Witte – Glas und Steine — ROMBO Magazine

Witte arrives from Tostedt, a small place near Hamburg where the former electrical store of August Witte still stands. Marvin Burfeind and Kilian Kremer took that space, full of old wood and leftover cables, and began making music there in late 2025. The project carries the grandfather’s name. It carries the quiet of rooms that remember earlier lives. Their songs do not rush. They open slowly, letting atmosphere settle before any demand is made.

“Glas und Steine” is their third release. It continues the line that began with the EP Ich war nur kurz draußen and the single “Vögel.” The track lasts just over two and a half minutes, yet it holds a precise and lingering weight.

The song begins with numbers. “Ein tausend zweihundert und siebzehn Tage ist es her seitdem du mich nicht mehr angerufen hast.” One thousand two hundred and seventeen days have passed since you stopped calling me. Later the count grows colder still: one hundred and five million, one hundred and forty-eight thousand seconds of silence. These figures are not decoration. They form a kind of emotional ledger. The mind tries to master absence by measuring it, turning private ache into data that can be stated out loud. The German compounds land with a particular density. The syllables stack and hold. To a non-German ear the precision feels almost mechanical, a quiet ticking against the softer grain of the voice.

That tension sits at the centre of the music. Atmospheric synths create a wide, slightly cool field. A restrained pulse moves underneath, close to the steady insistence of a clock yet never fully rigid. Kilian Kremer’s vocal stays close and unforced in the verses, almost conversational, then opens in the chorus. The production allows a clearer, more danceable lift there, a summery trace that the earlier singles only suggested. The contrast is deliberate. Rational control against the pull of feeling. Observation against the risk of contact.

The refrain keeps returning to the same command. “Komm mir nicht zu nah.” Do not come too close to me. It is repeated with growing firmness, then undercut by the admission that follows: “Ehrlich, ich vermiss uns beide.” Honestly, I miss us both. The irony in “Fabelhaft für dich, dass das klappt” lands cleanly. Fabulous for you that it works out. The line carries the bitter clarity of someone watching the other person move on while still measuring the distance in seconds.

The central image holds everything. “Das Kleid wie Glas und Steine.” The dress like glass and stones. Fragile enough to see through, hard enough to cut. It is the perfect figure for a defence that has become habitual. Transparent yet sharp. Soft at the surface and unyielding underneath. The song never explains the metaphor further. It simply lets the phrase sit inside the arrangement, where the synth textures and the measured vocal give it room to work.

There is a kinship here with certain contemporary indie approaches that favour restraint over declaration. The careful pacing and the way atmosphere becomes structure rather than ornament recall the quieter corners of European electronic-tinged songwriting. Yet Witte keeps a distinct identity. The German language is not softened for export. The production remains independent, shaped inside the same rooms that gave the project its name. What emerges is music that understands memory as something still active, still counting, still capable of sudden warmth.

“Glas und Steine” does not offer resolution. It offers a clear-eyed account of the space between people after the calls stop. The numbers keep the feeling from dissolving into vagueness. The chorus lets it breathe. In a crowded field of emotional pop, that balance of control and openness is rare enough to notice. The track earns its place through exactness and atmosphere, through the simple fact that it knows how long absence can last when measured second by second.