the 2nd edition of Indie Pop Days are over now, isn't it sad? We guess everybody needs to get some rest now, because we had an extraordinary long and wonderful time with all of you at the Wasserturm Kreuzberg. But first we would like to thank all of our lovely Bands and DJs, they all did amazing and heartwarming performances! And we would like to send lots of hugs and kisses to our beautiful and kind audience! Thanks for coming, we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!
Thumbs up and a very big thanks to all of our dear friends and helpers* and to the Wasserturm-Team. Last but not least we'd love to say thanks to Aloha Surfsoda, taz, zitty and Byte.fm for all the support!
And now everybody can get nostalgic with this brilliant video by Nouriya. She filmed the whole weekend and she's great in editing, as you can see here, so stay excited about a little film about the Indie Pop Days coming up in the end of the year!
This is some great news we don't want to save from you!
Joel Gibb of The Hidden Cameras will join his compatriot Mark Woodpigeon tonight at his gig during the Indie Pop Days!
We are happy to have you, Joel and so much looking forward to tonight.
even though we'll meet tonight there are a couple of things we want to let you know.
If you take a look at our premium edition schedule you can see we included every special treat we got for you during this festival.
Well, no. We didn't. There are a couple more things we have for you.
At first we thought some of you who travel a more or less long way to Berlin might want to stroll around in the city for a while. If you feel like doing that we have a list of recommendations regarding places, shops and fleamarkets we'd like to go to. Check it out! Those who live in Berlin are of course also allowed to take a look.
But let's get back to the festival!
As you know we asked a couple of fine DJs to come and work out some nice shifts at the turntables for you to have a sweet party. We are very much looking forward to Flemming (DK, Labrador Records), Luise and Sindyan on Friday, Natalie Stardust, Lea Posh!pop, Tim Gane (Stereolab), Alex Bechberger and the guys from Sonic Pop Allnighter on Saturday as well as Sleepyheadphone and Anders on Sunday.
And we have a special guest who will join us for an acoustic (hopefully) outdoor set: Rune Simonsen will perform a couple of songs from his solo-project lagoonbird.
this is not an ordinary Thursday, it's the last day of presale for the Indie Pop Days Festival this weekend which ALREADY STARTS TOMORROW (waah). So if you wanna make sure to get in, please make use of this opportunity before midnight since we won't accept any incoming payments after that time.
You can get tickets for Saturday and Sunday combined. In case you can only make it to one of these festival-days the only option is buying tickets at the box office, just like on Friday.
Make sure to be there on time if you don't have a ticket already because the Wasserturm Kreuzberg isn't the largest place in the world, as you might remember from last year.
as we all know, weather is an idiot and never does what it's supposed to . If you don't believe us, please feel free to contact any farmer you like and be sure to get the same news over and over again in pretty colorful expressions.
Our advantage is we don't have much business with farming, which is why we can go inside and say: yeah, screw you, weather in general. And that is what we are going to do this weekend.
Since the weatherforecast can not exactly decide what we are going to have this weekend, we'll make sure everyone's having a good time and pretty much skip the outdoor-concert-part for safety's sake.
This means, on the sad face side, no sunny concerts, no blinking into the bright sun, but on the happy face side it means you can leave your wellies at home and have more space for extraordinary merch stuff, if you like, no walking around on muddy grounds and no danger of getting the sharp end of an umbrella in your eye while standing in a crowd and getting wet from rain.
We can live with that and it's not that we will never let you out of the Wasserturm Kreuzberg. There will still be music outside, brought to you by supergreat DJs or remix-artists, we are going to put some food outside in a tent and even though we let the bands play inside, we still pray for some sunlight because if the sun shines there is a surprise waiting for you outside on Sunday.
So, what do you say? We hope we didn't destroy your welly-outfit-plans and you can find something nice to wear. We are sure you will!
these weeks are supercrazy exciting. We are feverishly looking forward to this weekend's INDIE POP DAYS!
And we are tremendously glad to be given the opportunity of talking about our festival with two radioshow-hosts! One of these two interviews already happened and has been recorded, but for the other one we are going to be live in the studio, so here's plenty of options for you listening to our slight babble talk and a couple of beautiful indiepop-tunes.
It was so so so nice of Kathy Twinem to have us for an interview and we are glad she dedicated a complete hour of air-time to our dear festival and the music we all are going to experience this weekend already. Kathy is host at byte.fm and you can listen to our interview this wednesday at 6 p.m. Tune in!
