ACHT EIMER HÜHNERHERZEN + KRATZEN - WDR Crossroads Festival - TV Aufzeichnung
3/22/2025
at 7:30 PM
/ Bonn
ACHT EIMER HÜHNERHERZEN
The Berlin trio with the wonderfully poetic name makes half-acoustic nylon punk, mixing the three music styles of “powerviolence folk, cacophony, and attachment anxiety.” So it is written. They claim to play “wander guitar hardcore with fuzz and driver for single parents, single children, allergy sufferers, and all cheerful-depressives.” Apocalypse Vegas bratty singing and Berlin tongue lazily bursts into immediately captivating little hits, in which all the rules of punk, folk, and songwriting are coldly ignored. Everything remains handmade, without tricks and effects, but spirally galaxies away from “unplugged” patina and pathos, everything is fast and punk-friendly timed. The genre media rave with enthusiasm: “Acht Eimer Hühnerherzen play a completely distortion-free, pre-unplugged, Pro-Tools despising and Foo Fighters dissing sound that kicks you hard in the ass despite everything and especially because of that.” (Curd / Munich)
“A mixture of creative brilliance and bratty-charming ferocity, NDW influences, indie pop, and Eisenhüttenstadt folklore” (Fred / Underdog Fanzine)
“Somewhere between art punk and brat-folk” (Simon / Away From Live)
Line-up: Apocalypse Vega – vocals, guitar / Herr Bottrop – bass, vocals, fuzz / Bene Diktator – drums, vocals
KRATZEN
Repetitive, motoric, reduced – Kratzen plays only the essentials. The trio founded in Cologne in 2017 creates a hypnotic atmosphere precisely through this stoic reduction. They call it “krautwave.” It is hard to be further from pretentiousness and arrogance when using guitar, bass, and drums.
“The forbears of the Factory label are within earshot, the Kraftwerk in the next Rhine metropolis is creaking at full speed, motoric beats and exhalations of space rock create a strict sound image in which every little change becomes an event. Self-diagnosis: 'smart and cool'” writes Plattentests.de.
“Just like the spiritual parents of this music, Neu!, Kraftwerk, Stereolab, or also Joy Division and Spaceman 3, who have elevated the absence of dynamics and pathos to an art form,” the Visions magazine knows how to classify Kratzen. And the Kaput magazine diagnoses: “Makeup-free, detoxified music without any seemingly unnecessary adornments…. Just from the obsessive repetition, Kratzen's sound can gain; power, expression, magic. For the spirit of indie blends with that of krautrock, mind you, the krautrock in its straighter Weilerswister and Düsseldorf variants.”
One might also think of all the mentioned reference points to Velvet Underground, to the Feelies, or – from the recent past – to the restrained aura of Lewsberg. So disciplined, so controlled are they: an accessible body part itches – but they do not scratch.
Line-up: Melanie Graf (guitar, bass, vocals), Thomas Mersch (guitar, bass, vocals), Stefanie Staub (drums, vocals)
Doors: 18:30 Uhr
Hallo, ich bin Maya.
