Matrix, Bochum, Germany
4th May 2012
Darkflower Live Night: [:SITD:], Solitary Experiments, F.O.D., Pakt
After the success of a sold-out Darkflower Live Night in Leipzig, now an addition is following. This time, not only taking place in the home town of Dark Flower club Leipzig, but also in Bochum and Berlin, starting with the one in Bochum, presenting all in all four electro bands.
Pakt
PAKT is the new project of Chris Ruiz and Gio van Oli, former members of quite well-known electronic band AND ONE. The project made its debut with single ‘Freiheit’ in August 2011, followed by its first ever live show as opener on M’era Luna Festival. On 27th April 2012, the duo released its debut album ‘Berlin’. The duo is supported by Cani Nickels (Studio & Live Drums). http://www.paktprodukt.de / https://www.facebook.com/PAKTofficial
Music & Performance
PAKT are constantly critically discussed, especially the way the band got a record deal right after the split with AND ONE and afterwards, both releases. Also, the first live show at last M’era Luna was awaking many critics. Now, it was time to check out a club show and how the songs would work live. First let me say, even though PAKT could not convince with all songs, they in fact exceeded my expectations. A bit strange for the very first band was, that they had quite a huge LED screen in the back being used for several videos and pictures during the show. The screen was not used for the other bands. Starting with instrumental ‘Freitag der 13.’ As intro, PAKT started with ‘Freiheit’, the first release from last year, followed by ‘Egoshooter’ which reminded me in several passages a lot of DAF’s ‘Kebapträume’.
Following was a more Synth-Pop like track called ‘All reminds me’, where Chris and Gio changed roles. In fact, in my opinion Gio is the one with the better voice, though not a front man since he is much calmer and less expressive, not moving much behind the microphone while Chris is constantly moving on stage. A nice addition to the duo Chris and Gio is drummer Cani, who is quite expressive as well, putting a lot of power into his play. They are “bad guys” proclaimed Chris when starting ‘Revolution ‘ as next, a song where his vocals were hard to understand. In fact there seemed to be problems with the volume of his voice during the whole set. After ‘Angriff’, a little “cover version” followed, and there were already laughs within the audience before they even started. They of course were not able to help hinting to their former band and so, they played a verse of AND ONE’S ‘Fernsehapparat’ before ending the set with ‘Lichterloh’, probably the song getting most applause in their set. All in all, not too bad, even though I thing Chris could work a little on is stage presence. When he spoke to the audience, he seemed a bit insecure. So, let’s see how they will do in future…
Setlist
01. Freitag der 13.
02. Freiheit
03. Egoshooter
04. All Reminds me
05. Revolution
06. Angriff
07. Fernsehapparat (one verse played of this AND ONE song)
08. Lichterloh
Rating
Music: 6
Performance: 6
Sound: 6
Light: 8
Total: 6.3 / 10
F.O.D.
In the year 2000 the Electro-Band F.O.D. originated from the bands FAROUT and D.O.D. Since then they already published three albums, two singles and played more than 100 concerts. Their first album, ‘Synthesizer Tanzmusik’, was released in 2008 and offered quite some variety but the focus is clearly - as the titles suggest - on dance music In November 2010 their new album 'Maschinentanz' was published and offered a mix of catchy Synth Pop and straightforward EBM just once more. German Electro band F.O.D. currently consists of eXcess D (vocals, composition, programming), Eva Pölzing (vocals), Doc Nexus (live keys & drums) and Sheriff Riley (live keys & composer). http://www.fod-band.de/ / http://www.myspace.com/excessdance / https://www.facebook.com/f.o.d.band
Music & Performance
Until the second band of the evening started it took a while. The rebuilding break was much longer than expected and so, the band started with 10 minutes delay. The stage setting was simple: two keyboards on white stands, decorated with blue LEDs left and right, a banner with the logo in the middle. We just were wondering why a drum set was built up BEHIND that canvas… Along with the intro, Doc, Sheriff and last but not least eXcess, always dressed in white and all wearing sun glasses, entered the stage, starting with very danceable ‘Synthesizer Tanzmusik’ and got people going. We stayed in moving mode with following ‘Burnout’ as well. Were the people quite reluctant during PAKT, they now started dancing and clapping along. When Eva entered the stage then for ‘Angels’, it became more emotional. I must say that the combination of her and eXcess’ voice works really well. ‘Allein’ following afterwards was also presented as a duo. Then for ‘Seelenschmerz’, eXcess left the stage to Eva, who presented the song all on her own, earning a lot of applause with her melancholic performance.'
