Jazz and Pop Tips
What is German music? When you think of it, do you hear strains of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms or Mendelssohn, or the omm-pah-pah of a blaskappelle in a beerhall? Good - you're right on track...but there is so much more!
In this weekly column we will try to cover everything in between, because from pop to world music to hip-hop and jazz, German artists are at the cutting edge of more genres than there are names for.
Deichkind: High-Concept Low-Brow Rap
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- Philipp Grütering is one of the founding members of Deichkind.
- (© Universal Music Group)
According to legend, the German rap outfit Deichkind, literally, Child of the Dikes, began its career rapping in a Low German dialect to bewildered crowds of unhappy hip-hop fans. Since the late 90's, the band has ditched the dialect but retained a refreshing commitment to the principles that led them to try rapping in an obscure northern German tongue in the first place: relentless experimentation and uncompromising silliness. Their first successful single, "Kabeljau Inferno" (Codfish Inferno), from the 2000 release Bitte Ziehen Sie Durch showed an affinity for head-bopping beats and humorous wordplay. The lyrics ranged from witty ("classier than a gymnasium full of caviar") to crude ("you're the best horse in my stable") but were always delivered with a sly wink and impeccable flow borrowed from American rappers ranging from LL Cool J to Eminem and Method Man.
After a successful follow up in 2002, however, the band went off the radar, only to emerge from their chrysalis in 2005 with an outlandish, space-suited spectacle on an annual battle of the bands program on German television. The song, "Electric Super Dance Band", was a Germanized take on the Beatles "Taxman" over a pounding breakbeat. Although the tune failed to win the hearts of German TV viewers, there was no turning back for Deichkind and their new sound. They were at the vanguard of electro rap, and their next two albums twitched and gyrated to synthesizers and techno beats rather than bumping to funk grooves. While some hip-hoppers were alienated, the adventurous party set were more than happy to shout along to anthems like Arbeit Nervt! (Work Sucks!) at increasingly elaborate festival shows featuring the band wearing plastic sacks and neon sashes.
When one of the band's core members, producer Sebi Hackert, died in early 2009, there were some indications that Deichkind would call it quits. The crew from the dikes has forged on however, most recently strapping on guitars for a heavy metal taunt aimed at fellow Hamburgers Tocotronic titled, "Die Tocotronic Die." Tocotronic responded with a characteristically highbrow musical retort, "Ich verabscheu euch wegen eurem Kleinkunst zutiefst" (I Loathe You Deeply for your Cabaret), and the two songs were released on a limited edition split 7" for German Record Store Week.
Deichkind hits the road in December, 2009 for one last hurrah before heading into the studio in December.
Deichkind on MySpace
Kettcar: Punk Grown Up
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- Kettcar is one of the biggest bands in the German-language pop scene based around Hamburg.
- (© picture-alliance/dpa)
Kettcar singer Marcus Wiebusch sings with the hoarse, labored voice of a man who spent years shouting in punk bands but still has a lot he wants to tell you. To make room for his stories, Wiebusch first traded in his now legendary punk and ska bands But Alive and Rantanplan and launched the more controlled pop outfit Kettcar in 2002. Over three releases, Kettcar has reined in its rock to frame Wiebusch's wry and melancholy lyrics in sweeter and calmer sounds and become one of the biggest draws in the now crowded field of German-language pop rock.
A "Kettcar" is a children's toy similar to a Big-Wheel, but the name seems mostly a nod to the band's punk roots, since Wiebusch's lyrics are thoroughly adult. The songs are mostly vignettes from the lives of people in their 20's and 20's, growing up, accepting loss, and learning their limits. From a dinner party among friends who have grown apart, to lovers realizing that their relationship cannot withstand a few hundred kilometers distance, to a forlorn lover passing the exit to his ex girlfriend's parents house on the highway to Ikea, Wiebusch's stories could be oppressively mopey if it weren't for his sense of humor. Kettcar's grey world is streaked through with bright absurdisms. In one song, the narrator shares an elevator with Bill Gates and Karlheinz Stockhausen. In "Hauptsache Glauben" (The Main Thing is to Believe), T-shirt slogans, the 10 commandments, Freud, Adorno, and dead rockstars top a laundry list of articles of faith.
