Chris Imler (Album Release) + Die Goldenen 20er (Support)

In the organizer's words:

Chris Imler

"The Internet will break my heart", Chris Imler's latest album, which will be released on February 28, 2025 on Fun in the church/ Moli Del Tro, marks the steepest artistic stage to date. We see a man whose entire oeuvre is a late work, at the dizzying heights of his game. "So, the internet, that's a really hot topic," I can already hear blasé hisses here and there in the boxes.

But the truth is that the topic is annoyingly topical. For it is only now that the world wide web is unfolding its full disappointing potential. All dreams of an emancipatory power of the digital multitude (remember Negri/Hardt, haha) are as completely extinguished as the Arab Spring was swallowed up by the pre-nuclear winter. While they are capped from above in authoritarian states, social media in the so-called free world are primarily used by lumpen capital to undermine humanist standards and by the remnants of the left for self-destructive polarization. But the cute animal videos! They too have their dark side, which Imler brings up in the title song: "The animals in the real world are under pressure".

But what is an aesthetically appropriate way of dealing with this digital new version of frustration with progress? Can it still be the old cold sounds of defiant transformation to alienation? In the announcement for the exclusive session that Imler recorded for the innovative London station NTS, the presenter placed him alongside Kraftwerk, DAF and NEU! That's not entirely wrong. But it's only half the truth at best. This becomes particularly clear during his live shows. To a certain extent, they are public rehearsals. Sketches that he makes on his laptop on his long and numerous travels are tried out on stage on the same evening, with ad hoc cobbled-together lyrics and drum work that he himself describes as "sloppy-emotional". His performance is deliberately chaotic, impulsive and, for all its Kreuzberg street toughness, heartfelt. And although Imler - even with his occasional trumpet interludes - never has direct jazz references, one can just as easily think of Thelonious Monk's unruly boldness or Ornette Coleman's aggressive dynamics as of those aforementioned representatives of Teutonic robotics.

One thing is certain: the improvisational charm of his concerts cannot be captured one-to-one on record. But perhaps this album succeeds for the first time in achieving the same intensity of experience by other means. (Jens Friebe)

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Support: DIE GOLDENEN 20ER

Afterparty: DJ tba