music: Pop Up Fair 2008, Leipzig, Germany
For the second year in a row Mstation makes it to Leipzig, Germany's festival of Indy music called Pop Up. It's a two hour drive from Berlin through gently rolling and forested Brandenburg and into Saxony. Small villages can be seen from the autobahn, church steeples poking up over small copses. Martin Luther was from these parts but that hasn't seemed to have made for any more, or any less in the supply of steeples.
It's dark when we get there on the Thursday night and we then spend an hour or so getting alternatively lost and unlost trying to find our way through a maze of twisting streets. The one we are after seems to appear, then disappear, and then miraculously reappear somewhere unexpected. Eventually, after a few phone calls - Where are we? Where are you??! - we meet with some people who are putting together a shop/cafe/hangout place where mixtapes are displayed on the wall as art, and where you're encouraged to bring along your own and swap for one that's there. There will be photos as well and with the same encouragement. The mixtapes are partly about the decontextualisation of individual songs when distributed individually in a digital format. Most songs have brothers and sisters that appear together on albums ... and tapes... although perhaps that becomes a different story on a mixtape. No matter - nice concept. It opens on May 28 and googling for "kassette" and "Leipzig" might find something by the time this story is up.
After that it's off to a bar and club for beer and bockwurst and conversation - apparently the music scene here is not particularly big but the art one certainly is. "Leipzig is the new Berlin!" says our host for where we're staying. One reason for saying this is that the rents are like Berlin from the old days - really very cheap and there is a quite large arts community already taking advantage of that.
Berlin's status won't be immediately threatened. It will retain its naughty reputation, as Paris has, for years after odious real estate speculators and chain stores have made it into a sterile desert of plastic pseudoness... this is happening as we speak. Just in the last year two indy record shops have closed down in Lychener strasse in Prenzlauer Berg as a result of buildings being resold and the rents going up substantially. Surely business renters deserve the same sort of protection that apartment dwellers mostly do. Anyway, two more coffee-to-go places coming up.
The next day there are workshops connected with Popup and in the evening, a collection of music events at different venues. The workshops are in German so, while the organiser of this trip, Henning Kuepper of Lollipop Shop Records (and the author of last year's report) is inhaling some knowledge, we head off to explore the town center to see if we can find the likes of the church where J.S. Bach was headquartered for so many years.
Liepzig used to be a thriving industrial center during and before the communist regime of East Germany. Since the changeover, East German industry has practically ceased to exist and the area is now quite poor with few jobs on offer. It's not the place here to attempt to explain how this great capitalist landgrab came about - suffice to say that there was a large exit of people and many buildings are empty - hence the low rents.
The old center is fairly full and bustling though with new and old buildings, lots of tourists, and the standard fare of shops for a German "High street" (call that boring). We found Bach's church, the Thomaskirke, but it was closed as music was being either recorded or practised. The other main one, the Nikolaikirke was open and that was a feast of the Baroque with many nice wall and ceiling paintings. The building dates from the 12th century. Later on, we heard that Bach had played there as well. It was also, Henning Kuepper tells me, the place where peaceful marches began and ended that ushered out the communist regime.
That night there were eight venues worth of gigs with a drinks session before hosted by the people promoting the city of Hamburg .. or was it VUT, the organisation that advises the indy music industry, and anyone else who wants to know, about how it all works as well as technical minutae of various kinds - legal issues, etc... and it was actually VUT.
The buzz act for the night is Gustav, a young woman from Vienna signed to the Chicks on Speed label, which is headquartered in Munich. (We have an interview with Gustav coming up next month... hopefully)
Luckily for us, considering our habit of getting lost, the venue is a two minute walk away and we head down into a packed cellar where she, with the help of some friends, is already playing. All we can see is the back of heads as the ceiling is too low to have an elevevated stage - the venue (Fruehauf) is really only suitable for a much smaller audience but at least the "vibe" is good and the music interesting and absorbing... there are Bjoerk and late Nico strands here - varied timbres, varied rhythmns with non-standard sounds. It's really, amongst other things, a very intelligent use of synths and effects. And, at times, it rocked along pretty well.
The air was thick with cigarette smoke mixed with more illicit smells. Interestingly, the supposedly over-regimented Germans haven't laid down and died like the French or the Brits and there's no mealy-mouthed talk like "oh well, I really should cut down" or "it's fun standing out in the road: You meet such a lot of people!". Yes, a music club late at night should have a smokey smell about. It's a requirement.
