Balbina - "point"
(Polkadot / BMG, from January 10th)
You have to be grateful to the Berlin singer Balbina for many things, but most recently for an absurd association: We older people still remember the lovely Sesame Street key Grobi, which once tried to teach us concepts of spatial orientation. "Over", "under" and "around" still went relatively quickly, but the repeated running from "close" to "far" drove the eager blue plush doll almost to the edge of exhaustion. An amusing and instructive TV moment that you have to think of when Balbina sings at the beginning of her new album: "I'm far away, but I'm only around the corner", "I'm now somewhere else, me am someone else now, far from the one I know '".
The pop design of the now 36-year-old, a figure unique in the German music landscape, has always dealt with the tension between the greatest possible intensity and simultaneous distancing. Her exalted way of singing and dressing in artistic, consistently body-wrapping costumes has not only polarized audiences and critics in recent years, but has also led to obstacles for her record company, which she quickly put after the release of her major debut "About Brooding "firmly: A young woman, whose aspiration is Björk rather than Sarah Connor, who, with clever rhetoric and space-consuming soul, also refuses the dull German poet style, has a hard time in Schlagerlandle. After the release of her grandiose album "Questions about Questions" (2017) and two years of struggling against industrial resistance, she started to feel exhausted: Balbina canceled everything and went to retreat with herself and her art.
"Point." marks her return with the greatest possible autonomy, the album appears on her own label Polkadot. Everything stays different, with this quote from her mentor Herbert Grönemeyer (who makes a rare guest appearance in the song "machen ") one could summarize the innovations that Balbina is installing here. What has remained is her talent for dissecting language and synthesizing it ingeniously for her purposes. In the title track, an opulence-prone elegy in the style of "Nothing Else Matters", she processes the frustration of being cut off from the music business. The "life sentence", ie the life sentence, becomes an empowerment statement, the grammatical-biographical sentence end: "Full stop, point, off, end."
What is new is not only that Balbina now inserts passages sung in English into her German lyrics in several songs (which is a matter of taste), but also that she is for the first time her solipsistic-strict music cosmos for guests (Grönemeyer, rapper Ebow in "Weit weg" ) and a spectacular cover version opens: Rammstein's "Sun" (presented with benevolence from the band) retains his majesty at Balbina, but renounces harshness in favor of a futuristic clicking electro sound including female choir.
It is astonishing that this guy-like hymn rumble can sound so feminine and bright. In the sunrise celebrated there, that is the point, there is also the promise that grief and despair can create a new beginning - just "no end", as is the case in the vigorous pounding, self-overturning and ultimately ecstatic pleading drumfire. Soul of the song of the same name means: "Hope for the future to finally seize the present."
Regardless of losses or possible fan disturbance, Balbina pursues the expansion of her musical creative zone: In the more playful first half of the album, she experiments with James Blakes Whisper R&B and Róisin Murphys Pluckerpop ("Wanderlust") or skeletonized Reggaeton ("Moment"). Again and again, rugged gospel structures and percussive volts contrast highly melodic choruses or hooks. It is howled and shredded with the voice or indulged with an entire orchestra in James Bond opulence; Such an aggressive fulminance is only known from US roots idiosyncrats like Alabama Shakes or Algiers.
Some things ("bluenote", "boredom") may remain too shallow. But that's only noticeable because the majority of these new Balbina pieces are so fearlessly emotional and so stirringly original. Very close to her soul, very far from German pop monotony. (9.0) Andreas Borcholte
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The Chap - "Digital Technology"
(State Act / Bertus / Zebralution, from January 10th)
It is enough with the gibberish of the wild twenties, with the blah blues forecasts for the dawn of the decade, which just want to choke a windy future think tank. If you want to know what's going on, you can hear The Chap records since the beginning of the millennium. From the biorhythm to the yogicism of society, from clone food to protest culture, from the joy of depression to financial disaster, the band measured what is commonly called life in late capitalism with seismographic precision and so joyfully transformed it into off-track music that all the shit is even right Is funny.
In 2001, The Chap's first mini album, titled: "Fun", what else? Since then, the four or five members from various (still) EU member states have consistently consolidated their under-the-radar status: one plate is more informed and more eye-opening than the next. But many don't want to know that exactly. Anyone who wants to navigate through the neoliberal treadmill to a certain extent is not badly served with a good degree of ignorance. The new work "Digital Technology" will therefore not change much about The Chap as an eternal insider tip.
The title is not even a joke, but a cheek. Exactly what The Chap likes to do and do best. Digital technology is as comprehensive and creeping in everywhere as the band's aesthetic program has always been. There is a lot of up-tempo rock with beatbox, parabolas about dolphins ("Bring Your Dolphin") and rhymes about Mark E. Smith ("Pea Shore"). Machine radio ("Toothless Fuckface") and apocalypse techno ("I Recommend You Do The Same") act as a contrast medium to make the stellar melodies shine even brighter.
It would not be The Chap if the hymn-like nature of the chorus of "Hard" was not the subject of the same chorus: "Close your mouth and hear the chorus / Some voices will lead you to eh-eh-valuation", it says : Evaluation as the final boss. This will ring in the ears of all junior professors and lecturers who are prepared for a teaching assignment like a sweet alarm bell that never stops.
