WHAT IS A HUMAN

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Announcement: I am glad to announce that a new EP entitled BARDO SISTERS & BROTHERS will be released on Bandcamp and some other selected platforms except Spotify in February 2026.

Timeline of EP release:

Oct-Dec 2025 Mixing / Mastering
Jan 2025 Pre-release: Bandcamp
Feb 2025 Release: Concerts in Austria, Netherlands hopefully in Georgia

About the lyrics

My lyrics emerge from the interaction between rather spontaneous thoughts and a critical examination of them. I create melodies in my head, which I initially develop spontaneously, then refine more critically.

As with all spontaneous expressions, the lyrics naturally revolve around personal matters, but due to the critical impression of a social disintegration or illness, they also involve political conflicts. The more I examine them, the more personal and less political they become. I see the personal and the political converging in a dance or struggle within the individual’s perception, and my language is the major obstacle preventing me from becoming aware of the precise boundaries between them. Perhaps this is also the state of the current collective psyche. However, since I certainly possess less competence as a social observer than as a musician, I leave much suspended in the tension between personal and collective logos and pathos. This liminal state also corresponds to the title: Bardo. Sisters and brothers are my sisters and brothers – those who share this tension. Bardo is a Buddhist concept for the intermediate, transitional, or liminal state between death and rebirth.

Some of the lyrics on this EP deal with falsehood and exposure, others with religious needs and self-knowledge, still others with romantic love, the puer aeternus syndrome, mass movements and projections, as well as the general disorientation of modern humans. Ultimately, my aim is to sharpen honesty and self-awareness rather than distract from them, although I can’t claim to be particularly successful at this. I still find it a necessary and rewarding process, one in which something within myself sometimes shifts.

The band What Is A Human was founded in 2023 in The Hague and Vienna. As with the first album, I personally wrote, recorded, arranged, and produced everything. The debut album, “What Is A Human” (vinyl), was released last year, and now an EP.

Lineup:

Felician Honsig-Erlenburg: Songwriting, Arrangement, Recording, Vocals, Synthesizer, Drums, Tenor Saxophone, Flute.

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