Varius Artists - 100 Minuten in der Echokammer
A HUNDRED CONGRATULATIONS AND MORE
Albert Pöschl's Echokammer represents the Sound of Munich Underground like no other label. It's easy to write this off as if this position could be achieved relatively easily. Without opening up the whole barrel of the underground-mainstream discussion, I maintain that it's almost a miracle to survive in Germany's most expensive city for 24 years with 100 productions that at best make decent fun of the so-called "intelligent mainstream" which dominates the pop music world and its journalism now (and even gets an alarming amount of attention in the self-proclaimed better niches). This August 2024 has brought us plentiful (to avoid four-letter words) examples I could decorate this holiday greeting with.
At the outpost of pop music, Echokammer is a laboratory in which established templates are renovated or further developed. Disco is reassembled (with knowledge of the Sound of Munich, of course), punk is stripped of its still amazingly popular clichés, electro is mixed with seemingly inappropriate elements and so on. It all sounds like a very serious affair. Yet in fact, you could also write a long essay “On comedy in music by example of Echokammer records” - however, comedy in the bizarre-grotesque vein of Karl Valentin rather than comedy-funny. Roughly comparable to the tactic of making fun of authorities rather than shouting at them.
Something incredibly bizarre happened to me checking through the 100 Echokammer releases (and thus a considerable part of my musical life). Suddenly I thought: “Germany. But normal.” This neo-Nazi slogan popped into my head. Fuck you, I cursed, can't you even celebrate this anniversary in peace! Why did this stupid and hostile slogan jump at me like a fighting dog? Because from Echokammer come the tracks, songs and sounds that these “but normal” Germans despise and would ban if they could. They hate the food that Echokammer provides us with: the unpredictable, the unexpected, the incomprehensible, and the tearing down of all kinds of boundaries, the scrutinizing and dissecting of tradition, the laughing at unquestioned norms, and not to forget these experiments that even venture into terrain that perhaps hardly anyone enters anymore, but which you can't know if you don't risk it. The freedom of art is not exclusively be defended by well-articulated words set to beautiful piano music.
Every Echokammer record has been an adventure for me. Often into the opposite of my connoisseuring expectations. Never into territory I didn't care to know about. Some albums contain more hits than the underground police would allow, others are so badass I could only approach it with medical superintendence. Lots of times I drove hours to see a Echokammer act without even knowing what to expect, and was never disappointed. Favorite bands turned their latest record upside down live. Well-known friends suddenly turned up on stage under a new pseudonym. New formations had apparently formed backstage. Musicians were unexpectedly playing their instruments with such skill that it was as if they wanted to overturn certain romantic notions of the underground.
This stands for the attitude with which Echokammer produces - Albert Pöschl describes the conditions in his accompanying text. Without friendships, solidarity, courage and self-exploitation, it wouldn't have made it to 100. May it continue for a long time and just as wonderfully! For if it doesn't, we'll have a problem. And many people who have no idea what this was and is all about will have a problem.
Franz Dobler
(writer, DJ, author of several music books, has written, for example,
about Echokammer's “Damenkapelle (aus München)” in
“These Girls, too - Feminist Music Stories”
(Ventil Verlag, 2022)
Tracklist:
Side A
1. Heb 100 ab - Salewski Parlamenti
2. Temporary Secretary - Damenkapelle
3. Yamaguchi-sanchi no Tsutomu-kun - Japunk
4. Mantar I - Rumpeln
5. We are the World - Hektor & Rositha
6. The Bitch is to be - The GREAT Tyrannia
7. Thriller Night – pcn
Side B
8. Private Motocross - Parasyte Woman
9. Transatlantik Express - Die Lore
10. Bobby Brown - Queen of Japan
11. He's lost - Tom Wu
12. Im Keller - Mosh Mosh (Buzz Taser Version)
13. Desiree Tout - Electronicat
14. Nothing like the Sun - Jason Arigato & The Sayonaras
Side C
15. Hau ab, Du nervst - Grexits & g.rag / zelig implosion deluxxe
16. Strassenköter - Schnecken im Hochbeet
17. Boring Games - Murena Murena
18. That's how strong my Love is - 4 Shades
19. Samurai Kebap - Sasebo
20. Immer wieder - Peter Brombacher
21. Don't believe the Heimat - Suzie Trio
22. slow run - Zwinkelman
Side D
23. Beat Report - H
24. Alter Mond - Die Moulinettes
25. Blind Song - Das Weiße Pferd
26. Enjoy Peace - Ippio Payo
27. Martellata - Babel/Fuchs