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!
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.
you may have heard it already but it is still true: this very thursday and tomorrows friday Puschen Fest is on the plate! It's 18 Euro each day or 32 Euro for both days and there are going to play some splendid bands!
See for yourself:
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 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!
♥
It has been a while since the last entry at this very fair blog of ours, but don't think we were only hanging around on couches all day! Quite the opposite, we can say, as you were able to see on our facebook-page.
But now we have decided to revive this blog since not every single person is or wants to be on facebook. Here we go: there will officially be a second Indie Pop Days Festival in Berlin 2011! Mark the dates August 26th to 28th in your calendars, because you are hopefully going to be busy listening to some fine music with us on that specific weekend!
Last year we moved a bit from location to location (the adorable multilayerladen on friday, saturday we were at the wasserturm, just like sunday), this will not happen again, since we decided to stay at the beautiful Wasserturm in Kreuzberg for the whole weekend. Also we were able to find a real stage for the outdoor-gigs, so rain won't be a problem again.
(for those who unhappily missed it last year, we were forced to reschedule a couple of stage-times due to unfriendly weather-conditions because we couldn't let the people play outside. It was a bummer, but in the end everything worked out fine. Still, this year we are prepared for almost everything!)
We have a whole bunch of great ideas for the second Indie Pop Days Festival and are already excited about having you around again for a great weekend. But we have to wait. Until then we will keep busy booking great bands for concerts, djing on several occasions or doing other nice stuff.
We are going to tell you about everything here, so why don't you check in from time to time and keep yourself up to date? There are some interesting things going on, we promise!
Indie Pop Days started with a blast at Multilayerladen yesterday! The place was packed! Thanks everyone for coming. We loved Bart Cumming's performance, Stars In Coma and parts of them playing songs by their side projects was awesome AND to top that Renée from Liechtenstein gave a spontaneous solo set. So in a nutshell that was a great night!
We let the fun continue today: we have Lucky Soul, The Felt Tips, Pocketbooks, The Sunny Street, Labrador, Le Man Avec Les Lunettes and Still Corners playing from 3:30pm! Doors open around 3pm. Later the party will move to Golgatha (after midnight) at Viktoria Park. Don't miss it!