The band has followed its trajectory from pop-punk to acoustic troubadours to its logical conclusion with the release of "Live at Kampnagel", a DVD of a performance with a string quartet at sunrise in Hamburg. The performance was so well-received that the band is planning a tour with the string quartet in November.
Kettcar on MySpace
Tomte: Melancholy and Literate
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- Thees Uhlmann, Dennis Becker, Nikolai Potthoff, Max Schröder and Simon Frontzek are Tomte.
- (© www.pertramer.at)
Founded by singer Thees Uhlmann in 1996 and based in Hamburg until moving to Berlin in 2005, Tomte represents the second generation of the "Hamburg School" of German language rock. Initially invented by a journalist to describe a handful of bands from the northern German metropolis in the early 1990s whose brainy German-language lyrics distinguished them from both the sentimental German-language power ballads known as "Schlager" and the ocean of English-language pop that still dominated the airwaves, the "Hamburg School" is not a particularly meaningful designation given the new popularity of German-language music.
If any band should wear the mantle of the movement that made German-language guitar pop a fixture of daily life in Germany, however, it might as well be Tomte. The band founded an influential label "Grand Hotel van Cleef", which puts out like-minded American bands like Death Cab For Cutie and Maritime in Germany, and they are a touring juggernaut, headlining festivals across Germany.
Plenty of bands whose lyrics go beyond nonsense syllables, flirty come-ons and dancefloor booty-shaking get tagged as "literate" by critics, but in Tomte's case the term is apt not just for the substance of the lyrics, but also their delivery. Uhlmann often sounds as he just scrawled the lyrics in a notebook and wedged them into the song when he got to the recording studio. This trick forces listeners to pay close attention to what he is saying, which usually involves young sophisticates experiencing indefinable angst, longing and an acute awareness of human mortality.
In September 2009, the band will rock US stages with the Canadian band the Weakerthans.
Tomte on MySpace
Necrophagist: They're No Fine Young Cannibals
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- Despite the gory imagery, Necrophagist makes music so precise and ordered that flesh-eating zombies would likely change the channel.
- (© Necrophagist)
Necrophagist might not be mom-approved fare for everyone; they perform songs with titles like "Fermented Offal" and "Extreme Unction" under the banner of tours like "Summer Slaughter" and "Pillage the Village." The German death-metal band is a lot more wholesome than they seem, though. After all, Necrophagist plays music is so technically demanding that the four studious looking men on stage only have time for modest, almost perfunctory, headbanging between breathtaking solo passages. It's the sort of thing that reflects an interest in computers and classical music rather than digging up corpses, even if that is what all the songs are about.
In fact, guitarist and singer Muhammed Suiçmez began the band as a solo recording project, programming all the drum parts because they were so difficult to play and capture on tape. "Onset of Putrefaction" made Suiçmez, the son of Turkish immigrants to Karlsruhe, something of an underground legend in death metal circles when he released it in 1999. Soon, he was able to recruit players that were good enough to play the demanding music live, and Necrophagist has been slaying crowds at festivals worldwide ever since. Given the precision with which he crafts his metal, it should not be a surprise that Suiçmez has also studied mechanical engineering at the University of Karlsruhe.
Necrophagist on MySpace
Die Goldenen Zitronen Make Lemonade with a Bite
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- "A little manslaughter won't kill us...we've seen worse", sing Die Goldenen Zitronen in a 1994 classic protesting violence against foreigners.
- (© Die Goldenen Zitronen/Buback Records)
Die Goldenen Zitronen (The Golden Lemons) hit the scene in the late 80's with revved-up country and folk tunes and a sneering anti-establishment attitude that made them icons of Reagan-Kohl era punk alongside bands like Die Toten Hosen or the Dead Kennedys. On the band's first single, singer Schorsch Kamerun imagined himself praying for the death of German pop star Thomas Anders (the singer of Modern Talking, who is still alive): "Please take him, God, and never let him out of heaven."
The Lemon's acerbic humor was not just reserved for the mainstream however, as they would use later releases to lampoon other punk icons like Die Toten Hosen and even the "Hamburg School" of literate German-language post-punk they supposedly inspired. What distinguished Die Goldenen Zitronen most from their punk contemporaries was not their humor or more refined political sensibilities, but their constant exploration of new musical and theatrical forms. Their releases in the mid-1990's, which combined electronics, ragged, frantic dance grooves and increasingly surreal lyrics, sounded more like the work of young upstarts than decade-old punk standard bearers.
