iedereen

In the organizer's words:

The duo in rock music works according to the principle of reduction: if there are only two of you on stage, you usually focus on accents instead of surfaces, on scaffolding instead of jewelry. Less is more is then, of necessity, the motto.

IEDEREEN are also familiar with the question of what happens when you leave out more and more until only two things remain: friendship and a shared love of music. It all started in a sandpit on the Lower Rhine, where Ron Huefnagels and Tom Sinke first met as kindergarten children and immediately became friends. A typical provincial youth: IEDEREEN are not the first band to be helped by the lack of stimuli and the distance from the metropolis to foster fixed ideas. If there's nothing here, we'll just take matters into our own hands, is the credo of the two, who played together in various bands until they moved to Cologne. To study, to make music, to try things out.

Where it would all end musically was unclear for a long time. There was a time when the door to their rehearsal room in Cologne was constantly open. Musician friends came and went, they jammed here and invited someone there. You have a cool riff? Sure, come over. You play the flute? Sounds interesting, let's try it out. But nothing tangible came of it, one after the other said goodbye, and in the end only Ron and Tom were left. And even they no longer believed that it would continue. The rental agreement for the rehearsal room had already been terminated when they arranged to meet there for the very last time. "We just let it flow," Ron remembers. "Just make music without giving it much thought." Something happened at that moment. Was it a spark? A flash? A neurotransmitter that whirled their central nervous system around? The fact is: the duo IEDEREEN have been around since that evening.

"I'm knocked out, on fire": the opener "GKO" from their debut album sums up in just a few words what IEDEREEN are all about. It's about risk, about going all out, about going far beyond the call of duty. When there are only two of you, you simply have to play with a higher level of commitment, and it is above all the urgency and energy of this band that grabs you by the collar. It has something of the desperate ennui that bands like the Fehlfarben or Abwärts formulated over 40 years ago. And that also leads you on the right track musically. Because IEDEREEN take some of their inspiration from the post-punk of the late 70s and early 80s, when bands like Wire, Gang Of Four or Devo caused a stir. Here they groove robotically, sing neurotically and write fatalistic lyrics - and always with a loose fist so that they can quickly punch the listener in the face if necessary.

According to Ron, the formula is "50 percent of the songs are dark, 50 percent rather cheerful." In fact, it is this balance that characterizes IEDEREEN. Brutal and uncompromising on the one hand, harmonious and catchy on the other. In the end, IEDEREEN is not just about reflection, but also about the moment, about the moment of giddiness, about physicality, about celebration and hedonism, ultimately - let's say it like it is - about droning away and fucking. The old punk tradition. You have everyday life? We have the escape route!

Two people make music and see what happens. The recipe that IEDEREEN follow sounds simple, and it hasn't changed much since that one evening in the rehearsal room, or actually since the first meeting in the sandpit: Friendship is the basis, creativity the result.