Furthermore we are going to be live in the flux fm-studio thursday 6.10 p.m. It's worth tuning in because there is a chance of winning two times two tickets for the Indie Pop Days-weekend! Flux fm also invited Woodpigeon for an interview. They are going to be in the studio Friday afternoon, in case you are interested! Sorry Gilberto have also been invited by the lovely Radio 1 and will be interviewed Friday evening at 7.30 pm. This is something for everyone who can't make it to the festival at all (poor you) or will only miss the Friday (still: poor you!). And this is the last chance to win tickets for the Indie Pop Days 2011! Radio 1 is giving out two times two tickets for the weekend, too.
You can listen to both radiostations online and in case you are located in Berlin or Stuttgart it's also possible to receive motor.fm with your ordinary kitchen-radio.
It's a week from now untill the Indie Pop Days Berlin 2011 start and we all meet. We expect our festival to be ridiculously great and very much look forward to meeting you and the bands.
Since we are not exactly the patient kind of people we decided to give you a tiny little taste of the Indie Pop Days already tomorrow.
So let's meet at the King Kong Klub in Berlin, Mitte (Brunnenstrasse 173) and enjoy good tunes, nice company, cool drinks and the pleasant anticipation towards Indie Pop Days!! We are not alone behind the turntables, some of the Sonic Pop Allnighter (Punk New Wave Sixties French Beat IndiePop) and Kostja (Lo-fi, Chillwave, Noise) are coming over to join us for a great night.
There is even a special treat, because you can get your weekend-festival-ticket for only 30 Euro instead of 32 Euro. And we will have some of our totebags with us for sale and for you to show off.
In case you already have been at the King Kong Klub you know the deal. Entrance is free as a bird, but there are two Euro extra on the first drink. That money is for the DJs and we are going to spend it well on even more records to play them to you!
We will be there from 10 p.m. on and probably stay there the whole night, so step by and say hello whenever you want!
The festival is not far away, one can almost hear the first chords but still it's not too late for some good news! We happily received the message that Soda Fountain Rag can make it to our festival and will play a set.
Say Hi to Soda Fountain Rag!
Soda Fountain Rag's music is a great kind of lo-fi indie-pop, sugarsweet with supersmart, catchy one-liners, written and produced by Ragnhild Hogstad Jordahl. She's on her own in the studio but not alone on tour, that would probably not be so much fun, which is why she is being accompanied live by Anders Kaasen (guitar) and Stian Nyheim (bass). If you haven't already, give it a listen!
Here's a clip from Soda Fountain Rag's gig at last year's London Popfest.
What to do with all this time on our hands? Well, that isn't exactly our problem these days. There are still one or two or three or eleven or even more things to do, before we are well prepared to welcome all of you who are going to join us for three days of puppy poppy perfect indie-music.
But some of you might want to have a little something to hold on to for the time being.
No problem at all!
You are probably already looking forward to Television Keeps Us Apart's gig, so do we. It's something special since they play their first show ever in Germany at our festival! In case you would like to rearrange your top-five-list of TKUA-songs, this is the opportunity. These nice people offer their latest EP for free download, which isn't a bad thing to do, right?
Compared to that our Soundcloud Mixtape is like a first date. Please just listen, don't touch! Sort of a weird comparison, but this friday is making us feel silly, so what the flip.
whew it's only a couple of days until the festival is due and we finally
- get to meet all you fine people again
- see a couple of our favorite bands on stage
- dance to the tunes of our DJ-Friends
- have that great weekend, we've waited for a long time!
That is going to be a blast. Do you agree or would you like another reason why you shouldn't miss the Indie Pop Days 2011? It's easy! Take a listen at our Soundcloud-Mixtape and hear for yourself! Every band that is listed, will be playing at the festival, in fact, at the festival there are going to be even more bands!
The first two smartypartys who find out what bands are missing, get one of our favorite INDIE POP DAYS BERLIN 2011 posters, just be quick and post them in the comments.
Already bought the ticket but your Berlin based friends are all on holiday? Well, that is not such a big deal, since we thought about a couple of hostels, hotels and other options for the sleepy part during you stay in Berlin.
Have a look at our recommendations and feel free to comment anything you would like to add!
If you have any more questions just get in touch and we'll help you as much as we can.
23 days more, we are really looking forward to this!
we were so sure everything was fixed but as it happens from time to time, we were not sure enough.
Let's start from the beginning. You might remember how excited we were to present Aberdeen to you. The band confirmed, they would like to play at the Indie Pop Days Festival 2011 and we were happy. But unfortunately there were some disagreements within the band, which is why we were told, there might be some problems, but none one couldn't solve.