On "Lenin," their 2006 comeback after a five-year hiatus, Kamerun assumes various characters to deliver stream of consciousness lyrics over trippy krautrock. Outside the band, Kamerun and lyricist and bassist Ted Gaier have also pursued their interest in theater. Kamerun recently directed Leonard Bernstein's opera "Trouble in Tahiti" in Munich, and Gaier has directed music videos and written films.
"Flimmern" by Die Goldenen Zitronen on Youtube
Moritz Von Oswald: An Invisible Monument of Electronic Music
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- Moritz von Oswald kept a low profile despite being a major force in the techno landscape.
- (© Matt Cheetham (CC))
Moritz von Oswald has had a three decade career at the center of Berlin's thriving techno scene, but until recently, he rarely appeared in photographs or gave interviews. Instead, von Oswald played the craftsman and technician, with a public profile even more minimal than the machine-music records he released with series names like M4 through M7. If his persona were proportionate to his influence, however, he would be a major star. Von Oswald is one of the key architects of the super-minimal Berlin techno sound and also played a major role in popularizing dub reggae in Germany. As the co-founder of several labels, a vinyl mastering facility and the legendary Hardwax record shop, his various enterprises are a model of vertical integration and entrepreneurship in independent music.
Von Oswald began his musical career in 1983 as the drummer in the new wave band "Palais Schaumburg," a Talking Heads-like outfit whose members went on to become leaders in the electronic and industrial music scenes. After Palais Schaumburg split in 1984, von Oswald began releasing records that stripped the sound of Detroit and Chicago house music down to its bare essentials under the pseudonyms "Maurizio" and "Basic Channel". In the late 1990's, von Oswald and his chief collaborator Mark Ernestus shifted their focus to dub reggae, inviting Jamaican vocalists to sing over spare, hypnotic beats for their "Rhythm and Sound" project. In 2008, he released "Recomposed" on Deutsche Grammophon, an interpretation of Ravel's "Bolero" and Mussorgsky's "Pictures an Exhibition." His latest release is "Vertical Ascent" with percussionist Vladislav Delay and synthesizer-player Max Loderbauer.
Moritz von Oswald Trio at Honest Jon's Records
Rainald Grebe's Cabaret for the 21st Century
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- Rainald Grebe appears as Robinsin Crusoe.
- (© Joachim Dette)
"I feel so empty, I feel so...Brandenburg" sings Rainald Grebe in one of a series of songs poking fun at Germany's least densely populated states. The ribbing Grebe dishes out to Germany's less glamorous provinces, sushi-eating yuppies, dour German literature students, '68 radicals, Volksmusik and other clichés of contemporary life in Germany might seem a little mean if he didn't cut such a silly figure. Grebe regularly performs with his "Reconciliation Choir" sporting an Indian headdress that might have been made during a grade school craft hour and has been seen in his theater shows sporting a fake beard and a parrot on his shoulder as Robinson Crusoe.
Like Randy Newman, Grebe uses his prodigious talents as a singer, composer, actor and instrumentalist to make the audience laugh at themselves and others in equal measure, but he is less of a moral crusader. Instead, Grebe's focus is everyday life - the provincial, the profane, and the pretentious - and his cabaret performances are more about the laughs than the message. The da da delivery however, with absurd digressions and uncanny language, is high art.
Rainald Grebe's Website
Flowin Immo: Free Body Culture of the Mind
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- Flowin Immo et les Freaqz perform at the Bundesvision Song Contest.
- (© picture-alliance/dpa)
Bawdy, verbose, and clownish, Flowin Immo is the George Clinton of the German rap scene. Sporting stringy hair and a scraggly beard, he has the disheveled look of a tramp even when he appears in a three piece suit, and a gravelly voice to match.
Though he sometimes refers to himself as "the bard" Immo does not owe much debt to the language of Shakespeare and hip hop. Although he and his band les Freaqz play music that borrows from punk, country, reggae, and heavy funk, his lyrical flow is deeply rooted in the phonemes and colloquialisms of the German language. Immo doesn't use many words with Latin roots, and his guttural delivery complements the Teutonic sound of his texts, which makes him an authentic and original artist in a genre full of international poseurs.
