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Rating: Weilheim auf Achse, Weilheim on the move. Weilheim is a town of 20,000 souls 40 kilometers from Munich. Console in an interview says “a shit town, but when I'm away for too long, I miss it”. All the bands of this mini festival touring Germany come from there. Yesterday, Ms. John Soda, Tied And Tickled Trio, Enders' Room (Enders is also the saxophonist in Tied and Tickled Trio) performed. Today, Notwist, Lali Puna, and Couch. Every musician plays in at least one other of these bands, but creating a complete genealogy would now be too complicated. Let's just add that the catalyst is Mario Thaler's Uphon Studios, where almost everything is recorded.
21.00. Couch begins: Stefanie Böhm, here the keyboardist and guitarist, is also the singer of Ms. John Soda. There are four of them, besides Stefanie, a bass, a guitar, and a drummer. At the beginning of their journey, they said: “we make music without words and without solos”. And so it remains. To give you a reference, let's say Kinski; they build songs on rather minimal phrases, then speed up. Occasionally they approach the majestic. I miss the words. The lyrics. 4/5
22.00. Lali Puna: On bass Markus Acher, also guitarist and singer in Notwist. Here there are some words, we know the records, but the live performance is rather flat. Sometimes the fit between samples and live parts doesn't completely align. It remains a poor copy of the records. They also make some note mistakes, and at times the keyboards, the two-note melodic lines, don’t integrate with the rest. This is because the musicians are forced to chase the loops, which constitute the structure of the songs. The drummer obviously plays with a click in the headphones and occasionally exploits the click's possibilities and launches into some offbeat. Markus Acher moves back and forth, in place, like someone autistic, never stopping. They don't play "Contratiempo," my favorite. They play "a cookie monster beside my bed". 3/5
According to the concert program, it should be 23.00. My internal clock roughly confirms it. The Notwist. Markus Acher comes on stage alone and starts playing something vaguely country folk. While the others are still setting up the stage. I expect a quiet and delicate concert. Here they are all ready: they play "One With The Freaks," from Neon Golden (at the merchandise stand, I even discovered a copy on double mini CD, tiny. When you talk about a band’s attention to detail). "Pick Up the Phone" follows. And here Acher tortures the audience with a noise à la Einstürzende Neubauten. He strikes the guitar strings between the nut and tuners with the pick, which becomes a shrill and piercing thing with the effects. The song ends in a maelstrom.
The Notwist is impressive for the mastery of their execution. The surprise is Martin Gretschmann (aka Console), the man of samples. It's he who follows the band and not the other way around. Occasionally he steps away from his laptop and keyboards, goes to smoke a cigarette behind the amps, goes away to drink some water, but he's always in his place when necessary. So skilled he doesn't have to pretend to do something when the loop goes alone or when there isn’t one. His contributions are always perfectly in the mix. And it was he who steered the turn towards today’s Notwist, in 1995, when he contributed to "12". The debut album of Notwist was instead between rock, punk, and metal. Which occasionally peeks out live in moments of sudden anger. Anything but calm and delicacy. Markus’ brother, Micha (also a member of Ms. John Soda), here plays the bass exactly like his brother, with a bobbing motion and head shaking that gives him no peace throughout the concert. He doesn’t stop once. Often in the outros of the songs, he deviates on dub lines. Praise also to the drummer, Martin Messerschnitt, who still perfects the art of offbeat. In "Chemicals," which was their first small hit, Martin Gretschmann replaces the modem halfway through the song with vocal warbles. Almost camp. Great. After every song, Markus Acher says "Tausend Dank", a thousand thanks, and "Vielen, vielen Dank", many, many thanks; the gentleness and kindness of the records in his words. They close with "Pilot" and Acher samples his own voice in a slow, spectral closure "Ca-Car-Car". Finally, the encore definitively closes the concert with "Consequence", this one as delicate as on the record.
Wow. It's one o'clock. A thousand thanks. 5/5
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