It went from 'we are playing' to 'we are playing friday' to 'we are not sure we are going to make it' to 'we are coming!' to 'We can't make it'. And that was it... Whew, what a ride!
We are sorry to tell you, we truly are, but Aberdeen can not make it to our festival. In case you want to return the ticket you already bought, we are unhappy not to see you at the festival, but that's totally your decision and not a problem. Just get in touch with us and we'll send your money back!
On the bright side, we are working on finding another group of musicians who would like to come and play on stage of our festival. We can't say much more about it for now, but be sure that we will let you know as soon as we figured something out.
And let's all be reminded there are a whole bunch of other great bands, in fact someone of us counted 16, which is quite an okay amount of music to experience for two days, don't you think? Among them for example The Wave Pictures with their beautiful song Like a Drummer:
we already told you what there is to know about the bands that are going to play at our festival this summer. You can see the complete list on the right side of this very fair page with links to every band. But! There is even more to experience at our festival than live-bands! We are also going to DJ on this occasion and we are not going to be on our own behind the dj-tables.
We happily announce that Tim Gane from Stereolab is going to join us behind the turntables, so that is probably going to be a hat full of fun!
You might also know Tim Gane's djing colleague (or is it the other way around?) Alex Bechberger. They are a good team at the turntables, which they already proved at the broadcasting show Rock/Pop am Montag on reboot.fm. You can still listen to the great session by Tim Gane and Alex Bechberger. Alex's second guest at this session is Jeremy Novac.
So, that's the situation here: we've got the precious dj-team Let's kiss and make up and very special guest DJs on Friday and Alex Bechberger accompanied by Tim Gane on Saturday! How does that sound to you? Right, it sounds like a lot of fun. Put on your dancing shoes!
Especially when there are so many nice things to find like at the Mauerpark on Sundays. This time a visit is going to be even more worthy to consider, because some of us will be selling awesome stuff. There are going to be a couple of nice dresses, some rare vinyl to buy and as a special treat we have our new INDIE POP DAYS bags for you to purchase.
That's all? Nope.
We also have a special offer for everyone who buys a ticket at our fleamarket-stand. Come visit us and get your INDIE POP DAYS Festival weekend-ticket for just 30 Euro each!
Well, that sounds great, but how would i recognize you, one might think. And we have the solution to that, too. In case you can't see us right away, just follow the sound of our portable record-player!
Usually we are not a jukebox, but if you want to recommend one of your favorite tunes on vinyl, why don't you bring it and we can listen to it together. Or suggest them in the comments so we can figure out if we already own the record and there won't be any need for you to carry it all the way there!
The fleamarket starts at around 10 a.m. and lasts until 6 p.m. We are very much looking forward to meeting you there and hope you find some nice things among our stuff and/or at the rest of the market! But even if you don't do the live-karaoke is worth a visit and a tune.
So let's all hope for nice weather and meet at the Mauerparkmarkt!
the time has come to announce that we are through with booking. We are happy about the confirmations we received and really look forward to the festival with every single band that is going to play. Hopefully (we are 99% sure) you like them, too. Tell us, what do you think about the last four bands we proudly announce today?
Let's start this last round with Young Wrists, a lo-fi-duo from Italy. Alberto and Letizia make nice 80ies synthie- lo-fi-pop and on their second album wasted youth they actually also sing about this century, or to be more precise, about one specific event that took place in June 1986.
What event might that have been? We are still wondering. Maybe there is a chance to find out more about this when we meet in person, because Young Wrists are going to play at the Indie Pop Days Festival as well, which is benissimo!
Young Wrists
If you wanted to visit the next band you'd have to move much more north, so it's a good thing they are also playing in Berlin, way more comfy! It's a pleasure for us to host Television keeps us apart from Stockholm, Sweden. Check out their website and download the fabulous album 'A Slight Change Of Light' for free.
what's going on outside?
Suddenly everyone is happy happy yeah yeah sweaty sweaty. We became quite fond of this state of mind and recommend enjoying the weather as long as it lasts.
Further things we started enjoying a lot lately:
- eating asparagus with tiny new potatoes and lemonsauce
- putting strawberries in a glas of sparkling wine
- biking around with our favorite tunes in ear
- hanging around with friends outside wherever we are.
Yay, summer, we like you!
But let's get to the topic. Even though we love hanging around and want to be in the warm sunlight all the time, we don't forget our duties and continue working on the booking list for our highlight (hopefully yours, too) of this fantastic summer, the marvellous Indie Pop Days Berlin! To be honest, that is a fun duty so we like doing what we do anyway.
