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projectpitchfork3Kulturfabrik, Krefeld, Germany
3rd November 2018
Project Pitchfork - “Akkretion” Tour 2018 - Special Guest: Faderhead

This autumn PROJECT PITCHFORK are conquering the clubs all over Germany together with FADERHEAD, another Hamburg-based artist who created a whole bunch of Dark Electro club hits in the last almost 15 years. Last Saturday, we visited an amazing show in Krefeld!


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FADERHEAD has also already been touring earlier this year with the current release, ‘Night Physics’, from autumn 2017. The 11th album since the foundation of the project in 2004 showed the whole growth and variety in the music that Sami Mark Yahya is creating with his project. While the current release is still on heavy rotation in my playlist, Sami released just in time for the PROJECT PITCHFORK tour a new song called ‘Meteoris’ (go to http://meteoris.faderhead.com for a free download of the song!) and just announced in his monthly newsletter that plans for a new album and tour in summer/ autumn 2019 are getting more concrete. For more info and to stay up-to-date, see https://faderhead.com/blog/.

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Music & Performance
The stage was already very full with the impressive set-up for PROJECT PITCHFORK, so there was not much space left for the usual FADERHEAD set-up with big table and video walls. Therefore we were really missing the usual countdown that is usually set for 12 minutes and the gigs almost always start just the second when the countdown is down to zero. But when the lights and the waiting time music was turned down, it didn’t take long for the title song of the current album, ‘Night Physics’, to begin. The song was already used on the headliner tour in February / March 2018 as intro and brought instantly lots of great memories. What I really liked from the beginning was the more raw kind of vocals that made the songs sound different and therefore there were a lot of new details to explore.

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FADERHEAD was instantly welcomed by a loud crowd ready to party and enjoy the long concert night. By the time the next song, a little different dark scene hymn ‘Generation Black’ started, the last ones woke up and recognised the guy(s) on stage and the crowd really started to warm-up. The next song from the current album, ‘Know Your Darkness’, is a very special one, as it describes the relationship of two people who are so close that they even know the darkest times and secrets of each other. Most times that I heard this song live, I was lucky enough to have this person standing just next to me and therefore this song is really special to me, too. FADERHEAD shows one more time that he knows how to do the business right, and not only did he write a new song for the upcoming album planned for approximately autumn, he of course performed it. ‘Meteoris’ instantly found its way in my mind and works perfectly as a catchy song. It is one of the slower ones, but this is barely noticeable as it has such an incredible intensity and variety of vocals, melodies and hook-ups, while still not being overloaded. Every time you listen to this song, you’ll find another detail. Also the audience seemed to like it immediately.

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The balladry and kinda spooky ‘Skinny Witches’ gave the crowd the chance to relax a bit. The song builds a very mystic atmosphere and is very different from what many people expect from FADERHEAD and therefore a great song to show all the variety of FADERHEAD’s creation. But the “trve” star of the show was definitely: an ironing board and an actual iron. Just before ‘No Gods’ a guy from the PROJECT PITCHFORK crew came on stage, and put an iron on an ironing board on the edge of the stage. Not only the audience, but also Sami himself was more than surprised and wondering about it. He told that this never happened in all the years on stage, while still wondering about it. This led to some laughter during the song and just gave Joe aka Alfons aka Karl, Sami’s live performance buddy, finally the chance to take of his shirt and finally iron. Things that you never have enough time for at home. The spontaneous reactions, easy-going attitude and the ability to use ANYTHING to make a show are things I really appreciate about FADERHEAD. The secret, why the iron appeared on stage, was not revealed and might stay unsolved forever.

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The rest of the songs were more the kind of powerful and energetic songs that made you forget that this was “just” the special guest. KuFa Krefeld was on fire and people danced through all the rows. Sami also noticed and underlined the great atmosphere. So when FADERHEAD left the stage, the audience was more than perfectly warmed-up for the main act of the evening: PROJECT PITCHFORK.

