Monobob und WhåZho

Monobob
The Grateful Dead allegedly named themselves after an encyclopedia entry that Jerry Garcia happened to look up. Fiction or truth, the story sounds as credible as if Maryvonne Porwol and Markus Rhein, Karen and Stefan Afeldt insisted that the name of their band was in no way infected with meaning. Bob Dylan, whose serious admirers the label owners Thomas and Markus Rhein undoubtedly are, released his first eight records in parallel in both single-channel and two-channel technology, but they were creatures of monophony. Even hotter, of course, is, as apart, a track into the world of winter sports: while four-man and two-man bobsleighs have been competing in world championships and Olympic Games since 1924, the monobob is a phenomenon of the present - and a veritable metaphor, or more precisely: metonymy, for the decay and end of public life, the isolation, singularization, monofication of man under the conditions of global neoliberalism, rampant post-democracy and in the face of the advent of the secular apocalypse. The labels of the nameless debut can give you an idea of how rides in a monobob can end - each car an ominous individual mobile.

The sky full of chemtrails: In manifold cultural forms - from the chorus of ancient tragedy to bourgeois art song and Brechtwellian alienation to post-punk freak folk - and kaleidoscopic moods - from muted horror to stunned, bewildered rage and disturbed, disturbing grief to impossible, yet tenderly germinating hope - Monobob sing and play variations on the theme of why, why, why man is the animal capable of thinking but unwilling to do so; whether and how the final closing meshes of power can still be given a hook; and in general: how all this is supposed to go on. Monobob give expression to the horror that must creep up on anyone who still has cups in their cupboard, in the face of what's happening before our very eyes, in the face of reality outdoing the Kafkaesque, the absurd and the surreal. Monobob is therefore music to time, its historical-philosophical condensation, as it were, in the sense of Walter Benjamin, whose Angelus Novus (Paul Klee) is driven backwards and with outstretched wings from the past into the future by a storm blowing from paradise and in front of whose eyes debris is constantly piling up on debris. What we call Monobob is this angel of history.

Text: Jens Dreisbach

https://monobob1.bandcamp.com/

WhåZho
You were standing in the rehearsal room and had your first gig, no guitarist and no songs... this was the trigger for the brilliant start of WhåZho in 2015. The looper became your best friend and many other devices joined in - the motto "more is more" was written in capital letters for a while and Gutfeeling Records became the home base.

Consisting of Philip Groß (drums, samples, effects, glockenspiel) and Christian Riedel (bass, synths, loops & effects), they move through all genres and styles with predominantly instrumental songs and rush through the provincial metropolises with a fascination for effect-rich loops and samples to create a digital/analog sound world for two. They are also happy to play live with various guest musicians. They were still missing pop glamor in the form of visual art by VJ Zava, so they packed it in - it's a must!

www.whazho.de
www.soundcloud.com/whazho