Get Well Soon - Séance Tour 2027
In his second album this year, Konstantin Gropper aka GET WELL SOON attempts to integrate AI into the artistic creation process, rather than just condemning it outright. Fortunately, this project has failed, and SÉANCE became an album about, not with, artificial intelligence.
The title hints at it: For Gropper, communicating with ChatGPT, Claude, and others has much in common with summoning spirits. Therefore, the album has quite a ghostly vibe. “SÉANCE is my Gothic album,” he explains. GET WELL SOON's seventh album, Minus The Magic, was released only in May 2026. Some may wonder how Konstantin Gropper could finish a new album, his eighth, just a few months later. Sure, since Amen, released in 2022, some time has passed, enough to gather a stock of material. However, since the Get Well Soon project also celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2026, the idea arose to celebrate this milestone with two albums in one year. Still, the thought that Gropper may have had support is not far-fetched and, interestingly, not wrong. However, the support came from a different corner than one might initially assume.
“I am convinced that artists should not search for themes,” Gropper emphasizes. “The themes should find the artists. And since this theme is ubiquitous and often troubling, I can't possibly avoid it: SÉANCE deals with artificial intelligence.” The album thus documents the experiment of working with a non-human sparring partner, and fortunately, the experiment has failed!
Celebrated as one of the most seasoned songwriters of his generation, known as a multi-instrumentalist and versatile producer, one would certainly not expect Gropper to be on the list of artists who embrace this controversial technology enthusiastically. “Despite the perfectly justified criticism from the music and art scene, it will not help to ignore AI or dismiss it outright. AI is not just going to disappear. So I felt that I needed to confront the topic directly. Also to find (my) stance on it.”
Despite the familiar opulence, SÉANCE could therefore be Gropper's most idiosyncratic album. Perhaps it's due to the kind of support he sought instead of fellow musicians. Unlike Minus The Magic, the last album he recorded live with his band, where he rediscovered his enthusiasm for the sound of his youth. Thus, SÉANCE features only three other musicians besides Konstantin: Verena Gropper (his sister) and Alex Mayr on vocals, as well as drummer Paul Kenny. In mixing, Gropper handed over two songs each to five long-time “partners in crime”: Marcus Wüst, who worked on all Get Well Soon albums; Philipp Schwär, who mixed the first two LPs; Markus Ganter, with whom Gropper produced, among others, Casper's album 'Hinterland' and who also mixed and produced for Get Well Soon; as well as Philipp Hülsenbeck and Fritz Brückner, who have been part of the Get Well Soon tour team as live sound engineers for years. “A small reunion for our anniversary year,” says Gropper.
SÉANCE retains the drama typical of Gropper, especially with his opulent voice. However, it differs significantly in content from its predecessor this year: It feels more pensive, darker, and atmospheric. There is the menacing "Goth 101", the moving "Arthur And Harry", and the explosive "Hallucination No.4". The ghostly "Holiday in Lily Dale", the epic "Nothing Is Lost", and an inspiring shanty, "The Wreck of The Deutschland", not to mention the dark wave-tinged "Siri, What Ruined The West?". There are shorter pieces in between: the nostalgic "Human Potential Advisor", the otherworldly "The Undead Choir", and the cinematic "Khaleesi". The closing tracks display the melancholic atmosphere of "Witness Impact" and the quiet threats of "You Need Me". Gropper himself calls SÉANCE his “Gothic album.”
However, what began as an artistic exploration into the world of technology quickly developed in another direction. Gropper's approach was ultimately shaped by an unexpected but, upon reflection, reassuring realization: “Almost every attempt to leave the creative work to AI led to nothing,” he says. “It only caused me more work. The most interesting results arose from its mistakes. That’s why SÉANCE became an album about AI – and not one made with AI.”
But as the title suggests, SÉANCE is not solely about that. “When you engage with the most debated topic of our time, you always find yourself lagging behind the development. Therefore, it was necessary for me to find a rather unusual perspective.” In SÉANCE, Gropper thus holds the view that artificial intelligence has much more in common with spiritualism than one might assume. “AI is, in the literal sense, a supernatural force,” Gropper explains. “And as such, it inevitably raises the existential questions of philosophy, psychology, and sociology. And that's where it becomes interesting.”
For some, the connection between AI and communication with the dead may seem far-fetched. However, the musician from Upper Swabia has obviously thought this through thoroughly. To support his conviction, he invokes nothing less than the spirit of Jacques Derrida, the French philosopher who coined the term “hauntology” – a combination of “haunting” and ontology.
“I understand it as follows,” Gropper elaborates. “The present is always haunted by the past. Every seemingly new insight carries traces of what preceded it. For me, that is the great contradiction in AI: This technology, which claims to embody the future, can ultimately only draw on the past. It is never literally creative. It is a monster, stitched together from body parts.”
Twenty years after founding GET WELL SOON, Konstantin Gropper is as inspired and powerful as ever: insightful, inventive, an artist who is still just as hungry for ideas as for answers. The intelligence of SÉANCE is anything but artificial, rather it is artistic, witty, challenging, and intoxicating. And unlike AI, of course, simply “the real deal.”
Entry: 19:00
Hallo, ich bin Maya.