We are glad to announce that Nils Folke Valdemar happily agreed to play at our festival. For those of you who don't know his music containing songs "of goliaths, of fear, of birds, of the night, of youth, of you, of himself" check out his homepage where you can download a couple of his albums.
He releases his records on his own and wants you to listen to them in first line, not pay for them to make him rich. We think that's a nice attitude. And we like his personal lyrics, his charming melodies and how he plays the guitar. So that's going to be another show you really shouldn't miss!
Do you know WeePOP! records? You probably do, like us. WeePOP! records is this nice label where 'Allo Darlin' in 2007, at that time named 'The Darlings', released their first EP "The Photo". WeePOP! records usually release EPs and mini-albums in a limited number of copies. It makes us glad to have another band from the WeePOP! records at this year's festival. We are talking about Amida, their awesome mixture of great styles and suggest you listen to their songs on your own if you aren't already familiar with their albums, because we are not in the mood for genre- or namedropping. All we can say is it's fun listening to Amida and we already started practicing our funky dancemoves for their show to impress you with great choreographies. So we are definitely going to be at the dancefloor during Amidas set and hope to meet you there!
Darren Hanlon is sort of an expert for beautiful things. He has been working as a solo artist since 1999, before that he was a member of the Simpletons, and contributed backing guitar and keyboards for the Lucksmiths, the Dearhunters, and Mick Thomas. Hanlon also founded his own music label called flippin yeah industries when his former label Candle Records shut down.
He is not only known for adorable music videos (you can watch them all on myspace/youtube and it's worth it!) where he mostly works together with director Natalie van den Dungen, he is also popular for getting along nicely with any kind of audience . Hanlon always seeks the dialogue with the public and is not afraid to tell personal stuff in a witty way, so that's another thing to look forward to regarding Indie Pop Days Berlin!
Are there any questions? Until now we introduced almost every band we invited to play at our festival and still there are more great gigs to announce. For today this should do. We are out!
Have a really great afternoon and enjoy whatever you do!
We hope you have a nice week so far and enjoy this strange weather. Regarding the weather: we, the festival creators and bloggers, are all based in Berlin. So how is the weather at your place and where are you making your living at the moment? Seems a silly question but we would like to know, especially if there is a vibrating twee-scene at your place. And we are sure you would like to know more about the bands that are going to be our entertaining guests. The confirmations are getting more and more, in fact we are almost done with the booking. But there is still enough time for surprises and changes. For now we can say the following:
You might know 'Der elegante Rest' if you are in to bands like Ja, Panik because Der elegante Rest were the opening act for them a while ago. It's like a group of mods who got the blues, one might think while listening to their almost orchestral songs. They just got it. Thoughtful lyrics (in german though), nice rhythm skills and this shy kind of wit we all are so keen on. Der elegante Rest was founded in Leipzig five years ago. Enough time to gain some experience on stage and in the studio. We are happy to welcome them and look forward to their performance!
Our Blanket Skies have this song written by Matthias F. Brasch, whose project it is, wrote on his own and it's about to thank people for their help. It has the fitting title 'I thank you' and we would like to say thank you, too. Because not only do Our Blanket Skies play music that reminds us of the famous musician Beirut from time to time, the lack of drums, kind and melancholic arrangements but also happy ukulele- or as Matthias F. Brasch would call it ukulilli- sounds are a pretty nice way to put it. Our Blanket Skies, especially Matthias, have also been part of the team that brought the second edition of the Berlin Melodica Festival to us this year, which happened in the Görlitzer Park and gave everyone a great time! This to say we are glad to meet you again in August at our very own little festival, Our Blanket Skies!
Well, that should be it for today. We are considering going to Ty Segalls show at West Germany in Kreuzberg tonight. But we are not sure because Andrew Jacksoon Jihad is also going to play music tonight. For Free! That's a tough one. What would our readers do?
as spring rolls on and May greets us with the insight that transition still does exist the festival is taking shape bit by bit, actually great bit by even greater bit. Those familiar with Berlin trivia might know that the 1st of May is a day of celebration and rejoicing. We did no less and cheered our new line-up confirmations.