back from the moody part to dance music. Without the female voice, now some catchy Future Pop / EBM songs followed up, starting with ‘Maschinentanz’, the title song of their latest album. After ‘Jung und Stolz’, there was also room for a very new song, entitled ‘I Don’t Need’, to be released on the upcoming album. For this song, Doc changed keys with the drum set. Soon it was obvious that he could not be seen since hidden behind the logo canvas. Stage hands soon faced their mistake and removed the logo, so we could watch the expressive play on the drums. For ‘Gleichstrom’, Eva returned once more onto stage. Final song ‘Dirtypop’ was a pure EBM tune, reminding me not only by its sound of AND ONE, but also by the stage performance. Doc joined eXcess on vocals and how the duo performed reminded me so much of older AND ONE shows, when Steve and Chris performed together. I think F.O.D. should think about how to perform this song…
Setlist
01. Intro + Synthesizer Tanzmusik
02. Burnout (Humanoid)
03. Angels
04. Allein
05. Seelenschmerz
06. Maschinentanz
07. Jung und Stolz (rmx)
08. I Don’t Need (new song)
09. Gleichstrom
10. Dirtypop
Rating
Music: 7
Performance: 7
Sound: 6
Light: 7
Total: 6.8 / 10
Solitary Experiments
When the worlds of Dennis Schober and Michael Thieleman collided one day, they found out they were like-minded and made their first musical experiences under the name PLAGUE, before they decided to form the project SOLITARY EXPERIMENTS in 1994. By doing that, they were making the foundation for what was to become a successful story in the genre of electronic music, even though the way to getting that status was full of many stones. With every new album, they could enlist a bigger audience and a loyal fan base grew from that. Their newest album ‘In The Eye Of The Beholder’, which came out in late 2009 following a long time of dormancy since ‘Mind Over Matter’ in 2005, marked their triumphant return to the scene with powerful and melodic electro songs carried by a distinctive voice. The latest album ‘The Great Illusion’ was out in 2011. SOLITARY EXPERIMENTS is Michael Thielemann (sampling, programming, engineering, recording), Dennis Schober (lyrics, vocals, effects, performance) and Steve Graeber (programming, sampling) with live drums by Frank Glaßl. www.solitaryexperiments.de / www.myspace.com/solitaryexperiments / https://www.facebook.com/solitaryexperiments
Music & Performance
SOLITARY EXPERIMENTS are not always able to perform with all members live on stage, but this time they could, like Dennis happily stated. Frank’s drum set was as usually built up in the back in front of a video screen which during the set was extensively used. Logo banners and illuminated keyboard stands completed the picture. Right from the start, being offered with ‘Words of Wisdom’, the audience was with the band, clapping and singing along and of course dancing. Compared to the Christmas Ball appearance, the setlist was completely re-arranged and of course extended. Today, the band had about one hour for its set. Following ‘Words of Wisdom’ were ‘Still Alive’ and ‘Pale Candle Light’ from the ‘Mind Over Matter’ album. Soon, it was time for some “Girls’ Music” with ‘Delight’, a catchy song-a-long Synth-Pop track. Dennis had a little bad luck during this track since his microphone all of a sudden was silent. But no problem at all, he just grabbed Michael’s one to end the song. With a new mic, ‘Homesick’ followed soon. ‘Immortal’ as always caused huge applause.
‘A Rush Of Ecstacy’ was announced by Dennis with “now my favourite song is coming up”. This one musically always reminds me of [:SITD:]. But nevertheless it is a really great song. With ‘Trial and Error’, also a new song was presented before ‘Rise and Fall’ finally ended the set. People were excited and in my opinion, SOLITARY EXPERIMENTS delivered the best of the four shows on this evening.
