SMILE

In 2015, Rubee True Fegan from Albuquerque (New Mexico), then just 19 years old, turned her back on the USA for the time being. She has a scholarship in her luggage. Instead of Prague, Paris or London, her decision fell on Bonn-Alfter, of all places, a rural region in the deep west of the former capital. A momentous decision: the planned six-month stay has so far turned into eight.
Rubee, who works as an illustrator, develops video performances and has always written between the disciplines, has been a music enthusiast since childhood. In the city of her birth, she spends most of her time at a D.I.Y. joint, The Gasworks, where she gets infected with punk, often making the door and meeting bands from all over the world. She also keeps her eyes and ears open in Bonn. She meets drummer Marius Szarnych, who is well versed in the musical underground. The two start playing, Rubee on bass at first. Soon they recruit guitarist Lars Fritzsche, who has just moved to Bonn from the Ruhr area and is looking for music makers to start a band. The Bonn concert scene takes notice and sponges on Max Schmidt (bass) and Sebastian Lessel (guitar), who writes sporadically as a music journalist and studies sound studies with Schmidt in Bonn.

The group is complete and moves into an old haunted train station building, starts writing songs that are well informed on the history of post punk and find inspiration wherever experimentation and catchiness touch: B52 s, Talking Heads, Life Without Buildings, ESG, Sonic Youth, Talk Talk. The list is open, always remains open. Thus, the quintet is also enthusiastic about contemporary bands. Protomartyr, Interpol, Drahla, Fontaines D.C. (for whom SMILE 2022 played support) Gorillaz!

When the pandemic takes control, Rubee is suddenly stuck in Albuquerque for a year. The rest of the band meets up at the train station in Bonn. It's not uncommon these days for a conversation with Rubee to precede plugging in the instruments. And on the other side of the world, the singer of SMILE then writes what happens to her, what she observes, feels. In this mode, she sometimes adopts a solitary introspective, which may provide for that extraordinary precision and intensity of her lyrics, which have a great narrative quality. Thus, between continents, between Albuquerque and Bonn, between shoegazing guitars and artful poetry, a common echo chamber is created, in which first the singer is still stuck in exile about half of the songs are written that are now available here.

When Rubee is back, the songwriting intensifies. A first EP is recorded. Concerts are played. Things are going well. They call themselves SMILE!
Olaf Opal becomes aware of SMILE, soon visits the group more and more. A collaboration is decided, and the legendary Cologne producer inspires the five friends with his idea not to record in the studio, but to go to different places, as far afield as possible, to capture the intensity in the playing that is SMILE. Several sessions in Cologne follow, at the KHM for example, where Rubee is now studying, and with these first live-takes the group and producer create the basis of an album. Long sessions with overdubs in Cologne's Bear Cave Studio follow, then it's time for the intensive mixing process. Gradually the band moves to Cologne, where the members meet like-minded people: Infant Finches and Liza Dries, with whom they also collaborate. History is being made (things are progressing)! Price of Progress, the debut of the group SMILE, is taking shape....

https://www.instagram.com/band_of_smiles/
https://open.spotify.com/intl-de/artist/6OY6Dxy4fEtfwYJxPdoQC8

PRESENTED BY BYTE.FM & DETEKTOR.FM

Admission: 20:00