OUM SHATT

Six years ago, Oum Shatt released a highly acclaimed debut album, which led from the Song of the Year award at Radio Eins for "Gold To Straw" and in the TAZ Popblog for "Power To The Women Of The Morning Shift", a feature on the BBC to acclaimed performances at South By Southwest in the USA, the French Transmusicales Festival or the Electric Picnic in Ireland. Now the Berlin-based band - consisting of singer and songwriter Jonas Poppe, founding member Chris Imler on drums, guitarist Richard Murphy and Rémi Letournelle on bass and synthesizer - is back with a second album that even surpasses their debut. Where Oum Shatt combined American surf with Greek rembetika music, no wave and oriental influences on their debut, they have fanned out their sound even further here: Although the classic Oum Shatt sound with its Phrygian scale is immediately recognizable in "Over the World and Out", there are also such contrasting songs as the irradiated singer/songwriter chanson "Madame LeSoleil Levant", the rapturously ecstatic "Play!", the edgy drum-dominated "Off to St. Pete" or the hypnotic, danceable "Love the Way She Stands". However, this does not mean musical wandering and getting lost in nothingness, but is instead purified by the band and played to the point. The interlocking, circular single-note guitars, the mantra-like baritone in combination with repetitive background choirs and the very unique, wild percussive aesthetic give the album a mystical, sometimes psychedelic sound. Oum Shatt never stops at a reference, but sees it as a starting point from which to build its own world. Jonas Poppe's often ambiguous, sometimes sarcastic lyrics address the question of the realization of ideals ("I would have quit my job, if I ever had one") or the failure to do so, as well as love and the housing market, politics, artistic freedom and power structures. A recurring motif is a fictitious "in-between world" in which - triggered by a feedback loop between the outer and inner worlds of the lyrical self - a mystical hyperreality is created: "I found something in between signing and resigning - the bliss of imponderability". The result is a record that is completely unique despite its many obscure influences.