The Berlin-friendly David Tattersall, Franic Rozycki and Jonny Helm are the cream of the crop of everything labelled Modern Folk/Singer-Songwriter/ETC. Trust us, they are awesome. The Wave Pictures got the whole package: the wit, the unique and amiable singing voice, the heartbreaking melodies, brilliant lyrics and last but not least guitar solos that leave you feel entertained instead of embarrassed. It might not come as a surprise that with this talent they've already released several albums but would you have guessed a total of 13 plus EPs, singles and miscellaneous stuff? This is insane! You basically HAVE to come to Indie Pop Days to hear songs from the band's latest album "Beer in the Breakers" (released this Monday) and a round-up of their secret hits. This is one of them:
Next on our list is the charming duo Clay Hips, also known as Andrew and Kenji (Ex-The Fairways!).
They sure know how to handle a bit of Simon & Garfunkel smoothness without falling into the cheese pot. So it was to be expected that many mourned their disappearance from the world of pop when they moved to different parts of the globe. But! now the boys are back to sing you those bittersweet songs even Lazy Line Painter Jane would hop on the bus for. Keep an eye out, you might see her in the crowd.
To complete today's good news let us tell you you'll get the chance to witness members of a dying breed: Marsh Marigold's Kristallin! a stunning pop band born and raised and living in Germany.
Breaking hearts and beer bottles since 1998 Kristallin know how to entertain and enchant. The band is doing an excellent job showing love for their idols' ramshackle and frisky kind of pop (The Wedding Present, Primal Scream and all that) and blending in their very own charm. We recommend checking out their brilliantly written biography!
Give them bands a listen and try to come up with reasons not to attend Indie Pop Days. Can you think of any? We told you so.
We hope you had some nice leisure-time during Easter holiday and enjoyed tasty, addictable chocolate in silly shapes + great company. We did, in case you are curious! And we are going to repeat the latter at our very own festival in August. Want proof? Look who is going to join us!
Let's start with a kind and awesome band from Scotland. We are talking about Wake The President, a fantastic twee/cs86-band, very inspired by the old stories only a town like Glasgow knows (wanna look at some nice pictures? there!). Erik and Bjorn Sandberg, the founding members, aren't just witty storytellers with a sense for melody and that soft spot in your heart, they are also the heart and the brain of Say Dirty Records. Last year they released their album 'You can't change that boy' and we look forward to seeing them on our stage performing for you.
Watch this video:
Do you like what you hear/see? Are you familiar with these songs?
There is another band who positively "rsvp'ed" to our invitation and we are more than happy to have them around. White Wishes' members are originally from St. Petersburg, but live in Berlin for now. Their melancholic popsongs make us want to hug someone and then: dance! So that is going to be a quiet, shy, extraordinarily great blast to have them around for our festival.
What do you think? At which time of the day would you like to see White Wishes? On a, hopefully, sunny afternoon or in the cozy light of the dawning night? Let us know!
Anything missing? Well, there are still a lot of bands coming up, don't worry. Last but not least for today we proudly announce that The Electric Pop Group are joining us for the Indie Pop Days. The Band is touring around Europe at the moment, as you can see on their facebook-page, and it is great they can make it to Berlin for this specific indie-pop-weekend. The Electric Pop Group is a Gothenburg-based band, signed by Matinée Recordings since last year.
Do you think you could like it, when you look at this lose collection of pictures?
We also found a live-video with crappy sound but well, what can you do!
What do you hear, what do you say?
We say, let's go outside, grab a bite and have a drink in the evening sun!
Work will still be there tomorrow.
Thank you for reading and we hope to see you around soon!
♥
at first we would like to thank you for your suggestions and ideas. They really inspired us and we heard about a couple of bands we already knew though, some of them we even had in mind for the festival, too, and some of them not but, considered requesting them. So that went well!
We are happy about this fact because it proved to us that a couple of people share our taste in music. That is comforting for us doing a festival, that would be a liiittle expensive, if we were the only ones who are interested in the bands that are going to play.
Speaking of bands that are going to play. There is another reason why we are excited to quite an extend.
It is no longer just rumor that Aberdeen are going to play at our very dear festival! We think it is a huge honor since the band split up twice already (1995, when Sarah Records shut down, and then again 2005, after the member's interest for other projects grew), to host this formidable band! Aberdeen announced a reunion-show at The San Francisco Pop Fest on 05/26/2011. There are no more shows planned for now. Except one gig in Berlin at the INDIE POP DAYS FESTIVAL! yay!!
We think this is a good reason to attend the festival as a guest, even if it is only for seeing one of the three bands from the US that were signed to Sarah Records. Check here if you already have rsvp'ed on facebook in case you are attending! And check back on this blog again soon, since we have a lot more pretty good news!
