The new album The Internet will break my heart by Chris Imler releases in february, 2025, on german label Fun In The Church, co-released by Belgian/french label Moli Del Tro.
The album marks the steepest artistic stage from Imler to date.We see a man whose entire solo oeuvre not to mention all the bands he’s been providing drums for, from legendary 80ies Postpunk outfit The Golden Showers to Peaches , from Maximilian Hecker to Oum Shatt. “The Internet will break my heart” is a late work, at the dizzying heights of his game.
Only now the world wide web unfolds its full disappointing potential. All dreams of an emancipatory power of the digital multitude (remember Negri/Hardt, haha) are as completely extinguished as the Arab Spring was swallowed up by the pre-nuclear winter. While they are capped from above in authoritarian states, social media in the so-called free world are primarily used by lumpen capital to undermine humanist standards and by the remnants of the left for self-destructive polarization. But the cute animal videos! They too have their dark side, which Imler brings up in the title song: “Die Tiere in der echten Welt stehen unter Druck” (“The animals in the real world are under pressure”).
So what is an aesthetically adequate way of dealing with this new digital version of the frustration of progress? Can it still be the old cold sounds of defiant adaptation to alienation? In the introduction to an exclusive session with Gary the Tall on NTS radio he was placed alongside Kraftwerk , DAF and NEU! That’s not entirely wrong. But it’s only half the truth at best. This becomes particularly clear during his live shows. To a certain extent, they are Sketches that he notes down on his laptop on long and numerous travels are rehearsed on stage on the same evening, with ad hoc cobbled-together lyrics and drum work that he himself describes as “sloppy-emotional”.
His performance is deliberately chaotic, impulsive for all its Berlin street toughness, heartfelt. And although Imler – even with his occasional trumpet interludes – never has direct jazz references, one can just as easily think of Thelonious Monk’s unruly boldness or Ornette Coleman’s aggressive dynamics as of those aforementioned representatives of Teutonic robotics. — Jens Friebe
Chris Imler Record Release w/ Naomie Klaus X Cobra Killer Dj Team
Saturday, 10.5.2025 | Doors 20:00 | Starts 21:00 CET
Säälchen | Holzmarktstraße 25 in 10243 Berlin
Presented by Moli Del Tro, Fun in the church, Bretford & amSTARt, ByteFM, Musikexpress, Musikblog, rausgegangen & Digital in Berlin