In his latest single "Urlaub am Attersee", which kicks off with a sample of a schlocky folksong about the picturesque alpine lake in Austria, Immo imagines himself as a rapping Odysseus, sailing around the Attersee looking for a "nude beach of the mind." The song was chosen to represent Bremen in the 2009 Bundesvision Song Contest and took 11th place out of 16 entries.
Flowin Immo's Website
Beatbox Battle World Championships
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- Steff la Cheffe of Switzerland (l) battles Bellatrix of the UK while moderator Bee Low checks the technique. Bellatrix went on to become the 2009 women's beatboxing world champion.
- (© picture-alliance/dpa)
The four elements of hip hop - MC'ing (rapping), DJ'ing, breakdancing, and graffiti writing - have spread from the Bronx throughout the world over the last three decades, and Germany is becoming an international hub of sorts for at least two of them. The breakdancing "Battle of the Year" in Braunschweig has established itself as the coliseum in which breakers from Poland to Korea vie for supremacy, and any visitor to Berlin will notice that graffiti writers seem to decorate the city with impunity. While the fifth element of hip hop is a somewhat contentious designation, many agree that it is the form of vocal percussion known as beatboxing, and Germany has a pull for beatboxers from all over the world as well.
At the Beatbox Battle World Championships in Berlin in May 2009, Ze De from Switzerland out smacked, popped and buzzed his opponent Vahtang from Russia to become the world champion beatboxer. The brainchild of German beatboxer and entrepreneur Bee Low, the Beatbox Battle series attracts thousands of spectators and over 100 beatboxers from 37 countries to Berlin and boasts an impressive lineup of corporate sponsors.
As a form of musical and personal expression, beatboxing is ideally suited for the era of online video and webcam confessionals. If the beatboxer is talented and confident enough to mug for the camera with lips pursed while making all manner of smacking, wheezing, popping and sucking sounds, the effect can be mesmerizing and often quite musical. Beatbox Battle has used online video to great effect by publishing videos of all the Beatbox Battles, which often resemble musical comedy routines, on its Website and Youtube channel.
Beatbox Battle
Burnt Friedmann Makes Cyborg Music
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- Burnt Friedmann (r) and Jaki Liebezeit explore "secret rhythms" not usually heard in Western music.
- (© picture-alliance/dpa)
If electronic music is like a robot band, then there are two dominant schools of thought: C-3PO and R2-D2. Like C-3PO, a sampler or computer can be a reliable and efficient substitute for a human being. No drum machine ever expected free beer, after all. Alternatively, like R2-D2, machines can go beyond human forms and capabilities.
Bernd Friedmann, a composer, multi-instrumentalist and electronics pioneer based in Cologne, is more interested in melding man and machine. Since 1978, he has made music as or in Gummibox, Some More Crime, Drome, Nonplace Urban Field, Flanger and The Nu-Dub Players that combines skilled performers with meticulous programming and editing to create cyborg music. It sounds human, but slightly better. Friedmann tweaks live performances, giving drummers virtual third arms and saxophonists access to the tones and textures of an entire orchestra.
Since 2002, he has been releasing records with former CAN drummer Jaki Liebezeit under the name Burnt Friedmann and Jaki Liebezeit. The duo is preoccupied with what they call "secret rhythms," or odd meters used in other musics but unfamiliar to most westerners. Friedmann's most recent effort "Con Ritmo," is available on the label he runs, Nonplace.
Burnt Friedmann's Website
Joy Denalane was "Born and Raised" on the Spree
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- Joy Denalane switches nimbly between German, English and South-African languages on soul, hip-hop and folk tunes.
- (© Nesola Records/Four Music/Joy Denalane)
Joy Denalane's 2006 record, Born and Raised, sounds like a hometown record by Joy from around the way in Philadelphia. Like Lauryn Hill's breakthrough solo debut, the record is full of songs about uplift and self-reliance that puts classic soul in sharp focus by recreating samples with live instruments and adding hip-hop beats (though it lacks Hill's fiery verses and mystical outlook). It was recorded in Philadelphia by a band of neo-soul first stringers and features verses by Lupe Fiasco and Raekwon, and...it bumps. Everything is in its expected place until Denalane gets to the line about "playing dodge ball against the Berlin Wall" in the biographical title track.
