One of Germany's most essential showcase of upcoming acts and buzzing industry topics, the c/o pop celebrated a wild anniversary this year around the corners of Cologne Ehrenfeld. NBHAP author Anna Stich, a city local herself, roamed the festival spots to get an impression.
The Berliner festival, XJAZZ!, is known for bending definitions of jazz. Considering it a word of freedom rather than a narrow genre description, its line-up features international artists with different takes on jazz. We spoke to headliner and South Londoner Rapper Nadia Rose about her music and its connection to the genre.
The Canadian pop veterans have endured the drastic transformations of the music industry for the past two decades and it is a little miracle they are still here, delivering one decent album after the other, most lately last year’s "From Capelton Hill". NBHAP authors Norman Fleischer and Andreas Peters share a mutual love of the group from the beginning of their career and sat down with Amy Millan on their recent Berlin tour stop to talk about about their life’s work.
In its familiar format CTM, the well-established festival for club culture returned this year. Some of Berlin's finest sound systems, including the ones at Berghain, RSO, and HAU2, have once again been selected to host electronic and experimental music acts from around the world. Anna Grubauer reflects on a week of inspiration, surprises, and lack of sleep.
For two days in late November, the music-discursive event Territory Disrupt gathered various artists and researchers at SOMA Art Space Berlin. The concerts and discussion rounds focussed on the topic of cultural imperialism and artistic work in times of war. Music and cultural production are ways of fighting oppression and inspire solidarity and resistance. Anna Grubauer entered this space for exchange and discourse and shares impressions from the artistic interventions and discussion rounds.
The notable showcase festival ESNS gives upcoming artists the opportunity to display their talents in the Dutch city Groningen and if in luck, be booked for festival giants like Rock am Ring, Glastonbury, Primavera or The Great Escape. Ahead of the new edition, Anna Stich selected eight female(-fronting) acts who have made the most out of their performance at ESNS.
The renowned Pitchfork Festival series has at last reached our German capital (and NBHAP headquarter) so we took the opportunity to catch up with Bay Area’s ravishing indie outfit Fake Fruit and New York City-based synth-pop-trio Nation Of Language to talk about the euphoria of live music, post-pandemic music industry and their budding pop careers. Time for an introduction.
Get to know some of the most exciting new bands from Italy at the third edition of La Festa. The showcase takes place on 21st of September at Hamburg's Reeperbahn Festival and features the bands Her Skin, Qlowski, and KOKO. Ahead of their show, each band shared ten songs from their home country with us. The La Festa playlist gives a little taste of the past, present, and future of Italy's versatile music scene.