Anna von Raison (AnnaVR) describes her debut album as a retreat from the world of professional music. After deciding to pursue a career as a pianist as a teenager, impressed by a Herbie Hancock concert, she went on to study jazz piano in Amsterdam and New York, and then embarked on a career as a studio musician. After years of commissioned work, she became known as a solo artist with a new recording of Philip Glass' Etude No. 2, which was even released on the maestro's own label. The newly released album Salvation mixes this spirit of renewal with diverse influences from Stravinsky to Rihanna to create a unique modern soul.
The five men of Die Verlierer, a combination of the Berlin garage rock project Chuckamuck and the punk band Marke, consistently and above all with great enthusiasm and competence pursue a retro sound typical of early 1980s punk in Germany. And even if the shouted or barked slogans of singer Hannes Berwig seem more like posturing largely liberated from the original spirit of punk, the raw energy of songs like Stacheldraht or Beton, sometimes reminiscent of German veterans like Razzia or Slime, sometimes of English heroes like the early Killing Joke or Wire, is able to call the inner rebel back on the scene.
Kitty Solaris, a singer-songwriter from Berlin, draws her inspiration from classics such as Velvet Underground and Cat Power. Her dreamy, enraptured pop adorned with all kinds of echoing guitars and gentle synths is about a better world, one of sunsets and date palms, in which people look to the future united by the desire for peace. But the minimalist production also offers room for your own thoughts. The lightness of the production and the simplicity of the lyrics are the framework for the strong emotional depth of the nine airy songs on James Bond, the recently released tenth album.
With radishes (for example), it's simple: if you sow them, you will reap them. The jazz project Ernte, however, speaks more of the consequences of the challenging global political situation, which are producing far more complex results. However, the top-class quintet does not dare to make any predictions, but rather negotiates the signs of the times on a musical level by recording jazz versions of anti-fascist and anti-racist protest songs. They interpret the old songs with enormous complexity, leaving classical song structures behind and exploring the musical boundaries of the compositions in extensive improvisations.
To describe Dumbo Tracks as a solo project by Cologne-based producer Jan Philipp Janzen would be to miss the point. For Move With Intention, Philipp and his co-producer Julian Stetter first sketched out the ideas that would become the basis of the album in several studio sessions and then invited musician friends to record the basic tracks. In the final phase, they were joined by (among others) Smile frontwoman Rubee Fegan, Canadian singer-songwriter Marker Starling, house romantic Portable, Bonn-based haunted pop artist nothhingspecial and Hamburg techno visionary Ada. The result: electronic krautrock full of trippy anarchy and techno swagger.
