ACHTUNG! FIVE-IN-A-ROW! We’re so happy to announce that we’re back on the Bahn, down past the peep shows and strip-o-ramas on Hamburger Berg, past where the Beatles learned how to let it all be, at the legendary Reeperbahn Festival on September 21st.

 

This is the fifth year running we’ve teamed up with our long standing collaborative partners US Performing Rights giant SESAC, as well as being the third year that we’ve been joined by a charity that the whole music business should be firmly behind, Help Musicians UK. They’ve been saving musicians in crisis as well as and funding new music and musicians for almost 100 years, and never was there a time when they were more needed than today. And for a second year, we’re delighted that premier audience growth glitterati LEAF are joining us. Our job again this year is to enable the acts chosen by SESAC, Leaf and HMUK together with us to get in front of the best of the international music industry. What a bonus to be doing it in front of what we believe is the best festival audience in Europe, the Hamburgers.

There will be industry networking from 5pm and showcase from 7pm. Check it out!

FOR INDUSTRY NETWORKING with SESCAC, HMUK, Leaf and Karousel CLICK HERE.

19:00 LYDMOR

“Hypnotic dance moves in a style reminiscent of Grimes or Lorde… the boldest and most fearless of performers’ – Consequence of Sound
‘Heavy, feathered, humorous… she is absolutely her own… worth the wait!’ 5 ***** – GAFFA
“There is a fearless madness in her that might have waited for too long to break out.” (NBHAP)

This woman is a star, no doubt about it. We had our minds blown at SPOT in Denmark last year by the undoubted star of the festival, Lydmor. Referred to in her biog as ‘A Danish girl with the bruised knees jumping down from stage swinging the chord of the microphone like a whip while she sings as much of sex and drugs as emotions and far away places.’ She was all that and a lot more. A set at our East London showcase with SESAC late last year resulted in her signing with Phyllis Belezos at ITB. Internationally in demand, Lydmor seems to be everywhere at once. From Sao Paolo singing her heart out while the beat is pumping over her sweaty dancing audience; to coproducing a track with j-pop legend Takeshi Kobayashi; to composing the soundtrack for an animated fantasy series. In between her myriad of creative collaborations (including critically acclaimed “Lydmor & Bon Homme”) this young producer/artist has managed to tour most of the world several times, playing from the biggest festivals and venues to the living rooms of her biggest fans.

After her first two albums – A Pile of Empty Tapes (2012) and Y (2015) – which were only published in Denmark, Lydmor’s new record will be released internationally for the first time by hfn music. Lydmor has recently released her singles “Helium High”, “Money Towers”, “Killing Time” and “Claudia”, as well as two albums with her critically acclaimed duo project “Lydmor & Bon Homme” on the Hamburg based label.

The new album “I Told You I’d Tell Them Our Story” will be out on September, 28th 2018, and Lydmor will be touring China, Hong Kong, Europe and UK in November/December 2018. If you manage to catch one of her shows, she will flirt, dance, cry, scream and hug her way into your heart with a brutal honesty that comes across both in her pumping rhythmical electro sounds as well as her emotional dreamy side. Showered with comparisons to the likes of Grimes, Kate Bush or Björk, but inevitably Lydmor is quite her own. Did we mention she’s a star?

19:50 FRIEDBERG

With “Friedberg”, Austrian born London-based singer and songwriter Anna F. combines her wonderfully delicate and fragile voice with a super fresh take on grungy guitars and driving rough beats. Her lyrics are poetic and enduring, involving very personal stories and more abstract thoughts about modern day life.
In its minimalistic simplicity the songs have their own totally unique sound and let Anna embark on a new journey after two very successful previous records (Gold in Italy and Austria, and chart entries in Germany and Switzerland, touring with Lenny Kravitz and James Blunt, winning the Austrian Music Award AMADEUS 4 times) and make her evolve with a more rough and unpolished sound. She wrote and co-produced the songs together with Matthias Biermann (Roosevelt) and Daniel Brandt (of Brandt Brauer Frick) over the course of 18 months in Los Angeles, Berlin and London. Forming a 4-piece all-girl live-band she will take this new project to international festival stages in the near future. Indie-rock hasn’t sounded that fresh for long time as with this new record. It certainly brings to mind certain indie-rock classics but creates a new experience with a sound that’s one all of her own. The video for her forthcoming single ‘Boom’ as Friedberg is a few weeks away, so we’ve posted you one of her previous tracks from her Anna F project to keep you going. The new sound is definitely more gritty guitar based, but with that same close mic’d, breathy and sultry delivery.

20:40 BE CHARLOTTE

Be Charlotte is a young songwriter from Dundee, Scotland. Her music is an extension of her personality. Her songs are explorative, unconventional and undeniably pop with immediately recognisable vocals. She writes songs to express herself and elevate her understanding of the world around us. Charlotte has taken her Scottish pop music to festival appearances across UK, Europe and South East Asia, as well as playing to a tv audience of 350,000,000 households at the closing ceremony of the Solheim Cup/Ryder Cup in Iowa , United States of America in 2017. To date she has self-released two singles with over a million streams on Spotify and a groundswell of radio playlists across UK and Europe. BeCharlotte is looking forward to releasing new music in 2018 having recently signed to Sony Music.

