From NYC to Berlin: Algiers with exclusive Pop-Kultur Playlist

Algiers

We do not have an official mascot at Pop-Kultur but then there’s a band like Algiers who’s pretty close to the essential idea of our festival. The buzzing experimental rock group are not just performing brand new material exclusively at the Heimathafen Neukölln but bassist Ryan Mahan will also join us for an exciting talk prior to thei band’s performance. And the group is also hosting a workshop for our Pop-Kultur talents. The unusual seems to be the rule and that has always been the credo for Algiers. In preparation for their Berlin visit we asked drummer Matthew Tong to compile a very personal playlist for us. It’s about New York City, gentrification and well… that brings us back to Berlin, right? Please read and listen below.

“I started off thinking about what it is to live in New York City, as I am often inclined to do whenever I return from tour. There is this incredibly prescient Hal Ashby film from 1970 called “The Landlord”, which is perhaps the first film to explicitly look at issues surrounding gentrification. It’s funny, sad and it’s absolutely on the mark, so I built the playlist around Al Kooper’s “Love Theme” from said film. Gentrification is one of the myriad of apocalyptic tentacles waggling around in the world right now so there are some heavy tracks on here but I tried to balance it out with Françoise Hardy and Roxy Music.”

At Pop-Kultur 2016 Algiers will perform live on September 2 at the Heimathafen Neukölln as they present new songs. One day prior to this bassis Ryan Mahan will be joined by journalist Josh Hall to talk about horror and noise in the reproduction of colonialist silence at the Passage Kino. Tickets for both events are available at the Pop-Kultur Berlin Ticket-Shop.


The Sound of Keøma: An exclusive Pop-Kultur Playlist

KEOMA

Australian artist and Berlin resident Kat Frankie doesn’t need an introduction anymore. Keøma, her still quite fresh project with Cologne-based musician Chris Klopfer maybe does. They both are about to bring the melancholic and melodramatic electro-pop of their self-titled debut live to the stage of Pop-Kultur on September the 1st. That’s reason enough to ask Mr. Klopfer about the origins of the Keøma sound. The answer comes – unsurprisingly – in the form of music and this exciting playlist, compiled exclusively for the Pop-Kultur Spotify account.

This playlist is showing pretty well how we found inspiration for our Keøma album. It was as colorfully mixed as the playlist: there’s RnB from Miguel as well as classic Rock music from Bruce Springsteen.

As we recorded the album ourselves, we had a lot of time and could include many styles that we liked. If you take a look at the list, it’s remarkable that most of the artists come from the USA. For both of us, it was the possibility to make a very free Pop album, that we probably wouldn’t have made for our solo projects.

Keøma perform live on September 1 at Huxleys Neue Welt. Tickets for the show are available here. If you buy three or more moduls for Pop-Kultur, you get 10% off. Just click »Wahl-Abo« at the shop to receive your discount.