Angela Aux is one of the many projects of Munich-based musician, songwriter and producer Florian Kreier, whose sound, in contrast to his more pop-oriented projects Aloa Input and Midnight Embassy, is a combination of elements from folk, pop and electronic music. The lo-fi space folk on Spacelarking In The Age Of Spiritual Machines deals with the promises of traveling through the infinite expanses of space, of leaving behind the disdainful earthly reality, and if you listen closely, the spirit of Ziggy Stardust will appear wandering about among the countless tracks of the opulent production.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Kolossale Jugend released their debut album, an angry manifesto against the growing national pride in the reunified German republic. The elusive lyrics of guitarist and singer Kristof Schreuf, who sadly passed away in 2022, the rugged, edgy compositions and the band's raw energy made them one of the most important representatives of a movement that was later dubbed the "Hamburg School". This so-called school consisted of a flood of releases from a densely interwoven scene of art and music creators eager to engage in political and artistic discourse in the early 1990s in Hamburg, Germany’s undisputed music capital at the time. A retrospective of their work, which unfortunately only comprises two albums, has now been released — reason enough to introduce this incomparable band to an international audience.
More than ten years ago, Berlin musicians Masha Qrella and Julia Kliemann decided to form a duo, wrote a bunch of songs but never got around to recording them. Now they've made up for it, and the airy, summery pop of Halo is finally reaching the public: on In The Company Of No One, the mostly doubled vocals are accompanied by guitar pop rounded off with electronic sandpaper. The result is timeless indie pop that has gained in quality during the long wait, so well thought out and coherent do the at times quite complicated compositions in the eclectic arrangements appear.
Munich-based DJ and producer Skee Mask, perhaps known to some as SCNTST, focuses on classic techno and tasteful breakbeats, flowing rhythms, elegant glitches, bottomless dubs and slowly filtered pads with a deep vibe, right through to ambient-like textures. His influences come from techno labels such as Chain Reaction, Warp Records and Counterbalance. His new album Resort, released on Munich-based Ilian Tape like its predecessors, is another great showcase of work by one of the most talented producers on the Munich scene, who withdrew his album Pool, which was named one of the best albums of the year by Resident Advisor in 2022, from Spotify in protest of their payment policy, which not only attracted a lot of attention, but also found countless imitators.
Contemporary classical composer Sophia Jani and violinist Teresa Allgaier have released their new joint work Six Pieces for Solo Violin on the Munich label Squama, which has already been featured here several times and has always attracted positive attention. They describe calm and serenity as the basis for their initially uncomplicated and repetitive compositions, each of which focuses on a specific technical aspect of the instrument, exploring its limits while maintaining the illusion of simplicity. It takes a great deal of effort to create the feeling of effortlessness, and the two musicians and producer Martin Brügger have made this effort for this enchanting album, which, despite all the technical finesse, is more about the atmosphere of the overall work.