Born to a South-African father and a German mother in Berlin, Joy Denalane has been deeply involved in soul and hip-hop music since she left home at 16, but "Born and Raised" was her first all-English language record aimed at an international audience. On her 2002 full-length debut, Mamani, her biography is evident in the number of languages that pop up in the track listing. She switches nimbly between German and English on soul joints and South-African folk songs (the title track features flugelhorn and arranging by Hugh Masakela), and the skits between songs are largely in South-African languages.
With Born and Raised, Denelane has a credible American neo-soul record under her belt, and she had already gained international attention with her appearance on a Kanye West remix of Common's "Go." Does that mean that the old Joy vom Kiez who sang in German is gone? Hopefully not. Denelane is performing at a Hugh Masakela tribute concert in May 2009 and interpreting the poems of the young holocaust victim Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger with other German hip-hop luminaries in July. Her latest release is a live concert DVD of a performance of soul classics with the MDR Symphony orchestra called "The Dresden Soul Symphony Live".
Joy Denalane's Website
Munich's Whitefield Brothers Jay and Muggy are the Poets of Rhythm
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- Jay and Muggy Whitefield are Germany's soul brothers numbers one and two, but not necessarily in that order.
- (© Nowagain Records)
Classic sounds usually conjure up a pretty specific sense of time and place. Who doesn't feel the steam rise off the Meter's humid funk and think of New Orleans, for instance?
Today, the torchbearers for that brand of raw, crackling funk are two brothers from Munich, Jan and Max Weissenfeldt. Jan, the guitarist, and Max, the drummer, call themselves Jay and Muggy Whitefield, a literal translation of their last name into English. Since the early 1990's, under a dizzying number of band names including "The Poets of Rhythm", they have released a steady stream of 45's and LP's that faithfully recreate the loping grooves and distorted sounds of seventies and sixties funk. The Meters seem to form the foundation of their sound, but there are layers of Afrobeat and a touch of Miles Davis' electric bands.
The anglicized pseudonyms and dusty sounds on hard-to-find vinyl might lead one to think that the Whitefield Brothers are purely interested in creating an alternative version of the past in the present. Actually, they have become sought after collaborators for Hip-Hop artists. They achieved their breakthrough in the US with the rapper Lyrics Born on the 1999 track "I Changed My Mind".
The Whitefield Brothers have a re-issue of earlier works called "In The Raw" out on Nowagain records. The collection was largely recorded by Daptone Records mastermind Gabe Roth and features Antibalas sax-man Martin Perna.
The Whitefield Brothers/Poets of Rhythm on MySpace
The Monks: Germany's Anti-Beatles Back on CD
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- The Monks traded in their Army uniforms for tonsures and robes.
- (© Light in the Attic)
Listening to The Monks today, one gets the feeling they anticipated a decade of pop music yet to come and reacted against it with spitfire and venom. Plenty of sixties garage groups get tagged as precursors to punk, but this group of American GI's who stayed in Germany to rock and roll after leaving the Army truly had the attitude and the sound - wiry, angry and a little demented.
"You know we don't like the Army. What army? Who cares what Army? Why do you kill all those kids over there in Vietnam?," yells Gary Burger on the opener of the full length Black Monk Time, before refocusing his harangue on James Bond and Pussy Galore. It's a very punk move - decrying war and authority and then deflating the statement with some pop culture nonsense. The Monks don't like war, but then again, they don't like much of anything...with the possible exception of Pussy Galore. Black Monk Time was released in 1966, the same year as the Beatles' Revolver, which has nary a mention of politics, much less the escalating war in Vietnam.
The Monks were Americans, but it is no coincidence that they made their mark from Germany. The five friends from the Army began playing together as the Torquays, a run-of-the-mill cover band that played early rock and roll and "beat" music popular at the time. It was two German ad executives, Walther Niemann and Karl Remy who discovered them and directed their transformation into avant-gardists. Niemann and Remy imagined them as the anti-Beatles, wrote political screeds for them to read and encouraged them to focus on a frantic, tribal thumping and wild-eyed preaching they seemed to have a knack for. The Beatles were cute and sported mop-tops, the Monks were average looking and sported tonsures and robes. The Beatles sang about love, the monks sang songs titled "Shut Up" and "I Hate You."
