Berliner Dialektik

A.Hartmann | TAZ

The Berlin pop business has long since become a self-perpetuating system. It can’t help wanting to do justice to the media hysteria and the feeling of being good for oneself. In the meantime, it sometimes feels like being in the center of a speculative bubble. It’s not really crazy anymore. But it’s better not to say so in public because in the meantime people are feeding off the bubble themselves and skepticism would only have a negative impact on the share price. So they shout “Berlin macht Schule”, and a band like Surrogat proves that you really do get the most attention if you only shout the loudest.

The compilation “Gerdas Große Gruppe” is directed precisely against this Berlin pop hysteria, which is now resistant to criticism, against folk stage spectacles, which in truth are usually very dull, and the loss of stylization of subculture, in short: against everything that is too loud in this city. The music performed here is accordingly quiet, very quiet, like an echo far removed from the source of the din. Surprisingly, the idea of propagating silence and stillness not only as an attitude but also to attach it to the music itself comes from Klangkrieg, of all people. As a label, the Klangkrieger usually like to let it rip, and as concert organizers, they are only too happy to see bleeding ears. From Kat Cosm they have already released a record with extremely tender music, but for “Gerdas Große Gruppe” even the Gabbapop berserker Sonic Dragolgo had to discover the lovely side in himself. He now surprises with minimalist sweetener that sounds like early Air at a rehearsal for demo recordings.

The principle of networking is nothing new in Berlin. But where the impetus behind it is usually bundling and centering, “Gerda’s New Group” wants to link musical projects on the outer fringes of the attention economy, but still leave them “out there”. Instead of a new center, they would rather strengthen the musical outskirts of Berlin. Bands and projects like Ström, Leafcutter John, Jayrope, or Montag are linked together despite their different ways of working and beyond musical questions like electronics, guitars, or what’s in between for a snapshot without sufficiently revealing their true identities.

The fact that Gerda’s large group also includes a band like Ström, which no longer exists, additionally situates the compilation in an outside. Not only space is dissolved, but also time. It is pointed out again posthumously, so to speak, that there has been good music behind the scenes of hip Berlin for years, but unfortunately, no one wanted to hear it.

The melancholic undertone of the whole record, the complete lack of rebellion, quickly leads to the conclusion that Klangkrieg is slowly resigning themselves to the existing conditions. But this trap was set with care. In truth, all the crying and the apparent retreat into a Berlin that is the capital of its own, almost utopian parallel universe is pure camouflage.

If you get hooked on “Gerdas Große Gruppe” and keep listening, you will soon realize that almost all of the acts on this compilation can not only sound as soft as a purring hangover by the open fire, but loud and brutal. The real sound war is taking place, only beyond this compilation.