Berlin’s “Down by the River Festival” is back celebrating its 6th anniversary edition on July 26th, 2014. All styles and genres are welcome – it’s about “how” and not about “what”, about DIY, community and a wide musical range representing Berlin’s musical diversity and the city’s various niches and scenes.
It has to be unheard of – and the quality has to be right. There’s a lot to discover! The festival is happy to be located at ://about blank for the 2nd time, right at Ostkreuz, where you find a spacious, Elysian, paradise-like garden. 12 bands and solo acts will play on 3 stages, followed by an after party at Zukunft, next to ://about blank.
There furthermore will be a warm up night at Klunkerkranich in Neukoelln on Friday 25th of July, find more info here. Please note that festival tickets are NOT valid for the warm-up event!
httpv://https://youtu.be/LmKF4C-B0cM
The charming experimetal anti-folker Rozi Plain from Bristol will open up the copse stage together with Manchester’s Jamie Harrison and his blues harmonica-Folk to jazzy Varieté-pieces and Call-and-Response-Singing.
Za! plays transoceanic and post-world music. Spirited away by brass-polyphonia. Apocopemanically robotic. The duo from Barcelona are working on the ecstatic and harmonious orchestration of global and local confusion. Their music combines african beats, noise, thick distortions, vocal loops, free jazz, sounds from the shepherds of Tuva, balinese polyryhtms, math rock, dadaism, drones and a high percentage of the result left to complete on stage, every night.
httpv://https://youtu.be/FaLMcqsyGnA
Sizing you up, Lennonesque and defiant, that’s what the Jolly Goods sisters are doing on the cover of their second Album, Walrus, released in 2011 on staatsakt. The sounds is heavy-edged and splintered. Heavy-handed piano, guitars at the forefront, PJ Harvey-vocals. Glowingly rough. The lyrics conjure up beautiful, abject disorder. Which fits the cooperation of the band well. Jolly Goods have worked with, amongst others, Peaches, Hans Unstern, Dirk von Lotzow and Moses Schneider.
Charlie Megira & The Bet She’an Valley Hillbillies – those poor, kind of shabby white folks from the Appalachians, who made music on the fiddles which was really good to dance to. A bit like techno, but just in the fifties. Nowadays, they come from towns in Israel, play reverb guitars along to their bongos and cultivate the monochrome contrast. Also really good to dance to.
What do they actually sound like, images projected from a slightly broken kaleidoscope? What would it be like if the twinkling bits of glass weren’t bits of glass but instead sounds, human or machine-like – or something in between? Maybe it would sound like the Munich duo DC Schneider’s in-fake-leopard-skin encased cassette, released in mid-2013 on Klienicum Schallplatten Label.
That a punk approach, friendly unobtrusive brilliance, almost jazzy arrangements and falsetto vocals don’t conflict with each other, but are complimentary and create a charming and graceful indie sound, that is how Berlin band Skiing win people over.
On their recently released sampler “Keine Bewegung!” the two-girl band from Hamburg has the last word, and it’s a bad one: Pisse! Everyone already knows the song off by heart. We’ve all been waiting for ‘Schnipo Schranke’. We just didn’t know it.
The Sacred Travelers combines the melodic character of North Thai Molam music, West African rhythmics, 80s drum sounds and captivating clarinet improvisations – just like Benny Goodman’s eerie twin. Somewhere in the mass of open mouths, someone also whispered “krautrock”.
httpv://https://youtu.be/_QXMsP8dU0w
Jakob Dobers translates what Jonathan Richman does into German. His texts are made up of things which come into your head when you walk about. Or flick through magazines. Or just look around. Either way, it’s not about feelings but impressions. Not about I (yuck!). But about the world (yeah!). Which is nice and clever and above all charming! Dum-didi-dum-didi-dum.
Never before was Easy Listening so easy-peasy as with Yoyoyo Acapulco. Rhythms and melodies like waves lapping against the sand, coral riffs – as radiant and beautiful as the Hawaiian afternoon sun up above the Norwegian ukelele-skies.
Heidi Alexander was the singer of San Francisco band ‘The Sandwitches’. Her music is so wonderfully ungraspable and timeless, her voice so tremendous and tingling with echoes, that absolutely everything dissolves – whether into pleasure or uneasiness, it’s up to the individual experience.
Zentralheizung of Death des Todes stands for carefree DIY. The band from Erfurt, Leipzig and Berlin doesn’t leave anything to chance, never gives up but does give garage punk the scruffy face of a child, whose body can somehow slickly groove – as if by magic.
Final line-up & time table:
12:00 Doors
Noisy Stage (://about blank-garden)
14:00 DC Schneider
15:30 Yoyoyo Acapulco
17:15 Schnipo Schranke
19:00 The Sacred Travelers
21:00 Skiing
22:00 DJ Joe le Taxi
Copse Stage (://about blank-garden)
14:45 Rozi Plain & Jamie Harrison
16:15 Jakob Dobers
18:00 Heidi Alexander (ex-The Sandwitches)
19:45 Charlie Megira & the Bet She’an Valley Hillbillies
Crass Stage (://about blank-Indoor)
16:30 Jolly Goods
18:45 Zentralheizung of Death des Todes
20:00 ZA!
After Party (Zukunft)
DJs Marten Rux, Falko Teichmann, Mohair Sam & Spatz Habibi
For more information on line up, warm up and after show as well as where to get tickets, please visit the website: downbytheriver-berlin.de
Presented by Digital in Berlin. Check out our facebook page to win tickets.
Down By The River Festival 2014 presented by Fourtrack on Stage, Mohair Sam & amSTARt
Saturday, July 26th 2014 | 14:00 pm CET
:// about blank | Markgrafendamm 24C | 10245 Berlin/Friedrichshain
downbytheriver-berlin.de | aboutband.net
