The Offline // The Eisenberg Review Interview
For Hamburg-based composer and photographer Felix Müller, better known as The Offline, music and imagery are inextricably intertwined. The Offline project was born from a journey along France’s Atlantic coastline, where Müller captured beach life through the lens of his analog camera — and soon after, began composing music as its sonic counterpart. What emerged was a cinematic world all his own, blending the golden-hued atmosphere of ‘60s and ‘70s film scores with the beat-driven textures of instrumental hip-hop.
Across acclaimed releases like En clair-obscur, Les Cigales, and his 2023 debut album La couleur de la mer, Müller has built what he calls a “Mediterranean Cinematic Universe,” where each track feels like a postcard from an imagined film — sun-washed, slow-burning, and thick with mood. Now, with The Offline in Session, he’s beginning to translate this carefully crafted world into a live format for the first time, adapting selections from his catalog with a live band while staying true to their original tone and intention.
In our conversation, we talk about what it means to compose with a photographer’s eye, how music mirrors the rhythms of surfing, and the elemental pull of water — as both metaphor and medium — that runs through his work. It’s a dive into process, intuition, and the quiet narratives that live just beneath the surface.