So if you really want to know what's going to happen in the near future, you will find the answer in the closing credits of "Don't Say It Like That", the last song by "Digital Technology". Despite all the jokes in the language and all the pointed analysis of the current situation, the essence of this album is in an onomatopoetic original sound five seconds before the end, a frustration sound between the groaning of an under-challenged Icelandic horse and the defiant reflex of people of different ages, when it comes to brushing your teeth, gangstering or washing up goes from New Year's brunch. There we have the salad: "Ahmnnaahwa ..!" (8.1) Arno Raffeiner
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Georgia - "Seeking Thrills"
(Domino / Goodtogo, from January 10th)
For someone who has spent almost the entire New Year's Eve with an endless playlist of old Frankie Knuckles classics (was an all-round successful evening), this album is just right. Even the great artwork of ecstatic British teenagers on the dance floor of the Eighties (by photography icon Nancy Honey) makes it clear that this is about dancing, about "seeking thrills": looking for the kick between twitching bodies, pure hedonism, diving into sound.
London musician Georgia is doing an amazing career change. Her debut in 2015 was one of the most interesting records of the year and was influenced by electronics experimentalists like Daniel Lopatin as well as by street poetry by Kate Tempest. At that time Georgia's penchant for deep house and dance could already be heard in tracks like "Nothing Solutions"; now she gave free rein to her passion for 909 drum computers and Detroit.
The first four songs alone, all released in advance as singles, are an uncompromising broadside of shimmering, wonderfully rickety retro rhythms: "Started Out" quotes "Can You Feel It" by Mr. Fingers, "About Work The Dancefloor" goes with it the young Madonna in the underground clubs of New York and Motor City, "Never Let You Go" and "24 Hours" pick up where Robyn has temporarily left off.
Andreas Borcholtes Playlist KW 2
MIRROR ONLINE
Playlist on Spotify
1 Balbina: sun
2 070 Shake: Under The Moon
3 Eliza Shaddad: One Last Embrace
4 Alexandra Savior: Howl
5 The Chap: Bring Your Dolphin
6 Pet Shop Boys: Monkey Business
7 Georgia: Started Out
8 Moesha 13: Respect
9 Tomasa Del Real feat. TECH GRL & Nass G: 4.20
10 Rakta: Fim Do Mundo
Only with "Mellow" (with rap newcomer Shygirl) does she take a breather for nodding and chilling, then the compositionally more complex and sonically global ("Ray Guns", "Feel It"), but no less determined. Her optimistic pop grooves have been in constant rotation on the BBC station Radio 1 for months; at the Glastonbury Festival she was one of the highlights of the club stages last year. Georgia does not entirely forego content: "Til I Own It", one of three spherical ballads, is a melancholy view of the gentrification and housing shortage in her hometown.
One suspects: Despite the debut hype, the past few years have not been easy for the young musician and producer. After a long period of alcohol and drug use, she discovered the healing power of the dance floor, when the only substance that you eat while dancing is music, she says about her new life and sound concept. Frankie says: Let the Music use you. (7.5) Andreas Borcholte
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Seeking thrills
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DOMINO
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Alexandra Savior - "The Archer"
(30th Century Records / Rough Trade, from January 10th)
You will still be allowed to cry! Given the tense decade that is likely to come politically, socially and economically, sustainable summertime sadness is probably not such a bad mood, winter will soon be gone anyway - and Lana Del Rey, whose nostalgic Femme Fatale siren song is charmingly varied here, rose to modern class with her album "Norman Fucking Rockwell" last year.
On her second album, Alexandra Savior, a 24-year-old US musician, brings together the wicked twang French pop chanteuse of the 1960s with noir-California "True Detective" morbidity, but is a very self-determined child of her time despite highly epigonal tendencies: " He doesn't like it when I cry ", she sings, as tonelessly as defiantly, in one of the best pieces," and now he's gone, so I'm crying all the time ". That fits very well with her melancholy, disillusioned look on the cover.
Listened to on the radio
On Wednesdays at 11 p.m. there is a wiretap mixtape on Hamburg's web radio ByteFM with many songs from the records discussed and highlights from Andreas Borcholte's personal playlist.
Not only in this song, in one of the most beautiful choruses of the New Year, but also in "Howl", "Saving Grace" or "But You", Savior shows that she stands out from her well-known male mentors (Alex Turner from Arctic Monkeys, Danger Mouse) was inspired, but as a songwriter and songwriter yearned for autonomy. Her debut was produced by Turner in 2017 and sounded like it. The luxurious retro bliss of music has remained, but art figures such as Anna-Marie Mirage, who at that time still had to serve as substitutes for cheeky lines like this: "La-di-dah / I sing songs about / Whatever the fuck they want" , Savior no longer needs today.
Today she sings with more reverberation on her voice and without many expressions, but at least what she wants - and that is not as unoriginal as you might think. "Feminist fear horror film feel" she once called her style. Everything you need for the New Year's hangover . (7.3) Andreas Borcholte
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The Archer
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Rating: From "0" (absolute disaster) to "10" (absolute classic)