Markthalle, Hamburg, Germany9th March 2019
Solar Fake - “You Win. Who Cares?” Tour 2019 - Support: Seadrake
Saturday night and Hamburg was setting up for another tour finale. After being on tour for over a month, SOLAR FAKE’s last gig for the current “You Win. Who Cares?” tour was about to happen tonight. Six out of ten gigs of the tour have been sold-out - which is a huge success in the band’s round-about ten years of history.
Seadrake
SEADRAKE are Hilton Theissen (born in South Africa), Mathias Thürk (from Berlin living in Zürich) and Rickard Gunnarsson (from Stockholm). All three of them have been involved in other projects and have a long creative history. Some of their precious projects are AKANOID, MINERVE, LOWE, STATEMACHINE & DARK MILLENIUM. Together they created SEADRAKE and with ‘Isola’ the debut album was released in 2018. Supporting SOLAR FAKE on their tour in 2019 and with some festival gigs coming up in 2019 like at Wave-Gotik-Treffen and Amphi Festival there is for sure more to come from the experienced newcomer band with their roots in Synth Pop.
Music & Performance
The many years of experience in the music biz are absolutely noticeable when you see SEADRAKE perform live on stage. SEADRAKE create darkish Synth Pop that gets a special touch from the bass and so the Synth Sound melts with fine Indie melodies. The gig started with ‘Lower Than This (Someday)’ - a song that immediately gets you in the right mood for the Saturday Night. Catchy and danceable, showing the high standards that SEADRAKE state with their music. ‘Daydream’ was probably one of my highlights. Driven, I’d even say a great Rock song spiced up with melodic keys. Another song that I enjoyed a lot was ‘Get It On’. Hilton Theissen - the vocalist of SEADRAKE - gives the songs a very own touch with his soft, prominent voice that is perfect for the kind of music they make.
‘Something Durable’ has a nice 80ies attitude and makes you wanna dance all the way. The set contained of nine songs in total and as Hilton noticed as well - the audience in Hamburg was on fire that night. Already during their set the crowd was dancing and enjoying the gig. Also the whole show case was filmed. Hamburg was probably a good choice for some nice footage, I’m sure. The band seemed to enjoy the time on stage a lot. At the end SOLAR FAKE used the tradition of surprising the other band on the last gig of a tour and joined in which was a nice surprise for the band and audience as well. Sven Friedrich immediately spread his enormous energy around the venue and we just could anticipate what we had to expect in a few minutes.
Setlist
01. Lower Than This (Someday)
02. Daydream
03. What You Do To Me
04. On The Run
05. Conformity Loves Company
06. Get It On
07. No Matter
08. Something Durable
09. Down To The Ground
Rating
Music: 8
Performance: 8
Light: 7
Sound: 8
Total: 7.8 / 10
Solar Fake
Already 11 years passed by since the debut album ‘Broken Grid’ was released in 2008. I used to be a huge ZERAPHINE fan from my early teen years in 2002 and the back in time new project SOLAR FAKE was observed with a lot of curiosity of course and to be honest some scepticism as well. It’s been a fascinating journey to see Sven Friedrich fill in the support and newcomer slots with SOLAR FAKE while ZERAPHINE was already in established name in the dark music scene. Also remembering these shows back in times when the encore consisted of playing songs twice as all songs released so far were played in about an hour or little more. Now, over a decade later to see SOLAR FAKE tour all over the world and sell out over half of the gigs on the German tour leg is fascinating and very well-deserved. The current album ‘You Win. Who Cares?’ - released on 31st August 2018 marks my personal favourite and so to see SOLAR FAKE performing it live was something I was looking for.
Music & Performance
The audience didn’t need any warm-up at all. With the first chords of ‘Not What I Wanted’ the crowd started partying immediately, singing along and giving all the love to the band that was obviously more than overwhelmed from the heart-warming reaction. And the party just went on as it began. With ‘Under Control’ SOLAR FAKE just served the crowd another hit song and Sven jumped around the stage spreading the endless energy all over the place while André was killing his keys. And as if you thought they might slow done a bit? Nope. ‘Sick Of You’ followed that is for sure one of my highlights on ‘You Win. Who Cares?’. A very strong, emotional title with so much of that anger emotions that it’s releasing to free up your mind.
Sven was obviously more than overwhelmed by the reactions, but also the fact that the tour was coming to an end with the gig tonight. His honest and touching words went just directly into the heart. Love that guy with the forever young soul, most touching voice and his announcements in between the songs in purest Berlin dialect. ‘A Bullet Left For You’ - just reread this title again. Love it along with the prominent key line. With the decision to add a live drummer with Jens Halbauer to the line-up SOLAR FAKE added a whole more bunch of energy to the gigs that is pushing the songs even more forwards.
The setlist included many songs from the current album combining them with classics throughout the last decade. It is actually not that easy to pick out some highlights, but ‘The Pain That Kills You Too’ was one of them as well for sure. Beautiful lyrics, keys and synth melody. For ‘Anything You Want’ Sven promised that there is actually a new video in the making, but somehow it’s not finished yet. Might be connected with the fact that he is on tour all the time. So as the tour is sadly over now, we are looking forward to the new clip being released sometime in the near future, hopefully.
After 17 songs the regular set ended and of course, no surprise, the crowd wished for lot more. With the first chords starting after a short break everyone immediately recognized the popular cover that turned to a SOLAR FAKE song over the years, ‘Papillon’ and the party just goes on. Very different as a being a dark, intense ballad and therefore outstanding, ‘The Pages’. Still getting shivers just by thinking about the performance on Saturday.
The band - smiling from one ear to another - left the stage, just to follow the calls of the ecstatic audience and come back for three more songs: ‘I Hate You More Than My Life’, ‘My Spaces’ and ‘Stay’. The last part of the gig and so the tour was celebrated lively. The gig was truly amazing, catchy music, beautiful vocals, playful beats and honestly grateful and happy musicians and a crowd that would easily have continued celebrating for another two hours. SOLAR FAKE promised to come back soon and so far said that they were looking to see some of us next Saturday at the E-Tropolis Festival in Oberhausen. Well, see you there!
Setlist
01. Not What I Wanted
02. Under Control
03. Sick Of You
04. A Bullet Left For You
05. Here I Stand
06. All The Things You Say
07. I Don’t Want You In Here
08. Reset To Default
09. The Pain That Kills You Too
10. Invisible
11. Anything You Want
12. More Than This
13. Parasites
14. Too Late
15. Just Like This
16. If This Is Hope
17. What If There’s Nothing
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18. Papillon
19. Observer
20. The Pages
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21. I Hate You More Than My Life
22. Where Are You
23. My Spaces
24. Stay
Rating
Music: 9
Performance: 10
Light: 9
Sound: 9
Total: 9.3 / 10
All Pictures by Nastja Iz
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