• artist:
  LaBrassBanda (Eulenspiegel-Booking)
• featured artist:
  LaBrassBanda
• country:
  Germany
• release year:
  2009
• formats:
  • CD (Compact Disc)
  • LP / Vinyl
• record submitted by:
  Eulenspiegel-Booking
• label:
  Trikont
• publisher:
  Trikont
• 
  buy this record

LaBrassBanda was founded in 2007 and is an ensemble of five from the lake Chiemsee in Upper Bavaria with a three piece brass section, drums and bass. Within the shortest time they gained cult status with their dynamic gigs. From St.Pauli to Moscow, from Siena to London, at Festivals like Roskilde and Rudolstadt.

LaBrassBanda's goal is not to define Pop in a new way, they create their own new form of Pop. They just feel free to play from their perspective. Last year the band from Chiemgau released the debut album "Habedieehre". The first album was flanked by their live presence along with an amazing beat. The stage is wherever LaBrassBanda are - whether at Roskilde Festival, or at Chiemsee's Reggae Summer, at the Golden Pudel Club in Hamburg or on the hanger of a tractor at a spontaneous trip to the EM semi finals to Vienna. The dominance of guitars was taken aside and replaced with a three piece wind player section, combined with drums and e-bass. And suddenly it was clear that even Bavarian Brass Music has the funky groove of a brass section.

The second album is called "Übersee". And "Übersee" is everywhere - and not only coming from Chiemsee. The trumpet players Stefan, Manu, Hans plus the drummer Manuel and the bass player Olli have developed their sound further and are presenting a form of Brass-Pop, that grabs the groove wherever it grows. The Bavarian accent with his open vowels is a pop language and works internationally: England, France, Denmark, Russia or Zimbabwe. Wherever LaBrassBanda play the first song -their self-concept flashes over to the audience. This happens with such an energetic power that the masses are dissolving in pure movement. Homeland is not a nostalgic exhibit. You can only feel it, when the intuition for your own roots reaches out to the New and feels happy as a pig in shit.

The trumpet player Stefan Dettl, tuba player Hans Hofmeister, trombone player Manuel Winbeck and drummer Manuel da Coll have all studied their instruments either in Jazz- or in Classical Music. Bass Player Olli was originally starting somewhere between Techno and Electro. LaBrassBanda grows out of these individual musical interests and biographies, creating a Pop sound that won't let itself be compared but brightly shows how to burn the dance floor in a Bavarian style.

Singer and trumpet player Stefan Dettl is sitting on the beer table, delivering a story of the different stages of escalation in a traditional Bavarian fight. The cliche of Bavaria meets a sound that has the glam factor of a disco night out in New York. And just as you name it, you realise how naturally this goes along together. In the breaks between their shows they were working over months on the album in cooperation with sound engineer Willi Loester. You can hear the concentrated Sound construction not only in the dynamic finesse of songs like "Inter Mailand" or "Des Konnst Glam". "Ringlbleame" is the childhood memory of a girl that nobody wanted to play with. Nothing like sweet & misty eyed. A song of LaBrassBanda is a sound statement for the present and the future along with the consciousness of the past.

Despite forward-pressing they do have moments of calmness. Not only on stage. The beat is allowed to breathe or to sink into Dub on tracks like "Ofree" or "VW-Jetta". While a cow bell is echoing in the background. Or you lean back and look at the sound - "NaNaNa", "Deyda" - like a landscape that spreads on top of a hill. The attraction of this special LaBrassBanda sound is the fusion of the contradictory. You can enjoy the club night while you have fun with everything that makes your body move & dance. Still this band will never become a puppet of any scene, never function to any coolness rules. You should not understand this as typical Bavarian stubbornness, you should rather see it as natural development of five musicians, who arranged their sound without following any requirements of the market. This is what their new album "Übersee" shows - it can be a straight way to success.

"The Süddeutsche funkateers are back with a bang. And with Übersee, LaBrassBanda might just have delivered the surprise underground hit of the year. This is beyond any expectation:
there's a straight-up pop sensibility as sharp as that of MGMT or any of the latest alt-electro-pop hyphenated genres. It's fresh, confident and totally unlike anything else out there. Get onto this before everyone else does."

Songlines/London "Top of the World Album" 03-2010