The Monk's career was short, and they remained obscure for decades, but recent years have been good to them. A 2007 German documentary called The Monks: The Transatlantic Feedback told their improbable story and featured luminaries of the actual punk era speaking reverently about them. A tribute album called Silver Monk Time featuring many of the same luminaries was met with critical acclaim the same year. Now, Black Monk Time has been re-issued along with a collection of early demos by Light in the Attic records. The Monks may have been hard to digest for their contemporaries, but over 40 years later, their music seems to be arriving right on time.
The Monks' Official Website
Modeselektor Favor Rump-Shaking over Chin-Stroking
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- Modeselektor are the clowns of German techno.
- (© Bpitchcontrol by Ragnar Schmuck/Christian Feldhausen)
Modeselektor are the jokesters of German techno. While other German DJ’s and producers tend to cultivate sounds and personae that are either austere and cloaked in mystery or too cool for school, Modeselektor’s Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary tend to present themselves as clowns. They appear in press photos as babies or shirtless cowboys with giant heads and tiny legs in boots and spurs. A video for “Black Block” off their 2007 release Happy Birthday shows the duo donning jumpsuits like safecrackers on the way to a heist before sitting down to tea in the woods.
Luckily, their sense of humor extends to their music, which is an amalgam of electronic touchstones from the boom-bap of hip hop to the static and crackling of “glitch” music. That sort of thing is often referred to by those in the know as “Intelligent Dance Music”, but Modeselektor makes things a lot more fun than that sounds by focusing on rump-shaking over chin-stroking.
Modeselektor got some serious international profile when Radiohead singer Thom Yorke outed himself as a fan in 2003. Since then, Yorke has lent his trademark grandiose mewling to a track on Happy Birthday (“White Flash”) and invited the band to open for Radiohead in Germany and Japan.
The group’s next release will be a collaboration with the electronic composer Apparat und the moniker Moderat (Modeselektor + Apparat = Moderat) on the Berlin label Bpitchcontrol.
Modeselektor's Website
Moderat on Myspace
Timo Maas: Long Player
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- Timo Maas - the face that launched a thousand raves.
- (© picture-alliance/dpa)
Trance DJ Timo Maas makes music that demands patience. Given that he works in a genre whose expressive palette is derived almost entirely from digital equipment, Maas’ dance music is surprisingly at odds with the Internet era. It is meant to be enjoyed in public, at incredibly loud volumes, while dancing and, unless you give it your undivided attention, you are likely to miss the hook.
In his 2008 single “The Subtellite” for the Frankfurt club imprint Cocoon Records, Maas lets a thick drone undulate nearly unchanged for three minutes before he introduces the main theme – a clanging oriental lute. The lute takes its time to develop as well, trading phrases with a high pitched drum over the rest of the 12 minute track. The music makes simple statements and makes them very slowly, but hanging in there yields rewards that cannot be had in a three-minute pop tune.
Hailing from the small town of Bückeburg in Lower Saxony Maas heard the call to DJ at an early age; he played house parties and top 40 clubs in the 1980’s and was introduced to the rave scene in the early 1990s. It was not until the mid-1990S’ that a Maas track called “Die Herdplatte” (The Burner) found its way into prominent DJ’s record crates and propelled Maas onto the international stage. The breakneck tempo sounds like a quaint parody of an aerobics video today, but it shows Maas’s drive to push the boundaries of dance music, something he has continued to do.
In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, Maas built up a reputation as one of the best brands in techno for consistently packing the dance floor at the world’s largest clubs, from the Ministry of Sound in London to New York’s now defunct Twilo.
His next release is slated for April 15, 2009 under the moniker Mutant Clan, a project with the Italian producer Santos.
Timo Maas on My Space
Radio Citizen: Broadcasting from the Berlin Serengeti
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- Berlin multi-instrumentalist and composer Niko Schabel is the mastermind behind Radio Citizen.
- (© Marion Blomeyer)
Modal flutes dart like dragonflies over shimmering pools of rhodes piano - it's the hip sound of the late-night international jet set. Downtempo, sophisticated, but not too heavy. Another cocktail please...
