A great double bill of Karaoke Kalk act at salon wellenmaschine this May with Berend Intelmann and Astrobal both performing live.
»Mother Nature« is the debut solo album by Berend Intelmann, a key figure in the German indie music scene since the late 1980s. Having made his name as a member of groups such as Hallelujah Ding Dong Happy Happy, Guther, and Paula, Intelmann most recently focussed on his work as a producer for artists such as Jens Friebe, MissinCat, or Fotos. »Mother Nature« sees the multi-instrumentalist and singer navigate between pop sentiment and his penchant for classical music on these eight pieces, three of which feature additional contributions by Karaoke Kalk label mate Marla Hansen, synth pop iconoclast Der Assistent, and the versatile Mieke Miami, respectively. »Mother Nature« combines a sense of playfulness with cunning compositional rigour to stunning effect.
Intelmann took full creative licence and worked with the instruments that he feels most comfortable using: the drums, synthesizers, and his voice. While inspired by his life-long passion for pop music in all shades, he also took some cues from his more recent passion for classical music. »The synthesizer melodies are arranged like string quartets, while the songs are presented as musical themes strung together so that they form a coherent story,« he explains. The resulting sound isn’t quite as »krauty« as someone called it, instead the artist prefers to call it »slow-kraut—1980s synth sound with 1970s George Duke-style beats,« though of course he never attempted to fit in one specific genre or replicate a certain sound: This is simply the essence of Berend Intelmann as a composer and storyteller.
Emmanuel Mario keeps moving. The further he travels, the more he sounds like someone who has finally arrived where he has always been supposed to be. After collaborations with artists like Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier or the group Holden, his last album as Astrobal took the French composer and drummer to »Australasie« in 2016. On his second LP for the Berlin-based Karaoke Kalk, he ventures even further, eventually heading for »L’infini, l’Univers et les Mondes« – infinity, the universe and the worlds. Leaving behind the more krautrock-inspired approach he followed on »Australasie«, Astrobal focuses on a way of storytelling that takes conventional pop songwriting as a point of departure, yet arrives in previously unknown places.
