überlin

Photo by www.joekake.com

Oum Shatt are weird. I mean, just look at them. And that name – is it short for “oh, um, I shat myself”? Not that I’m complaining, because a touch of oddness usually helps when it comes to creating weird and wonderful music. Especially if you’re a German trio experimenting with minimal rock n’ roll sprinkled with Arabic influences.

We like the Berlin band’s own description best: “A bit of Ricky Nelson with a moustache. Or Ian Curtis naked in Cairo, half past three in the morning.” And we love Swiss producer Kalabrese’s remix of “Power To The Women Of The Morning Shift ”, which sounds like the kind of idiosyncratic psycho disco that Andy Weatherall would use to kick off a set. Get your ears around this!

by Mike T West of Demons Galore.

Another year, another slew of great albums celebrating ten (and twenty) years of existence and making us feel really, really old. But one took us totally by surprise as it still sounds like it was made yesterday; the incredible debut album from 65daysofstatic, The Fall Of Math.

The Sheffield four piece* are commemorating in style this spring by playing the album in its entirety across Europe. And, as if that wasn’t enough, they will follow this with a second set of songs selected from the remainder (math!) of their extensive discography. Stuff like:

Bonus-instrumental-post-rock-experimental-math-gasm!

Joining 65dos on tour are fellow guitar pedal abusers Thought Forms. Having recently signed to Invada Records, this scuzz rock trio have just released a split with Esben And The Witch, ahead of a third album proper this year.

This perfect evening of quiet-loud-heavy-quiet-loud is at C-Club, Columbiadamm 9-11, 10965 on Wednesday from 8pm.

*Why are all the bands we like from The North™?!

Bet you didn’t know The Cure were once signed to Berlin’s Hansa Records. For like, a second…

On the pointed club crossover 12-inch in question (Boys Don’t Cry), Smith balanced out its somewhat grotesque ambition by lampooning their early days: Included on the flipside were the slinking, original 1979 track “Plastic Passion”, the faltering pop/punk stab “Pillbox Tales”, and an in-studio disco joke, “Do the Hansa”. Recorded under the name Easy Cure in 1978, the last two tunes were leftovers from the group’s first big break, a contract with Germany’s then-largest independent label, Hansa, whose interest in the band proved superficial. After being pressured to record covers of Paul Revere & The Raiders’ “Great Airplane Strike” and the Bobby Fuller Four’s “I Fought the Law” (which, by that time, The Clash were already well known for), Easy Cure took their £1000, their tapes and their pride home with them, then recorded “Do the Hansa”, an embittered shot at the suits.

– Pitchfork

More metal mayhem from Mike T West.

Oh me, oh my – it has been bloody ages since we had a Metal Montag! We thought it was about time we dusted off the air guitar and warmed-up our invisible oranges. What better opportunity to get back into the pit than with one of our favourite Britports Architects?

The Brighton quad returned earlier in the month with their huge sounding sixth album Lost Forever // Lost Together, which is excellent and also makes us feel dead old. SIXTH ALBUM?! Recorded in Sweden with producer Henrik Udd (who also helps Bring Me The Horizon sound just as crushing), LF//LT is the sound of what living on the south coast of England would do any sane person.

Check it out…

Joining Architects are the best rap metal band since Crazy Town, Stray From The Path, along with Aussie metalcore underagers Northlane and English hardcore mob, More Than Life. If you survive the above then you are clearly made of steel. Super steel.

Please note the event has moved from Lido to C-Club and starts when the pit boss says so.

BLEGH!

As far as we’re concerned, it’s never too early to plan for festival season, especially when the line-ups are as awesome as this year’s Greenville Music Festival. What they call “one of the most diverse festivals in Germany”, we’ve called a “musical mixed bag”, and we have another descriptor to add: Deutschland’s dopest (literally) festival.

Greenville 2014 is headlined by Snoop Dogg AKA Snoop Lion, and we’re probably the only people to hope he’s still in full-on dread mode. We’ll also be throwing our blunts in the sky for Method Man & Redman and Odd Future’s walking whitey Tyler, The Creator. Other highlights are sure to be überlin favourite Hurts, my main beard rival MC Fitti, killer live acts The Hives, Turbowolf and Maximo Park and hardcore legends Cro-Mags and Sick Of It All. Um, and the Presidents of the United States of America?

Check out Greenville’s well-rounded line-up below, and give it a listen on their Spotify playlist. For more details visit the Greenville Music Festival website, and keep it locked to überlin for the chance to win a pair of tickets. Put your lighters up!

Ich find’ es supergeil! Thanks to Natalie for the heads-up  Now I’m off to run a bath of milk and cereal and smoke a Wurst cigar.

photo by Aaron Schmiedel

Running a tattoo studio must be a piece of piss! Because somehow, Valentin Plessy, the co-founder of the AKA gallery, tattoo, piercing and body-modification atelier, has enough free time on his hands to produce crisp, cheeky electro-pop under the alias aMinus. Plessy recently released his second solo album, Options, a hot mess of synth pop, eighties house, RNB and 8 bit sounds, through Berlin label Mad Dog & Love. Here’s our pick of the new tracks, lead single “Don’t Mind Me Now” featuring Magritte Jaco, which puts us in mind of Gallic romantics Mlle Caro and Franck Garcia and captures the quintessentially Berlin pastime of the rooftop barney-turned-orgy. Bittersweet and brilliant.

OK, so it’s actually St. Valentine’s Eve, but we thought we’d lubricate your ears in anticipation of the schmaltziest day of the year. On Monday, Adrian of Post Flashback was kind/stupid enough to let me back into the Berlin Community Radio studio, along with my goodwyfe Zoë – to talk about love, heartbreak, bad dates and other relationship awkwardness. You’ll have to strain to hear us speak (technical difficulties!), but we’ve decided that’s a good thing. Instead, listen in for a selection of our favourite breakup/make up tracks, including The Cure, The Postal Service and Deftones.

Or if you’re on Spotify, you can listen to our playlist minus the shit-talking, plus a few surprise bonus tracks – just click here! And tune into Berlin Community Radio every Monday at 6pm (Berlin time), for nostalgic indie, shoegaze, post punk, post hardcore and other sad dad music. Check out Post Flashback on Facebook for more deets.

Chaos © Jule Roehr

We’re very excited to introduce HYENAZ, the other-wordly, gender-straddling new project from TUSK:

The beats and basslines lift from early house, EBM and R&B; the vocals from soul, blues and prog-rock; the lyrics are punk poetry, cutups — the calls of a cybernetic siren. Synthesizers are built from discarded scraps of metal and 90s nostalgia. Their performance, their visual art and their texts cull from the discarded fabrics of their surroundings, felt and reinterpreted through their bodies. HYENAZ are one, defiled and immaculate, their androgynous flesh quivering on the thin edge between the digital and the divine.

For a glimpse at the HYENAZ universe, watch the video for “Cypher”, in which a transgendered Pierrot morphs into a humanoid hyena. It’s a weird, and oddly placid, clip, for the least singley-single imaginable, but as an introduction to the cosmic, androgynous duo, it’s sheer perfection:

And if you want to hear the intergalactic boy-things channeling the spirit of Anne Clark, listen to Hyenaz’ first single “Sister”/”Reading”:

HYENAZ release their eponymous debut album through Freudian/Slit this Friday, February 13th, with a record launch party at Urban Spree.