RamTatTa - PASCAL FINKENAUER: - Pascal Finkenauer - Album Release: 05.04.13 Trocadero/Indigo

  
  This article was automatically translated by AI.

If you live in Hamburg, you will mostly encounter the tall, often black-clad Pascal Finkenauer at night. Sometimes surrounded by people in bars or clubs, or all alone and enjoying the dance clubs of the city. He observes and wanders through the scenes and streets, always enveloped by a kind of euphoric melancholy. After a long musical break and a break in life, he worked quietly during the day on new lyrics and songs, and strolled and danced through the darkness and into the artificial light at night. His new album is a journey through the time between the Blue Hour and the next morning. When others are asleep, a world of freedom opens up to him, then Pascal Finkenauer feels comfortable, ready for images and encounters. He stores impressions and moods, and later these memories break through in his songs, which encompass the entire spectrum of emotions: anger as well as longing and tenderness, fun as well as sadness. "I seek the true kick that cannot be artificially manufactured. When two people meet, or when one is really angry or really sad, that interests me," says the adopted Hamburger.

"The fatigue doesn't come / I've tried everything / I was awake for nights / I was closed for days / I bent hours / used up the remnants / the sun rises" (Fatigue)

First, there is this voice; powerful, dark, a yearning. It blows in from somewhere, from very high up, and goes deep inside. A man, a vibrato. Then the lyrics: scenes, images, fragments, and between the lines, worlds open up. Set to music, poems that feel like films without words. One feels both secure and lost in the indeterminate, in the distance from the things that surround him, and in the attempt to arrive, to find something that holds, a new discomfort arises. "I was searching for truth, authenticity, and wholeness," says Pascal, "but in nightlife, you don't find that. It's an artificial world with its own unique beauty." In 'Verzerrt', the first song from his new album, it sounds like this: "I walked all night / beneath me is velvet / and in the veins, it washes rats / to the beach ... I hardly see myself anymore / and if I do, only from afar and / distorted / the others when they sleep / alive they seem almost flawless."

In science, there is a term for the break that occurs when artificial beings almost resemble real people and thus, in an inexplicable way, seem all the more alien. This is called the Uncanny Valley.

"I flew way too high / so pour a loud laugh / over me" (Loud Laugh)

Pascal Finkenauer wrote and composed the blueprints for his twelve new songs over two years, and then went into the studio with his new band of friends and great musicians for two short sessions over eight days to record the album directly and live, just as it will sound on stage. "When musicians play together in one room, an incredible dynamic can arise, that's what we wanted," Pascal raves about the two sessions.

The result is reminiscent of Joy Division (the dark), The National (the warm), Killing Joke (the pressure), and Interpol (the vastness), but one can also sense The Cure, Bauhaus, David Bowie, The Jesus & Mary Chain, The Verve, and psychedelic influences. The overall sound feels like a living, breathing organism. Dark elegies that sometimes explode into noise and captivate the listener in their finely nuanced drama, glam breaks through here and there, in the loud guitars and the determination of the sung phrases, but also quiet and delicate acoustic moments. Music like it has not been heard here before, it should be a discovery for listeners. And again and again this driving, steady, almost stoically grooving rhythm – like walking, or for dancing.

He played the first concerts with the new songs solo in September 2012 during the nationwide sold-out tour as support for Kid Kopphausen (Nils Koppruch & Gisbert zu Knyphausen) and on numerous solo shows since then. The concert premieres with his band will take place at four shows as support for Paul Banks (Interpol) at the end of January/beginning of February.

The first single will be the song "Den Bach runter": "I don't know yet / how it goes on with me / how it feels living on the edge / I am at the end / so dance on the rest of my remnants".

Some may now wonder where this Pascal Finkenauer suddenly comes from, but he has been there all along; he just hid well or also: took a lot of detours. It all started in 1997 with the punk-hardcore band Exhaust. In 2000, he made waves with the electronic performance trio Jaw, and in 2004 with the trash-punk duo The Black Cherries. After that, he was a guitarist and guest singer for Fettes Brot for five years and released albums where he experimented with various styles. Recently, a poetry collection with the misleading title 'Techno' was published, as well as an EP with English lyrics that was digitally released via his own label.

Looking back, all of this seems like a search and collection, like the necessary path to find one's own, unmistakable language in text and sound. Accordingly, the album represents a new beginning and is simply called 'Pascal Finkenauer', and not, as previously planned, 'Uncanny Valley'.

Album Tracklisting:

1. Verzerrt (6.18)

2. Im Licht (5.05)

3. Den Bach runter (3.25)

4. Maschine (4.05)

5. Wellen (4.02)

6. Lautes Lachen (3.59)

7. Müdigkeit (4.03)

8. Brennende Autos (5.14)

9. Hinter zerrissenen Tüchern (4.26)

10. Taucherin (3.01)

11. Alles in Rage (3.44)