BORN INTO A CRACK in the spring of '89 in Leipzig, DDR, into the final year of german socialism singer/songwriter EMANUEL SCHILLER's life / a.k.a. BELLE JAR's story, like all good stories, begins with an end.

eversince roaming the impenetrable surface of an estranged world. eversince a foreigner, in search of meaning and depth in capitalist society. eversince, by and large, failing. looking for a way home.


   EMANUEL SCHILLER, over the years, has played and sung in various bands, worked as a speech therapist and social worker, an actor in film and on stage and a composer of theatre music and lived in (east, west and capital) brd, uk and canada.

Currently based in Berlin, he is overjoyed by the opportunity to arrange a set of new songs with his band THE IRRPRESSIBLE URGES and hit the stages in spring 2025.

Since 2018, he has been writing and recording and producing songs under the pseudonym 'BELLE JAR'. His songwriting is concerned with issues of identity, love, heartbreak and sodomy, and, more recently, turning to philosophy, psychoanalysis and social issues, while exploring various musical genres of popular music.


   the artist name 'Belle Jar' picks up on the central motiv in SYLVIA PLATH'S novel "The Bell Jar" where the Jar, as a glass container, stands synonymous for a state of depression, of finding oneself inside a confined space, a vacuum perhaps, sourrounded by see thru walls, alive and yet detached from life, being "there but not there". so, why choose the bell jar?

"if i had to pick between a stone and a stick, i would always pick a guitar. if i had to choose between life and death, i would always choose the Bell Jar"
[from the song "the belle jar", 2019]

aside from isolating, confining, suffocating, the glass container can also create a space where we conserve and protect precious or delicate things, a transparent shield under which we present them, to enhance their value, emphasize their singularity and beauty. we may put something under a glass to observe it, study it, even to get closer to it - to find connection thru detachment, by removing something from it's natural context, and only so realizing it's true nature.


   in this way the bell jar, like a stage or a writing persona, is an in-between place, an internal as well a a social heterotopia. it isn't of the world, tho it appears to exist with-in it. it's real fiction. it isn't true. that's why it gets to say the truth. and, knowing that the truth is never the truth, one may find that the Belle Jar, inspite of the dangers it holds, is perhaps the only liveable place in the world.


   here are some songs to a better universe. to and from. laments for the downtrodden. hymns to the hopeful.

the 'U Lose'-EP: ADVENTURES IN POP...

   in 2019 i was living in a flatshare in leipzig, working part time in a major hotel, preparing conference rooms for semi rich blood suckers, to optimize their blood sucking strategies in. our boss made us fold the ends of the toilet paper rolls in the restrooms into a triangle. she used to roll her eyes to the neon lit ceiling and blink them in a ridiculousy high frequency whenever she saw something that insulted her, like imperfection, like someone not giving it their ultimate best. she did this a lot when i was around, struggeling to arrange pens and granini bottles according to her instructions. why was i here?

   my room was small, over-prized and lined with lenoleum, the plastic, wood imitation kind that gives you cold feet in the winter and sweat in the summer. it's horrible the way dust, hair and dead skin cells collect on these sealed plastic floors and it's a horrible surface to clean, touch, walk or do anything on. somehow it doesn't breathe. it's dead floor. but instead of just being dead it pretends to be wood. that's the worst thing about lenoleum!

   my flatmate was this dark-humored, somewhat mysterious guy from Chile. we met in the kitchen. he seemed to know an aweful lot, not just about guitars, but about so called D.A.W.s and plug ins and all that 21st century stuff i totally loathed. i was still using an SD recorder to work on my slow growing library of unpublished songs. over customized yum-yum soup, we bragged about expensive microphones we had sung into or gazed at, with no noteworthy consquences, at least on my side, while Matias seemed to beat me at every field of expertise and music related subject i brought up. so what was he doing here? what were we doing?! i think we were just bullshitting to see if the other one was bullshitting. anyhow, at some point we played some of our songs to each other and a week later we ended up in paunsdorf in my rehearsal space (carpeting on concrete floor- dirty but honest!).

   several important things happened that night: for one thing i began the long process of overcoming my spiteful suspicion of digital recording technology (the process still continues) while looking over my flatmates shoulder, watching him rearrange a song structure that would take me hours to re-record in only a few seconds. secondly, we decided to use a fancy ribbon mic for the vocals and for the first time i heard my voice on tape (ok digital tape whatever) the way i heard it in my own head which was great and gave me confidence to sing.

   thirdly, i will never forget Matias shouting at me between takes going "too many notes!", "cut it down!", "louder!", "do it on one fucking note!", "shout!". it reminded me of my time as a stage actor and the rare moments when something someone says or does opens up a space inside that lends an unsuspected resonance, emotional and physical, to a character or passage. a new kind of depth. this space from then on becomes technically accessible, again conserved, but useful body memory of something intense and true and with every rendition somehow you retell this moment. this holds true also for singing. i can still access that 'deep space' now, or at least aim for it. and i still think about Matias advice whenever i try to come up with effective vocal melodies. -fewer notes! -do less! -fuck!

   anyhow, after some hours of mic-ing, yelling, re-mic-ing, drumming, cutting, looping (fraud!), side chaining, piano auto-detuning and what not, we ended up with the elementary parts of "U Lose", an angry farewell song that turned out angrier than i ever dreamed of, but also way cleaner and more on point than anything i had managed to record so far.

   the second song, "Apex", a softer and perhaps more radio friendly take on the farewell sujet, had been written by Matias a while back and had been waiting on his laptop for a lyric/vocal and bass line which we added, applying indecent amounts of reverb and pitch correction, which give it an almost artificial sound that contrasts the lyric and that i could never have come up with, but that now feels very fitting to my life at the time (that floor! those triangles!).

   all of this had been unchartered territory for post mortem bootleg poet underduck aka BELLE JAR aka aka... the making of the "U Lose"-EP for me was a true adventure in pop! more so since it turned out my newly found friend and singing instructor was no other than the Santiago production legend MATÍAS CONTRERAS, famous for his signature 'big sound' that he applied to my very basic rock song set up and really gave it what it needed - production! shape! i am very grateful for this somewhat coincidental co-operation and i am still happy with the results today!