International Music

In the organizer's words:

"We welcome you, Endless Rüttenscheid", sing International Music in the title track of their third studio album, which will be released on September 6, 2024. The album title "Endless Rüttenscheid" is likely to be a real challenge for fans outside the German-speaking world. "Endless", of course, but then: a rolling R followed by an umlaut, a double T and a hard pronounced D at the end: Rüttenscheid. This is the name of the flourishing Essen district in the middle of Europe, which stands for lucrative growth in the Ruhr region, but also for the well-known gentrification problem. But as is usual with international music, such socio-political subjects mainly form spaces in which to fall in love, dream and part again, only to meet again one day. "Heart is the trump card", to quote the cult band TRIO, who have more than just the size of their line-up in common with International Music.

Since their debut album "Die besten Jahre" (2018), Pedro Goncalves Crescenti, Peter Rubel and Joel Roters have consistently developed their own colorful and minimalist rock sound that oscillates between 60s beat & boogie, 70s krautrock, 80s new wave and 90s shoegaze and post-rock. In other words, pretty much everything that a person in the formation of bass, drums and guitar can produce together in terms of joyful music.

"Here only cabbage and turnips, over there flowers bloom" is the opening track "Kraut", which sounds just as much like CAN as CANNED HEAT. And that's the fascinating thing about this band: the aforementioned decades, genres and sounds basically form layers in the International Music cosmos, which are layered on top of each other like a double exposure and then run through the VHS or Super 8 recorder again at the end. With a great fascination for the different techniques and equipment from more than 50 years of rock and pop history, the three Essen-based musicians are constantly developing their own music. And with International Music, it seems to be "endless" in the truest sense of the word.

These songs are carried by the unmistakable harmony vocals of Peter Rubel & Pedro Goncalves Crescenti, who are also known to be up to mischief as The Düsseldorf Düsterboys. On "Endless Rüttenscheid", they step out of their echo chambers onto the dry surface for the first time, giving their voices and the lyrics a new closeness.

If there is anything like a central theme on the album, it is the so-called "solid relationship" and the questions associated with it: When does a relationship become "solid" and how long does it stay that way just because it is solid? Can we somehow preserve the state of love? Can we hold on to love, the great happiness we feel, without ruining it in the end with all our fears and compulsions? And can we even want that?

"Here is a good place to live, here is not a place that stays long, a stopover that was long and will be longer, from me to you, from here to you", says "Guter Ort", a hymn for all lovers, not just those in long-distance relationships.
"Karma is karma, come on enjoy only yourself, it's no drama, do we have time or is it getting light already?" they ask elsewhere in "Karma Karma", in which International Music sound for a moment like their French neighbors from the band PHOENIX.

Tension and release, thinking and feeling, International Music's lyrics are something like a quantum-dynamic superposition, a field of tension from which new questions and answers arise depending on the life and emotional situation. "Tomorrow today or next year", as postulated in "Liebesformular". The track is also the first single - and provides something like the self-image of Rubel, Roters and Goncalves Crescenti: "We make timeless melancholic music"! And indeed, there is a subtle melancholy in Roters' stoic drumming and the interplay of Rubel's and Goncalves Crescenti's bass and guitar melodies - which International Music know how to counteract or reinforce at will with subtle humor. A unique mixture that Olaf O.P.A.L.'s production has packaged in a timeless guise.

"You lead skillfully, your gaze captivates me, you bind me, I retreat" they sing in the love song "Im Sommer bin ich dein König", with which International Music have a real power ballad in their luggage. But yes, the road to happiness remains a rocky one, for which they deliver another gripping anthem with "Kieselwege".

The professional provincial photography on the album cover, which looks like a portrait of the grandchildren on proud grandma Gerda's mantelpiece, is aware of the past and a possible future. And so it makes sense that the picture is not a quick selfie snapshot on a cell phone, but an elaborately staged studio photograph with the technical means of our grandparents. After all, the choir of our ancestors extends into all areas of our lives. They greet, remind, inspire and remind us every day. Always and everywhere.

In the end, we ask ourselves what the difference is: in other words, what kind of lifestyle is even possible in our cultural circles and can be fundamentally different! Whether in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg, New York-Williamsburg or Essen-Rüttenscheid. The really exciting things usually happen unplanned in the moment, sometimes in difficult to understand detours, and rock music in particular has always been a great Zen Buddhist teacher. Or to quote International Music one last time at this point: "And again, there is no principle when the moment shifts, because we only pick up what we like, what is in front of us, what surrounds us".

And if we have to preserve the moment, then please do as in the boogie twister "International Heat": "There can only be one love, to live forever in the meadow".

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