When a band manages to express great emotions with few chords, and when a band manages to switch from progressive and jazzy start to an epic song, and only two minutes have passed, then we know that a top-class album is coming our way in April. The seven-minute appetizer "The Third Sleep" is a compact mixtape whose vocals swing back and forth between Marko Saaresto from "Poets of the Fall" and Feargal Sharkey and which ends with a nearly three-minute instrumental part that would be just as...
We Germans now have a relatively large and diverse underground scene encompassing numerous musical genres. And I'm always amazed at who starts extremely interesting projects somewhere in the German provinces. This is what's happening with the duo "Sounds of New Soma" from Krefeld, which one would normally associate with the soccer club KFC Bayer Uerdingen. The two sound wizards Alexander Djelassi and Dirk Raupach have released numerous albums since 2013, and I discovered their project through a...
Berlin is a country for itself in Germany. 80 millions of us hate Berlin because it´s the only capital in Europe that is financed by the rest of the country. Germany is affording Berlin. Few people with a more open mind are proud on every bands and artists who came out from Berlin, started with Bowie, Iggy Pop, Einstürzende Neubauten, Techno or Rammstein. Brueder Selke & Midori Hirano has a huge potential to set art into music, no matter if it´s movie ore paintings or even sculptures. A...
I was already stoked by their first single "End of the World" which was released around August 2024. And after receiving other parts of the puzzle, "The Spiral" finally could be listen in its entirety. What was already apparent back in August is now apparent as a whole; the EP is a coherent acoustic concept album. While the opener "In the Beginning" is a straight and pleasant semi-acoustic song with a huge epic dimension, which is ideal for setting equally epic landscapes to music. This song...
The Australian band "Black Aleph" performs music that should be saved for special moments. It is not background music for everyday things, but for special feelings that intuitively call for this band. I look out of the window here in Munich and there is an autumnal gray veil over colorful leaves, the smell of the last apples and pears are in the air and all these different aspects of autumn are carried on the spheres that this band produces. Personally, I find the video too colorful for this...
What seemed like a coincidence turned out to be one of the best festivals of the year over the course of the day. Starting with the location on a hiking trail through the rocks and maquis at Le fare Les Oliviers, the quality of the bands, the quality of the sound and the light in the venue and the acquaintances we made during the festival. Click on the button for the report.
BER is the short for Berlin Airport and for the rest of ze Germans, Berlin is a country for itself. I love Elder on stage and since 2014 I have managed not to pay too much attention to the two minutes of singing in their 11-minute songs. What bothers me about Elder is the skills-oriented songs, i.e. everyone in the band gets to show what they can do. The songs sometimes rush from one highlight to the next and somehow it's a lot of work for nothing because nothing sticks after an Elder concert....
On the first rainy day after a month of sunshine, I stumbled upon this fantastic song by the Swedish dua Citzend via algorithm. The review appears under unknown pleasures because I am a total fan of the Norwegian band Madrugada, the Swedish duo Swarm of the Sun and dark music in general. And now two Swedes come along, creating an intimate atmosphere and at the same time a great expanse with very few instruments that sound quite isolated from each other and play next to each other rather than...
I would actually listen to a lot more post-rock if the voice suited the music, the sound wasn't too mushy and the songs had a certain structure and thus recognition value. And then by chance an email comes from Bandcamp, suggesting 5 bands to me and one of them is Remina from New Zealand. This band really manages to create a cathedral of a transparent, clear sound that seems to float above everything despite all the heaviness. Responsible for this lightness is the fantastic voice of Heike...
We could never get used to this band; we found the name just as repulsive as the Spanish Inquisition costume. These two aspects are diametrically opposed to the music of the band from Salamanca; since 2012, the band has been serving up the finest post-rock with numerous changes in dynamics and tempo, as well as influences from noise, doom or ambient, which demands a lot of attention from the listener. This is also the case with their new single "El silencio de un Gesto". It's not really new,...