Flake releases his first solo album featuring cover versions of popular Christmas classics

  
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Flake celebrates Christmas! A truly different Christmas album.

Just the video for the first track "Happy Xmas (War is over)" went online:

https://youtu.be/v9rndb0Azfk

FLAKE releases his first solo album featuring cover versions of popular Christmas classics!

"Flake celebrates Christmas" will be released on November 22, 2024 via Rekorder Management/ Kontor

Dad, can you sing a Christmas song?

Flake releases his first solo album featuring cover versions of popular Christmas classics!

Christmas is hell. A torturous ordeal that drags on for months, starting in late summer with shelves filled with gingerbread, filled domino stones, and cookies of all kinds, continuing through civil-war-like conditions on shopping Sundays, and finally reaching its tragic, saccharine music-accompanied low point on Christmas Eve with deceitful talk about love and peace. In other words: An annually recurring horror show, where one constantly wonders why one puts oneself through all this. On his album "Flake celebrates Christmas," the Berlin musician and author interprets the most popular Christmas songs in his own unique way while ruthlessly confronting the strange sides of the holiday. Flake receives moral and musical support from high-profile Friends & Family guests such as Joey Kelly, Farin Urlaub, Käptn Peng, Doro Pesch, Micha Rhein!

"Christmas is an analogy for me to the GDR," Flake says in his usual dry manner. "Everyone wants the best, but no one knows exactly what it’s all about. So you look forward to the gifts and just go along with it because everyone does. When the gifts were no longer so important to me, I cared even less about the fuss around it. As a young punk, I certainly didn’t want to be like everyone else and tried to completely refuse Christmas. Today I am a father. Since my children understandably do not want to share my protest, I have made peace with Christmas again for their sake." A relationship that is still somewhat strained today, which Flake channels on his solo debut in a wild ride through classical, minimal electro, jazz, German rock, pop, and singer-songwriter influences. Of course, not without decorating his remakes with plenty of dissonances, breaks, and other (dis)ruptive elements. The spirit of Christmas, viewed through Flake's lens.

Since the early 1980s, Flake has been one of the most idiosyncratic, quirky, and eccentric figures in the global rock circus - whether as the keyboardist of the East German cult band Feeling B, as a founding member of Rammstein since 1994, or as an author. After the musician recorded some piano pieces for a film at the end of last year, he used the remaining studio time to record a Christmas song, in which he also took on the vocals himself. Originally intended as a quirky Christmas gift for his wife, the demo soon landed online, where it was immediately celebrated enthusiastically. Enough motivation for Flake to sit down at the piano again to record more tracks. "Fortunately, I still had the songbook from the Christmas singing at Union, a Berlin football club. The lyrics were in there. When I listened to the result, I was a bit disappointed; my voice didn’t sound that appealing over time. So I asked some of my colleagues and friends if they would maybe sing a song for me. Of course, no one was waiting for this question, and most of them were just too busy. Others understandably wanted nothing to do with Christmas. I actually find the songs terrible too."

With "Flake celebrates Christmas," the 58-year-old now releases undoubtedly the quirkiest and strangest Christmas album of all time. As strange as he is himself. Deconstructed, reduced to a minimum of festivity classics, on which Flake can be heard both solo (piano, vocals) and with the support of his close circle. "I asked the musicians to put themselves in the situation where they are sitting at home and a child comes in and says: Dad, can you sing a Christmas song?" the Berliner describes his plan. While the child-friendliness was only partially implemented, "Flake celebrates Christmas" already reveals itself on the first track, an almost sarcastic cover of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's peace evergreen "Happy Xmas (War is over)," as a collection of songs for convinced Christmas neurotics.

And by the time the following "Ihr Kinderlein, kommet" plays, it’s clear: This will not be a normal celebration. This year, everything is different. As Flake also shows with his minimal electro version of Wham's heavy rotation hit "Last Christmas," where the Spandau German rap duo Icke & Er recalls the disappointing "Last Christmas." "I’m just jealous of `Last Christmas`. A song that is played over and over, that everyone knows and associates something with; at least if they are as old as I am. The collaboration with Icke & Er was really fun. Without us discussing it, I let the music play. They just sang over it once, recorded a few interjections, and were gone again in twenty minutes. That’s exactly how it sounds now."