In the 1990's, some saw the fusion of jazz and electronica as the final frontier for the great American artform and proclaimed the dawn of a "nu" era in jazz. Although a lot of the music labeled "nu jazz" was very creative, it was also easy to pass off as shopping music-the sort of thing one likes to hear while waiting for a cappuccino to be served or buying smart slacks, but not particularly challenging or rewarding.
Some, however, like Berlin multi-instrumentalist, composer and recording engineer Niko Schabel, have continued to probe these lush, soothing soundscapes. Schabel's 2006 release "Berlin Serengeti", released under the moniker "Radio Citizen", lays claim to a territory as strange and new as the title suggests. It is a modern European take on sixties jazz built from live instruments (Schabel himself is credited with saxophones, clarinets, flutes, piano, sampler, and more) and artfully tweaked samples.
While the excellent musicianship of Schabel and his collaborators is the album's main appeal, the vocalist Bajka adds a hint of mystery. Mumbling mystical nothings in a voice somewhere between Billy Holiday and Erykah Badu, she transmits strong emotion while letting the instruments tell the story.
Schabel has been relatively silent since "Berlin Serengeti", but he claimed in interviews around the time of the release that he had over 50 CD's worth of material completed, and he also composes for film.
Radio Citizen on MySpace
Made in the Booka Shade
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- Arno Kammermeier (l) and Walter Merziger are Booka Shade.
- (© Get Physical)
Imagine that you are at Berlin's penultimate techno club - the Watergate in Kreuzberg. You come in from grabbing a bit of fresh air on the small waterfront patio overlooking the Spree River and make your way to the dancefloor, where a sweaty mob is gyrating to the pulse of a synthesized kick drum beneath a massive matrix of lights that spans the ceiling. Who is the duo manning the controls in this club nirvana?
There's a good chance it might be Walter Merziger and Arno Kammermeier, otherwise known as Booka Shade. Between their own output and that of the artists on their "Get Physical" label, Merzinger and Kammermeier created the template for modern electronic dance music in the mid to late oughts.
Booka Shade first broke through with the singles "Manderine Girl" and "Body Language" (with label-mates M.A.N.D.Y) in 2005. The Berlin producer's formula was to flesh out the super-minimal techno that had become popular around the turn of the millennium with a few visceral pleasures. Melodic hooks and pop song structures were a welcome antidote to the spartan whirring and clicking of minimal techno, and the nocturnal party set responded with massive enthusiasm worldwide.
Based in Berlin, Merzinger and Kammermeier are at the nexus of a fertile dance music scene based around the label they run with other prominent electronic acts, Get Physical. Berlin is still a great place to make techno music - the music software company Native Instruments is right down the street (Booka Shade's albums bear the Native Instruments logo) and Berliners and club tourists alike still flock to the city's many dance temples. Booka Shade's ambitions go beyond Berlin though, these days you can find them in far flung locations from Miami to Istanbul.
Booka Shade's Website
Get Physical Website
Mouse on Mars / Lithops
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- Mouse on Mars have been the standard bearers of Germany's electronic avant-garde for over a decade.
- (© Courtesy of the Windish Agency)
Since 1994, Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma have been bridging the gap between European club music and the radical electronic experimentation of Karlheinz Stockhausen.
The duo calls themselves Mouse on Mars, and they are the longtime standard bearers for Germany's experimental electronic music scene. Just because you call it experimental does not mean you cannot dance to it, however. Mouse on Mars can pack clubs from Berlin to Mumbai (where they will appear this spring as part of a South Asian tour).
The pair of producers from Cologne and Düsseldorf fiddle with more than sounds. They are constantly trying out new formats that put their sonic collages in new contexts. A new soundtrack for Werner Herzog's film "Fata Morgana", a surround sound piece designed just for the sound installation gallery "Noise Room" in the Netherlands and an album with Mark E. Smith of the ornery primitivist punk band The Fall are just a few of their recent projects.
St. Werner has also designed countless sound installations to accompany theater, dance, performance art and video installations. He just released his sixth collection of these pieces on a CD under the name Lithops. Named for a succulent plant that is indistinguishable from a small rock during parts of it's life cycle, St. Werner's music as Lithops straddles a fine line between organic and electronic sounds.
