In the organizer's words:

The band Voodoo Beach is an unlikely undertaking: In a time when songs are supposed to reveal their innermost after 30 seconds, Voodoo Beach make music that doesn't readily want to blend into this noise around us. This is what makes their artistic approach so important.

The Berlin-based band has existed for several years in various line-ups, with Josephine Oleak on drums and John-H. Karsten on bass forming a well-rehearsed rhythm duo. In 2020, Voodoo Beach finally found its current line-up when Heike Marie Rädeker joined as vocalist and guitarist. The three musicians write new songs and rearrange old material with Rädeker - who immediately brings her style to the table.

She had previously played bass in the band 18th Dye since the 1990s, recording an album with Steve Albini and three Peel sessions. She also sang, but only in English, and never played guitar. Now the lyrics are in German and her guitar playing is just like her bass playing before: percussive, riddled with feedback - but also sensitive and melodious.

On Wonderful Life, Voodoo Beach's post-punk leans here and there towards noise rock with its uncouth, idiosyncratic capers. Primal forces that repeatedly devour Rädeker's catchy guitar riffs out of nowhere, Karsten's bass is then absorbed in the feedback and Oleak's otherwise so measured playing is forgotten in a roar. Destructive impulses that our minds gratefully absorb because they remind us that music can be anything: sheer escapism and unbridled dystopia.

For these intensities, Voodoo Beach also find a timeless poetry that few German-speaking bands have been able to achieve in recent years. The lyrics speak of a self that - like all of us - has somehow ended up in this world and can face it with sometimes more, sometimes less strength, as in the song Die Hand: "Life on credit / And everyone joins in / Everything anthracite / The animals scream in the forest."

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