"My wife whistled, and I went into the kitchen to make coffee," Flake briefly describes the creation process of "Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht," on which he is joined by his better half, visual artist Jenny Rosemeyer, before the album features perhaps the most extraordinary reinterpretation: To the original melody of one of the most famous German Christmas songs, speech samples from historical speeches by Erich Honecker, Günter Schabowski, and John F. Kennedy are mixed in, while Flake is accompanied on guitar by Die Ärzte frontman Farin Urlaub. "The idea with the samples came from Farin. I immediately had a picture in my mind of a couple that had been separated for decades sitting together under the Christmas tree, letting the past years pass by. Christmas existed before and after the founding of the GDR. I’ve always wanted a song like that: A song that tells the recent German history as a Christmas story without singing. The original text can still be heard in your head. It’s a song that you have to piece together in your brain. Only Farin Urlaub could come up with something so brilliant."

Bizarre blooms also emerge from the Käptn Peng collaboration "Schneeflöckchen Weißröckchen," where jazz elements mix with contemporary classical and distant booming flak noise into a strangely festive cacophony. Flake's commentary on the state of the world. "We heard in school how, on Christmas Eve during World War I, soldiers crawled out of the trenches and came to the enemy positions with cakes and gifts to celebrate Christmas together. They drank together, talked, and showed each other pictures of their girlfriends. The next day, they could no longer shoot at each other because they had gotten to know each other. Not even on the day after that or the day after that. Eventually, the battalions had to be exchanged. Why did they only think about the fact that there were people just like them on the other side at Christmas?" one often wonders. After a charmingly clumsy German rock version of "Freu' Dich (Leise rieselt der Schnee)" feat. Tausend Tonnen Obst and a soundtrack-like arranged crooner stroll through "Winter Wonderland" ("Weißer Winterwald"), Flake opens the doors to his very own Christmas bakery with the lively "Oh, es riecht gut."

"Fortunately, I am not responsible for the gifts; my wife takes care of that quite proactively. When I see something nice, I always give it away right away, and by Christmas, I naturally have nothing left. I also don’t want to cook for Christmas. Either everything is devoured in five minutes, or the kids are not hungry or don’t want my food. Then it was all for nothing because I’m already full after cooking." For that, Knorkator frontman Stumpen conjures up another highlight of the absurd with the poignant piano ballad "Tausend Sterne sind ein Dom," before Flake puts the festive mood to a hard test with the heavy "O du fröhliche" together with former East punk icon Andrea Hüber-Rhone. After a reduced goosebump version of "Alle Jahre wieder," Flake and In Extremo singer Micha Rhein celebrate a true rogue Christmas with "Es ist ein Ros entsprungen" before he concludes fittingly with the touching "Fairytale Of New York" alongside Joey Kelly and hard rock queen Doro Pesch to lively Irish folk sounds. A constellation that can probably only work in the wondrous Flake cosmos. "When I asked Joey if he wanted to record a song for the album, he suggested a duet with Doro Pesch. Maybe after this album, more colleagues will come forward, and we’ll make a second part. And if anyone still has no idea for a Christmas gift for their loved ones and enemies this year, here it is. Christmas always comes back. And so do I."

All proceeds from "Flake celebrates Christmas" will be donated 100% to the Arche.

Tracklisting:

1. Happy Xmas (War is over) - Flake

2. Ihr Kinderlein, kommet - Flake

3. Letzte Weihnacht - Icke & Er

4. Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht - Flake feat. Jenny Rosemeyer

5. Süßer die Glocken nie klingen - Farin Urlaub

6. Guten Abend, schön Abend - Flake

7. Schneeflöckchen Weißröckchen - Käptn Peng

8. Freu' Dich (Leise rieselt der Schnee) - Tausend Tonnen Obst

9. Weißer Winterwald - Flake

10. Oh, es riecht gut - Flake

11. Tausend Sterne sind ein Dom - Stumpen (Knorkator)