Muffled echoing bells, lively chirping, dubby synth dabs and a slightly nervous breakbeat greet listeners to Broken Temptation, the latest output of Polygonia, the multidisciplinary project by Munich-based DJ and visual artist Lindsey Wang. In recent years, she has become known above all as a label operator and daring collaborator in the borders of electronic music and jazz. Among other things, she is part of the jazz-techno band Lyder and has released an album with drummer Simon Popp from the Munich-based Squama group. The playful compositions defy classical categories, and the artist's interest in acoustic instruments and cultural diversity always adds surprising moments to her releases.
Rarely has a project name been as descriptive as that of Stuttgart-based sound researcher Michael Fiedler. Under the pseudonym Ghost Dubs, he has released an album of truly ghostly dub techno on the renowned Pressure label, in which you can clearly hear the great role models of Basic Channel. Embellished with sonic experiments, Michael Fiedler's project debut Damaged demonstrates both his technical prowess as a sound designer and the composing mastery he acquired during the productions of his avant-pop group Annagemina and the reggae dub project Jah Schulz. But don't let this diversity fool you: Despite the various influences, Ghost Dubs' debut album is a consistently homogeneous masterpiece of minimalist dub that maintains its arc of suspense over the length of the album and is very pleasant to listen to all the way through.
Cooperation, even across supposed borders, is the most important musical principle for the Hamburg drummer and producer Silvan Strauss, as he has proven in countless collaborations with artists such as Maria João, Soweto Kinch and Nils Landgren. The effortlessness with which he moves light-footedly between jazz and urban contemporary music in all these collaborations is also the hallmark of his new solo album Facing, a largely instrumental album, apart from two tracks with British rapper Oscar #Worldpeace and one with Ghanaian singer Mehdi Qamoum. The laid-back hip-hop/urban jazz compositions, supported by the soft, analog beats of the drummer, flow calmly over the manageable album length of a good half hour and will delight downbeat fans in particular, even if the individual pieces are harmoniously tinged with jazz.
As much as necessary, but as little as possible - this is the principle behind the work of the trio Kratzen. They see themselves as modern heirs to Krautrock and appropriately call their style “Krautwave”. Their line-up is unusual for the usual gender distribution in music - there is a woman on the drums and (usually) the only man sings. Compared to its predecessors, the newly released album III is somewhat more melodic and almost a little conciliatory, it seems satisfied - a band that has found itself musically and in terms of content. However, there are no major surprises, the band sticks to its minimalist principle. Rhythmically dead straight to the point of monotony, the three of them stay on course from the first to the last note. Even though the driving opener Reichtum gets off to a powerful start, the Cologne band's third album also has some decidedly quiet moments, which suits them perfectly.
In 1993, the Hamburg band Tocotronic was the German answer to the lo-fi movement from the USA to bands like Pavement and Sebadoh, who, tired of the exciting eighties, ushered in an age of philosophizing slackers. Dressed in corduroy pants and decades-old baggy T-shirts, without any respect for musical conventions but with an incomparable flair and a razor-sharp view of their generation, their wisdom and shrewdness made them the mouthpiece of a disillusioned youth who had a lot to say but whose privileged situation made any rebellion an empty gesture. They were also one of the central and commercially most successful acts of the so-called “Hamburger Schule” (Hamburg School), a short but formative chapter in German music history. Now, after more than thirty years of band history, they are releasing Golden Years, their 14th album. Hardly any other band has ever aged as gracefully and told their generation something about themselves over the years as the “Tocos” have been able to do. Whether it's the anti-fascist anthem Denn sie wissen was sie tun or the clever swan song to the capital Bye Bye Berlin, they know all the important topics and always hit the right note.
