Milliarden

In the organizer's words:

The Berlin band Milliarden releases its new album "LOTTO"

𝘁𝗼𝗶, 𝘁𝗼𝗶, 𝘁𝗼𝗶!
Transit zones in airports have one thing in common, regardless of which one people are currently in. They rather incidentally illustrate how strangely mobile life is. Ben Hartmann from the Berlin band Milliarden is stuck in one of these transit zones while talking about his new album "LOTTO". The plane from Madrid to the city on the Spree is late. In theory, not much is happening around him right now. But there is still tension in the air. Especially in places like this. People are traveling back and forth, from south to west, from continent to continent, from one perception to the next. Perhaps there really is something to the saying that anticipation is the greatest joy. On the one hand, it is never certain what will happen on the other side of the route. On the other hand, the curiosity to leave increases with each new arrival. The temporary lingering in the stateless area thus creates the perfect setting for an exchange of ideas about the new songs of the billions. They are about the naive state of life, about tense expectation. Ben Hartmann and Johannes Aue, the band's two placeholders, identify opportunities in the transit area. That makes sense: Making music has always been a game of chance. In some protagonists of pop history, it reveals a downright gambling addiction. The unwritten hand of tomorrow gives Hartmann and Aue a good feeling. Accordingly, the album title "LOTTO" describes the longing for the unknown rather than the actual game of chance. The real main prize can never be money. It is a waste product of work.

𝗻𝗲𝘂𝗻 𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗵𝘁𝗶𝗴𝗲
Open-hearted, almost catchy, the song "Das erste Mal" marks the beginning of the "LOTTO" path. Free of crashing bully guitars and yet radical, the track expresses the desire to be able to stretch time. The desire to escape the dictates of deadlines and schedules may seem guileless. However, the utopia of perceiving transience with a laugh offers the chance to dance to it. Whether anyone wants to discern any wisdom in the text depends, of course, on the ear of the beholder. However, the idea of not being a slave to stock corporations that use the forced digitization of every single person to maximize profits is appealing. Do we want to be ugly market, production and device zombies? "LOTTO" tears up digital monochrome surfaces with the desire to sleep outside, as if it were "the first time". And with love. In recent years, this has given rise to anger and a desire to sing about pacifism and a new culture of mourning. At present, discourse, sensitivity and accumulated knowledge are obviously being double-mindedly misjudged. We want to make ourselves dumber than we are. Billions find this state of affairs unbearable, but not irreversible. Opportunities can be identified. The "psychosis" in an airy, swinging rumba coat can show the way out of toxic self-medication. "Never tell the truth" is a post-punk manifesto that plays with a form of language that breaks with reality as we explain it to ourselves. It's about the falsity of rules, hypocrisy and love.

𝘇𝘂𝘀𝗮𝘁𝘇𝘇𝗮𝗵𝗹
The album structure literally draws you into the dialog field of weighting and counterweighting and into the alarm clock alert. It is followed by emotion. "Fürchte dich nicht" and "Sternenflimmern" almost form a unit, the transition is cleverly arranged. Words that deal with a poem by Jörg Fauser can only be heard in the first part of the first of the two songs, the rest is told by the music. Suddenly, huge panoramas of the unspoken exchange of self-perception between songmakers and listeners emerge. The pair's second song begins as the previous one ended, wordlessly. At this point, great praise is due to the drummer, who beats out the live drum & bass pulse of an indeterminate size. The lyrics of the star number want to move away from worldly cacophony of words towards lyrical expression. If "LOTTO" were a character, it would no longer have any desire for the term solidarity, which has been raped and used up beyond recognition. It would pull it towards sensibility. "Deine Musik" tells of a home that is a sound, a smell or a person - offering protection and violence at the same time. The nursery rhyme syllables "Pa pa papapa" vividly illustrate the paradox at the end of the song. The inherent sound of youth merges into "Mantel". The death of a parent has stolen puberty and triggered participation in a culture of mourning that is suffocating. All relics that refer to that loved one are filled with pain and powerlessness. Only when the narrator's ego realizes that being robbed is a stroke of luck does it take a different look at the lifelong drug of grief. Getting off it means being able to breathe. In the end, it begs: Please clear out the cellar for me, lush rat!

𝗴𝗲𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗻𝗮𝘂𝘀𝘀𝗰𝗵𝘂̈𝘁𝘁𝘂𝗻𝗴
The "LOTTO" album reports profound things from the battlefield of sex. It has a lot to gain from the spring-like quality that naturally follows shattered illusions. Everything is up for grabs, always and everywhere. What is given today takes on a different form tomorrow; less tangible, almost invisible. In this respect, the new billions album "LOTTO" was cleverly titled. The "right" numbers of today are the "wrong" ones of tomorrow. Or, to put it in long-playing record format: music-making plays for time and supposed profit, full of eager anticipation. Playing with possibilities makes the song, which is actually small as a grain of sand, big. Having, holding, letting go, reinventing - the "LOTTO" songs have their origins in the desire to say something that you understand without knowing what it is. Ben and Johannes are not so much authors who create and construct stories as musical painters of their worlds of experience. Since life does not tolerate a vacuum, there are disturbingly beautiful images to discover on "LOTTO", multi-layered and yet carefree and courageously painted. Just like the first time.

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