Zeche Bochum, Bochum, Germany19th March 2019
Alphaville - “Forever Young” Tour 2019 - Support: Ina West
‘Forever Young’, this title accompanies ALPHAVILLE singer and founder Marian Gold not only since the uber hit (and debut album title) in 1984, which, together with ‘Big in Japan’ and ‘Sounds Like a Melody’, belongs to ALPHAVILLE’s success hymns which today still are played on the radio, FOREVER YOUNG was also the name of Gold’s band founded in 1982 with Bernd Lloyd and Frank Mertens, the forerunner of ALPHAVILLE. And looking back today, ALPHAVILLE is indeed “forever young” - Marian Gold’s distinctive voice sounds fresh as ever on the current album, ‘Strange Attractor’. And “Forever Young” is also the name of ALPHAVILLE’s tour in March and April 2019.
Ina West
INA WEST accompanies ALPHAVILLE as support on their tour in 2019. In the pre-program, she provides quiet sounds for a pleasant start into the evening. The young musician comes from Poland and shows a mix of various music genres, which is well received by the audience in Bochum. INA WEST creates her own world with Trance elements, New Wave electronics and a combination of Folk and Jazz. She is a producer, singer, author of music and lyrics, combining the minimalist sound of early DEPECHE MODE with the concert energy of DIE ANTWOORD. The live performance features a combination of classical instruments (percussion, violin, synthesizer, bass guitar, and ukulele), dance beats and raw vocal harmony. https://www.facebook.com/inawestina / http://smarturl.it/InaWestGirlsLP
Rating
Music: 6
Performance: 6
Sound: 6
Light: 7
Total: 6.3 / 10
Alphaville
ALPHAVILLE has been touring the globe since the mid-nineties. With celebrated tours from Salt Lake City to Singapore, from Russia to South Africa, with intimate club concerts alternating with stadium and festival appearances in front of tens of thousands. ALPHAVILLE’s seventh studio album, ‘Strange Attractor’, was released in 2017. A hybrid of pumping Funk and Soul quotes with hymnal-baroque euphoria à la FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD, ABBA and PINK FLOYD, and a purity in Electro Pop as we used to only hear at the beginning of the eighties, when the genre was still young. The first single release, ‘Heartbreak City’, immediately returned to the charts. https://www.alphaville.info / https://www.facebook.com/avmoonbase
Music & Performance
Inverted world at ALPHAVILLE: On the one hand, Marian Gold is the only remaining constant in this German Synth Pop band. The two other founding members Bernhard Lloyd and Frank Mertens are already far away. And yet the front man, who stands on the stage of the Zeche Bochum on this Tuesday evening, does not really want to be an identification figure. Back-gelled hair, full beard, rather restrained stage presence: It is difficult to bring the soon 65-year-old together with the ALPHAVILLE sound of yesteryear. And somehow the ALPHAVILLE front man alienates with his role as a Pop star; even in the year 35 after ‘Big in Japan’. Nevertheless, the freedom with which Gold ignores its sunny boy image from its founding days deserves every respect.
Here, somebody does not even remotely think of captivating oneself with a band identity, having him pressed into an image template, but currently operates a multi-reformed band as a holistic body of sound in which he is only part of the whole. Of course, Gold plays the lead role as a singer, but ALPHAVILLE 2019 works as a homogenous quintet rather than a front man’s one-man show. At the beginning, everything works only very limited. Especially in the first third of the concert, a triviality joins the next. For almost 45 minutes, the music sounds as if it were composed as a soundtrack for a fairy tale fantasy film: cuddly, fluffy, but without content, circling and moving with much reverb on the drums and permanent key-beautiful sound towards Pop music.
But in the middle part, the pitch changes fundamentally, from Synth Pop to Electro Rock. Techno-keyboards by Carsten Brocker, who is with great body language also visually the most extroverted actor of the evening. The last third of the well two-hour evening finally belongs to the founding myth: The debut album, ‘Forever young’, may show how fresh this German New Romantic masterpiece from the year 1984 can still sound today. ‘Sounds like a Melody’ steals ‘Big in Japan’ the show with a combination of force and melody and ‘Forever young’ captivates with the karaoke version carried by the audience, once again as a synth pop ballad for eternity.
ALPHAVILLE tries to prove that they are much more than a Synth Pop band. For those who visit ALPHAVILLE gigs on a regular basis, this is no surprise. The addition of a permanent bass player has opened Gold’s eyes to EDM and the broad Rock scene and not only looks forward, but also backwards. Golden Oldies ‘Fallen Angel’ and ‘To Germany with Love’ mutate from Gothic hits of the 80s to something approaching Symphonic Metal. Some tracks fall into a turn-of-the-century Indie landscape. They are barely to place into a certain genre, and no longer simply classified as a product of a 80s band.
Setlist
01. Romeos
02. Dance With Me
03. I Die For You Today
04. Monkey In The Moon
05. Flame
06. Danger In Your Paradise
07. Jerusalem
08. Leben Ohne Ende
09. Elevator
10. Next Generation
11. Blauer Engel
12. Nevermore
13. Rendezvoyeur
14. Carry Your Flag
15. Starman Theme
16. A Victory Of Love
17. Summer in Berlin
18. Big In Japan
19. To Germany With Love
20. Fallen Angel
21. In The Mood
22. Sounds Like A Melody
23. Lies
24. The Jet Set
25. Forever Young
---
26. Red Rose
27. Apollo
Rating
Music: 6
Performance: 5
Sound: 7
Light: 7
Total: 6.2 / 10
All pictures by Daniela Vorndran (http://www.vorndranphotography.com / http://www.facebook.com/blackcatnet)
Comments powered by CComment