Setlist
01. Words of Wisdom
02. Still Alive
03. Pale Candle Light
04. The dark Inside Me
05. Delight
06. Déjà vu
07. Homesick
08. Immortal
09. A Rush of Ecstasy
10. Point of View
11. Trial and Error
12. Rise and Fall
Rating
Music: 7
Performance: 7
Sound: 7
Light: 8
Total: 7.2 / 10
[:SITD:]
The band exists since 1996, but the big breakthrough came with the ‘Snuff EP’ with the hit track ‘Snuff Machinery’ which, from there on, couldn’t be missed out on any DJ playlist and is now a real classic. The first album ‘Stronghold’ continued the path of combining club orientated beats with hymnal melodies and dark vocals and was the most successful band album in 2003. With ‘Coded Message:12’, [:SITD:] released their second album, containing several new club hits like the preceding single ‘Richtfest’ and the German-tongued ‘Wegweiser’. The third album had to wait until 2007 aptly titled ‘Bestie:Mensch’; the album shed some light on the deepest abysms of the human soul. With a new album ‘ROT’, the trio soon unleashed its next strike on the clubs in October 2009. Two years later ‘Icon:Koru’ is presented. [:SITD:] is Carsten Jacek (vocals and lyrics), Thomas “Tom” Lesczenski (keyboards, programming, sampling and backing vocals) and Francesco “Frank” D'Angelo (keyboards and backing vocals). http://www.sitd.de / https://www.facebook.com/SITDofficial / http://www.myspace.com/xsitdx
Music & Performance
Compared to the other bands, [:SITD:] had a rather sparse stage setting, just two Icon:Koru banners in the back, illuminated by some spots. In the back, also the keyboards for Frank and Tom. Before I start with the review I must say that I was slightly disappointed by the performance this time. First of all bothered me that the both keyboard players were nearly not visible in the back, covered by a wall of smoke all the time and nearly not illuminated. Talking about lights, compared to the other bands this evening, they were pretty dark and there was in times so much smoke in stage, that even Carsten in front was hardly visible, at least you could not see face expressions in times. I don’t know why this is, the band has so much songs with strong, meaningful lyrics, why hide the people producing such stuff? That it is possible in a better way was shown during the two songs being presented by Tom later in the set, there it was brighter on stage and you had a nice play of colours and smoke. Besides lighting, I also found the band’s performance not as good as I am used to see in their home area, even though they stated several times how happy and excited they are to play at home. It was just not transferred by their show, at least not to me. People around me seemed to have fund, even though I think that the reactions towards SOLITARY EXPERIMENTS were more excited.
But enough of the moaning, some words about the presented songs should be said at least. The show started with ‘Atemlos’ from the latest album ‘Icon:Koru’. From this one, in the curse of the set, several more were offered, like ‘Code:Red’ or later on ‘Periculär (Richtfest II)’. With ‘Stammheim’, there was also a song being not presented so often lately. So, the excitement was quite huge. My highlight of the show were once more the two songs being presented by Tom on vocals; he’s just the better singer in my opinion. First one he presented was ‘Beacon of Hope’ from the latest album, followed by ‘Suffering In Solitude’, a song he quite often performs and that I really love. The hour they had for the main set was short and so, it ended with ‘Rot’. Being headliner of the evening, there was of course some more time. Different to the other bands, they had time for two more songs, being ‘Richtfest’ and the Uber-classic ‘Snuff Machinery’. Just for those last songs, the mood really exploded and showed off some of the power a [:SITD:] show is able to rise. Wish the whole set would have been like this two songs.
Setlist
01. Atemlos
02. Brand of Cain
03. Code:Red
04. Stammheim
05. Beacon of Hope
06. Suffering In Solitude
07. Laughingstock
08. Periculär (Richtfest II)
09. Rot
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10. Richtfest
11. Snuff Machinery
Rating
Music: 7
Performance: 6
Sound: 7
Light: 5
Total: 6.5 / 10
All pictures by Daniela Vorndran (http://www.vorndranphotography.com / http://www.black-cat-net.de/ / http://www.myspace.com/vorndranphotography / http://www.facebook.com/blackcatnet)
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