Yearly Archives: "2016"

It must have been in early 2015 when I find myself sitting in the office of a record company. I’m here to talk about the labels‘ forthcoming releases and have a bit of a general catch up to do. We smoke a few cigarettes, drink a coffee or two and listen to some interesting artists. Towards the end of the meeting I get shown a video of an artist the label just recently signed. They were out with him in California and used the time to shoot a video theyRead More

This new Nada Surf album is really good. I have been listening to „You Know Who You Are“ every day for weeks and it just keeps getting better. I will say that it is my favorite one since 2002’s „Let Go“. It will be out on March 4 and you should all buy it now! If there is one thing I could change about the album it’s probably the sequencing. I’d have it start with „New Bird“ (which is actually track 4). I immediately loved this one while the actual openerRead More

Punk, rock and German indie these are the poles between which Astairre have set foot. Ich hasse meine Freunde is the first song from their upcoming EP So lange wir noch funktionieren. And it’s a belter. I have to admit that I’m not totally unbiased here – I’ve met bassist Robin on a long night out at Reeperbahn Festival a couple years back. Since then I’ve been tracking what the band is up to. With Unter Schafen Records they have finally found the right home for their sound. And ifRead More

The internet only offers some rare finds these days. With it, we seem to be overwhelmed by choices and fall into the trap of listening to the music backed by big money to buy our attention. Without it, I wouldn’t have come across a great little band from Montclair, New Jersey though: Pinegrove. At first it was the voice of Evan Stephens Hall on a song called Angelina, then the energy and lyrics of Recycling and finally the mixture of emo, indie and country sprinkles from Old Friends. I haveRead More

When I get asked to review new hyped band – especially from Berlin – I usually don’t expect anything. Which makes it even nicer when I am proven wrong. This has been the case with todays’ band Isolation Berlin. The four boys have recently been mentioned a lot in feature pages and it seems as if everyone agrees that they are the future of German pop music. The pressure therefore is obviously on and everyone expects their debut album Und aus den Wolken tropft die Zeit to be a hugeRead More

Everything is a fucking show. Everybody needs a fucking mass of background dancers, remixers, mash-ups, fireworks and symbols, pop-culture references, brand tie-ins and codes. The biggest popstars try to make an event out of everything. You have a new album coming out? Cool, let’s just not tell anybody and make it appear over night then. You haven’t released any music for some time but you need a reason to go on tour again and grab a couple of millions? Why not release a new album in order to have aRead More

A Tale of Golden Keys are just great. We talked about our love for last year’s album Everything Went Down As Planned and now Three Weeks is the next single from it. Do you remember the piano in the swimming pool in the video for All Of It? It plays an important part in this video again. Just listen to the song and enjoy the slow visuals popping bye and let the little story unfold. I’m sure there’s a deeper meaning to it and I have my own theory. ButRead More

I didn’t really care much for OK Kid from Cologne, Germany, when they released their debut album three years ago. Stadt am Meer was a good indie track but over the whole album you didn’t know if they wanted to be an indie band or a hip-hop act. It just wasn’t on point yet. Hardly anybody expected Ok Kid to return with a strong political message and a brilliant video for Gute Menschen late last year. The song had ditched any hint of guitar indie and turned towards a deeperRead More

Turbostaat. It’s been a little while (two years is not that long to be honest). I remember as if it was yesterday when I went to my first Turbostaat show. Back then I had just moved to Hannover and none of the people I knew wanted to come to the show with me. I ended up drinking way too much beer by myself and leaving the show with the biggest smiles on my face I’ve ever worn after a gig. I went to a girl afterwards who’d become my girlfriendRead More

The days are long gone since Basement were actually playing basement shows, dragging their gear into shabby pubs and dubious venues. Since the Ipswich band officially split up in 2012 they became international legends of sorts. All of a sudden the band was back in 2014 and it seemed as if they were biggern than ever before. And it seemed as if everybody was waiting for the band to return. The new record Promise Everything is the first full length since the reunion and the band is aiming big. IRead More