Then another cafe session, and after that, being the closest to sober, I was elected to drive home. Thanks to Benny and internet maps on his iPhone, the only hiccup was me driving on the wrong side of the road. Another 4AM or so bedtime.
Saturday was the day of the actual fair and it was another perfect day - sunny and 20ish and then cooling off nicely in the evening.
The fair was to open at 10 and I went along with the Lollipop Shop people who needed to be there at about 9 to set up. I wasn't the only bleary-eyed person there, that's for sure. After dealing with the very pleasant and helpful office staff for a pass and access to WLAN, I went in search of coffee. In Berlin that wouid have been a snip but for some reason Leipzig hardly does cafes at all and I had a fair walk around to find a bakery that served coffee as well as nice cake sort of things (kuchen!).
The fair itself had pretty much what you'd expect - labels, graphics people, a few magazines, the advisory people VUT that I mentioned before, a radio station or two, pr people, purveyers of t-shirts and buttons, and city stands to promote the likes of Hamburg, Mannheim, and Nurnberg.
One thing that showed was that Techno was still very much alive and kicking even if some of the output was a bit tired. There were at least a couple of soundscape labels which was quite cool and even if you don't like that sort of thing much, it's nice to know they can exist in this world.
And existence is a bit of a problem. One proprietor of a medium sized label said that 2008 was the most difficult year yet. One of the problems is the disappearance of outlets on the ground, especially for vynl. Digital strategy is still being worked out with one of the problems being promotion - setting up a web shop is simple but getting the traffic takes time and money. Another factor is that a lot of these people actually care what the result sounds like and digital quite often means lower quality and even a different type of market. No-one here is keen on iTunes. It's set up for the biggies. Parenthetically, a person who'd just updated to the latest version said 'It just keeps getting worse and worse!'.
From half-past one or so there were bands playing in an
adjoining room. Dante's Dream were first up and seemed a bit
pretentious to me but then along came the Subrosa Falcon
Association with million mile an hour guitar rock - real boy
stuff - no pretensions there! It wasn't shambolic either; these
fellows have been putting in a lot of time in the practise room.
After a break I was back again to see Kitty Solaris - she and her
guitar and one guy on drums. Billed as lo-fi, it wasn't really
but the arrangements were simple and the presentation was fun -
cute young woman with a blonde bob kitted out in 70's patterns
and warbling away endearingly. I went off with a bunch of people
to eat then and got back for the last two, both from the UK, The
LK and Miserable Rich.
The first was a two piece with one fellow on guitar and sequencers and the other singing and banging away while standing at a small drum kit. They played facing each other which was quite effective visually. The songs were highly original as well and I didn't have any urge to pop outside. One person nearby really didn't like the quality of the reverb which was a bit Everly Brothers-like. It wasn't my favorite thing about them but it didn't affect me quite so badly. There was a faint ghost of Morrisey around as well.
Last up was the Miserable Rich, an accoustic five piece with violin, cello, double bass, guitar, and vocalist. Quite a few people came along to see them especially as they've had a bit of hype and attract people who like 'real instruments'. I object to that notion but won't go on about it now. Their stuff was beautifully arranged and played and left me completely cold, and I did have the urge to go outside.
All in all, my favorites of those I heard were Gustav by a fair margin, and Subrosa and Kitty for different types of fun. I liked the LK as well and it'll be interesting to see what they get up to in the future.
And then it's over! We go back to where we're staying and what looks like being an earlier night turns out to be another late one as I get into a pleasant discussion about musical control surfaces of the future. No, we don't have the answer but more pondering is in order ... think light... as a non-tactile but visually very interesting alternative.
The next morning there were nine or so people around the eating table. The warmth of shared sensibilities as well as their inate warmth and hospitality is only a little muted by the general lack of sleep. It was a nice time.
John Littler
Bookmark:
post to Delicious Digg Reddit Facebook StumbleUponRecent on Mstation: electro-punk Autons, industrial/EBM Assemblage23, free-improv Bill Hsu, Lexus 600HL, Leipzig Games Convention, Paris travel
front page / music / software / games / hardware /wetware / guides / books / art / search / travel /rss / podcasts / contact us