose some of the human surplus that made concerts feel different from playback with lights.

Maybe the future of underground music will be more modular: full band where possible, electronic duet where necessary, acoustic or semi-acoustic versions when the setting demands it, festival versions, club versions, survival versions. Flexibility can be creative. Limitation can produce focus.

This is not only an artistic turn. It is also a financial wound. And Diary Of Dreams, by speaking about it directly, have given a picture of where live music stands now. Back to the roots, but also forward into a future where even established bands have to travel lighter, count harder, and hope that what remains on stage is still enough to carry the dream.

Words by Karo Kratochwil.