WESTERMAN

In the organizer's words:

Born in South London and living in Athens, singer-songwriter Westerman is going on tour in November. His second album "An Inbuilt Fault" will be released at the beginning of May. The two film classics "The Seventh Seal" as Ingmar Bergman's allegorical masterpiece from 1957 and Akira Kurosawa's sociological drama "Ikiru" from 1952 formed the biggest influence in terms of content. Each film, in a completely different way, follows a protagonist facing an existential crisis, evoking turmoil and stasis, carefully tracing his search for self-knowledge and realization.

A period in which he was stuck for months in Italy, where he was almost completely locked up. After disappointments about making music and with an abstract sense of the future of his career, it seemed unclear to Westerman whether the material he was recording would ever be heard. Creatively, this offered a strange kind of freedom and allowed for some of the most adventurous and unabashed songwriting of his career. Finding textures became a central concern, with Westerman taking programming and looping into his hands in a way he had never done before, creating polyrhythmic grooves to add urgency to his inner dialogue.

The result is music that is heavier and more sonically daring than Westerman's previous releases. The album's first drum salvo sets the tone: Krivchenia's drumming on "Give" sounds more hyperreal than natural, bloated and compressed, integrating sounds of shattering glass, crashing wood and what almost sounds like fists on flesh. The primary musical dialogue in many of these songs is between the mix of drums and Westerman's vocals - enhanced by bursts of rich three- or four-part vocal harmonies.

Price information:

22,00 € plus fees