Setlist
01. Night Physics
02. Generation Black
03. Know Your Darkness
04. Meteoris
05. Destroy Improve Rebuild
06. Skinny Witches
07. Sick City
08. No Gods
09. TZDV

Rating
Music: 10
Performance: 10
Light: 8
Sound: 10
Total: 9.5 / 10

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Project Pitchfork

PROJECT PITCHFORK are music legends. The band from Hamburg was founded back in 1989. The founding members Peter Spilles and Dirk Scheuber, together with Jürgen Jansen, still dominate the dance-floors of the Darkwave clubs all over the world. The current tour is presenting the first part of an album trilogy, called ‘Akkretion’, released earlier this year. The second part of the trilogy ‘Fragment’ just got released on 12th of October 2018 and PROJECT PITCHFORK already announced another tour next year in March & April 2019, after having two extended tour parts this year in spring and now in autumn. PROJECT PITCHFORK just celebrated 25 years on stage two years ago and they never happen to disappoint. For more information on tour dates and releases check-out https://www.project-pitchfork.eu.

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Music & Performance
First of all: Hell, how huge was this screen and amazing the whole light show? I’ve been to so many concerts in my life, and I am not sure whether I’ve ever had seen a more mind blowing light show. The huge special lights created a breath-taking atmosphere. This was pure perfection. Chapeau! Just for the light show, no doubt it’s a 10 of 10! The gig started with the title song of the tour and the album that was released at the beginning of the year: ‘Akkretion’. So here the long journey through PROJECT PITCHFORK’s discography started.

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And just with the third song the time travelling machine brought the fully packed KuFa back in the 90ies with the most epic song of the evening that just everyone knows: ‘Timekiller’ is so legendary, it doesn’t need any words to describe. The atmosphere was perfect, the crowd dancing in every corner of the venue and the song showed one more time its timelessness. But we didn’t leave the all-time hits here, with ‘Rain’ PROJECT PITCHFORK just threw another epic song into the audience. While they were performing the song, the dark and great video of the song was shown on the huge screen behind the band and the huge lights in industrial style recreated the atmosphere of the song in the venue, so it felt like being on this cold, stormy beachside (beside of being cold at all in the venue).

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‘Rain’ is one of my personal favourites with its dark and deep attitude, so I was really happy to hear it live again. Also the set-up of two drum sets was very impressive and gave the performance an extra kick of greatness and power. To tell about every song of the setlist would take forever and I would for sure still forget a lot. The setlist without encores included already 17 songs. But afterwards two more blocks of encores were following. Fans of PROJECT PITCHFORK got definitely great value and were not disappointed. The setlist was a perfect combination of very old songs from the beginning, like the epic ‘Alpha Omega’ (1995) or ‘Souls’ (1993).

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But also newer songs from the recently released albums ‘Akkretion’ and ‘Fragment’ enriched the setlist, or songs from in between like ‘Volcano’ (from ‘Look-up, I’m Down There’ 2016) and a whole lot more. Every song was like a time travel capsule that immediately brought you to the time it’s from. But this is still possible without the old songs sounding ‘out of time’, it’s more that they captured the lifestyle of the period they were created in such an unique way and also shaped it themselves for several generations now. The performance created on stage was like a perfectly written theatre piece, full of majesty, dramaturgy, holistic and honest, completed by the unique sound of PROJECT PITCHFORK and voice of Peter Spilles and the magic light show.

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Setlist
01. Akkretion
02. Conjure
03. Timekiller
04. Rain
05. The Great Storm
06. Titânes
07. God Wrote
08. Alpha Omega
09. Volcano
10. Acid Ocean
11. A Clockwork
12. The Queen Of Time And Space
13. Die Schlange Vs. (Dämon der Antwort)
14. Blood-Loss
15. There Is Much More
16. Revolution Now
17. Beholder
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18. Into Orbit
19. I Am (A Thought in Slowmotion)
20. Existence v4.1
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21. Souls
22. Onyx
23. Rescue

Rating
Music: 9
Performance: 10
Light: 10
Sound: 10
Total:  9.8 / 10

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All pictures by Andreas Klüppelberg


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