21:30 FATHERSON

Sometimes you just have to rip it up and start again. Come early 2017, Fatherson – comprised of vocalist/guitarist Ross Leighton bassist Marc Strain and drummer Greg Walkinshaw – found themselves at a turning point. Digging up their roots and decanting to a new studio home in Glasgow, they longed for a change. Sum Of All Your Parts (out September 14th via Easy Life Records) is the result, and their most assured record to date.
Forming in Kilmarnock, Scotland, in early 2010, Fatherson immediately captured hearts with their raw, honest alt-rock sound. Inspired by Scottish stoicism as much as their own personal turmoil, debut album I Am An Island and its 2016 follow-up Open Book were masterclasses in full-throttle rock songwriting, and garnered support from (and tours alongside) their north-of-the-border brethren in Biffy Clyro, Frightened Rabbit, Idlewild and Twin Atlantic, as well as further runs alongside the likes of Kings Of Leon, Augustines, Enter Shikari and more. Open Book jumped straight in at No.2 in the Scottish album charts as well as performing strongly in the U.K. Other recent highlights include packing a 12,000 person tent at T in the Park
That no-bullshit, heart-on-sleeve approach is integral to Sum Of All Your Parts. Sum Of All Your Parts’s sonic and lyrical experimentation has allowed Fatherson to break free of the British rock mould they’d found themselves being placed in. The opening one-two of ‘The Rain’ and lead single ‘Making Waves’ is testament to that fact – within ten minutes, Sum Of All Your Parts skips from hypnotic, looped piano, through storming post-rock passages, to the soaring pop nous of that first-released single.

Recorded live and in chronological sequence with Claudius Mittendorfer (Arctic Monkeys, Interpol, Weezer), Sum Of All Your Parts fizzes with a youthful energy, reinvigorating the group from the get-go. “A big part of this process was trying to capture that feeling of when you play a song together for the first time, and you look at each other in the face and get that smile that you can’t get rid of,” explains Walkinshaw. “We weren’t so concerned about some of the pop sensibilities – it’s a little bit more raw, and a little bit more loose, and a bit funner, at points.” Harking back to the innocence and innovation of those early days, while taking confident strides forward, the result is Sum Of All Your Parts – a record that finds Fatherson reborn. Sum Of All Your Parts is out on September 14th.

22:30 MAKOLA

West African flavour. East End behaviour.

Rising duo Makola have their roots in Finland and Ghana but their sound, an irrepressible explosion of Hip-hop and Afrobeat, could only ever have been forged in London. Consisting of rapper Kwame Mensah and producer Peter Hakola, the pair fused their love of Hip-Hop, Highlife, Dance, Electronic, Grime, Jazz, Soul and Pop music to produce a truly distinctive sound created unapologetically in East London.

Makola touched down in 2016 with their debut single This Is London, an exhilarating blend of culture and consciousness delivered with unabashed honesty, discussing their view of the London they’ve lived and grew up with. Second single Black Man Statues was a rallying cry which brought a harder and more immediate sound steeped in London’s Grime soundscape.

During the year of 2017 these two tracks alone would see Makola play some major festivals and gigs in Europe and UK, showcasing their energetic non-stop party vibes. Expanding beyond just a rapper and producer, Makola implement a live element that sees them perform with live drums and brass section. As a result they’ve built up a reputation as a band you must see if you’re looking for unrelenting musical and theatrical entertainment.

With Makola releasing new single Crown and an E.P in 2018, now is the time to catch them live.

23:30 LIFE

 

This is how you finish a proper showcase: Described by DIY Magazine as “an unhinged depiction of modern day punk”, LIFE are four youngsters from Hull, England who represent the untapped anger of the British working class in 2018. With a strong DIY ethic, LIFE have developed a loyal following for their clever wordplays and energetic and engaging performances. Influenced by punk music, underdogs and their own beautiful city.

LIFE released their self-released debut album, Popular Music, last year in the UK to an enthusiastic response from press and radio. Popular Music was included in Radio 1’s 2017 best album list alongside such esteemed artists as Stormzy, The XX and Jay Z, and the band was voted Ones to Watch 2017 by DIY, Metro, So Young and Fred Perry Subculture. Tracks from the record received adds on BBC 6 Music, praised by Steve Lamacq for being “…weirdly uncompromising and addictive”, and the band received support from Radio 1, including a live session at Maida Vale, and a performance at Radio 1’s Big Weekend.

Raised on 70’s punk in a “working liberal family”, Mez and his brother, guitarist Mick, create music with a political edge with sharp social commentary that depicts their surroundings with refreshing honesty and wit. Furthermore, both Mez and drummer, Stew, are youth workers in one of the poorer regions of Hull, and they see first-hand the real impact that austerity and cuts are having on the vulnerable. They work at The Warren Youth Project, a charity run by young people for young people. With a mission of creating a manifesto for the disillusioned, the widely ignored, and those who might think they’ve no means of having a creative outlet, LIFE has a timeless simplicity enhanced with refined grit that has (nearly) been lost in today’s music. They tackle themes from Trump to Brexit, mass consumption, police violence and austerity – the bleakness of it all laid bare in songs which punch with clarity and fizz. In the words of God Is In the TV, “LIFE are everything you could possibly want from an artist – they are politically astute, angry, intelligent, gritty and air-punchingly brilliant…”, and Louder Than War wrote, “LIFE Provide A Mouthpiece For A Voiceless Generation.”

Formed in 2013, LIFE have been touring constantly for the last two years including a headlining UK tour in 2017, appearances at numerous festivals across the UK and Europe, including Reading & Leeds, Latitude, The Great Escape, Reeperbahn, Truck, Live at Leeds, Boardmasters, and tours with Slaves, Idles and Nadine Shah. While being apolitical and disengaged with reality has been the trend for the past few years, LIFE’s music is angry and they buck this trend with their undying passion and unquestionable determination, and provide a voice for the disengaged. As Tom Twardzik from Popdust wrote, “LIFE are keenly aware of the problems of the world and how to put them into a rhythmic line.”

LOCATION: CLICK PHOTO