Mouse on Mars' Website
Lithops at Thrill Jockey
Peter Fox: The Wrecking Ball for the German Scene
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- Peter Fox is the "wrecking ball for the German scene."
- (© picture-alliance/dpa)
Peter Fox was the singer of Seeed, Germany's most successful dancehall reggae act (yes, there are more than one), and already had platinum records under his belt when he decided to invest his life savings to record an album with one of Germany's finest film orchestras. The native Berliner, born Pierre Baigorry, had a very particular sound in mind: no samples, no programmed beats, just two live drummers and an orchestra playing arrangements based on original melodies and snippets transcribed from dozens of old European folk music records uncrated by producer DJ Illvibe.
Fox considered himself a passable singer, but since he was sparing no expense, he slated the American singer Cee-Lo Green to take over vocal duties. Green told him he would be ready to work on the record as soon as he finished with a little project with the producer Dangermouse. When Green's "little project" turned into the chart-busting global phenomenon Gnarls Barkley, Fox decided that if it had to be an ordinary voice, then it might as well be his own.
The results are anything but ordinary. On Stadtaffe (City Ape) Fox delivers a sizzling dozen tracks that describe life in Berlin with cinematic imagery and plenty of humor, Sung entirely in agile and tuneful German except for a few dancefloor hollers. In the lead single "Alles Neu", (Everything New) Fox declares himself the "wrecking ball for the German scene." More than a boast, it is a challenge to the German pop world to find its own voice.
If the success of Stadtaffe is any indication, German music listeners would like that very much. Fox won Germany's Bundesvision contest with the song "Haus Am See" (Lake House) and has been playing sold out shows across Europe with a band that includes North Carolina A&T University's Cold Steel drumline.
Peter Fox's Website
Lychee Lassi: Berlin's Musical Explorers
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- Berlin's Lychee Lassi explores the outer reaches of soul, jazz and hip-hop.
- (© Lychee Lassi)
Dirk Berger, Beat Halberschmidt, Roland "Roy" Knauf and DJ Illvibe call their music "insect funk." That gets you in the right ball park; their songs are built on heavy syncopated beats with noises from another phylum darting around in the background.
Their outfits are another indication as to their sound. They appear on stage in anti-static suits wearing glasses that look like Geordi La Forge's bionic eyewear on Star Trek. Master technicians, the Berlin musicians can seamlessly switch from classic soul and jazz to bristling electronica and hip-hop. The result is a sound that is as cool as the international club music that drives nightlife from Paris to Tokyo but as fiery as James Brown.
The Lassi's not-so-secret weapon is Illvibe, who uses the turntables like an instrument with a sonic palette that ranges from percussive noises to complete vocal melodies. DJ Illvibe, born as Vincent Graf von Schlippenbach, is the son of avant-garde jazz pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach. He is a member of Seeed and worked on Stadtaffe with Peter Fox. He is also a member of the production team "The Krauts", which is racking up an impressive resume producing tracks for German pop artists.
Lychee Lassi's Website
Miss Platnum: Romanian Soul Food
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- Miss Platnum is the queen of Romanian-German comedy soul.
- (© picture-alliance/dpa)
"I like a long lunch break," sings Miss Platnum in her novelty hit "Give me the Food", a funky ode to all things edible and a polemic against the unrealistic expectations created by the skinny models portrayed in the media. It might seem like a cheap gag if it weren't for Miss Platnum's powerful voice and the alchemical fusion of Jamaican beats and Balkan horns percolating in the background.
Born in Romania, Ruth Maria Renner moved to Berlin with her parents when she was eight and began singing in school, church and musicals. Under the tutelage of the New York to Berlin transplant Jocelyn B. Smith, she developed formidable soul chops and eventually recorded an earnest collection of modern soul tunes with the nu-jazz pioneers Sonar Kollektiv.
Unfortunately, the market for soul sirens is crowded, even in Berlin, and Platnum's debut went largely unnoticed. She regrouped and went into the studio with the production team "The Krauts" and searched for ways to tap into her Romanian heritage in her music.
Propelled by buzz from a humorous online clip, the lead single from the resulting follow-up album, Chefa reached 63rd place on the German Charts and 11th on the Romanian charts.
Miss Platnum on MySpace
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