Philipp Poisel announces his fourth studio album "Neon" for September 17, 2021. Like hardly any other German musician of the new millennium, Philipp Poisel manages to illuminate a speck of dust while simultaneously speaking to thousands of fans. The first singles "Was von uns bleibt" and "Das Glück der anderen" have already been released.
If there is one thing that unites the four studio albums Philipp Poisel has released since 2008, it is their warmth, which always manages to encapsulate the tension between musical expansiveness and narrative intimacy that has characterized his work from the beginning. Like no other German musician of the new millennium, the songwriter manages to illuminate a speck of dust while simultaneously speaking to thousands of fans.
Why does the orchestral minnesong of Philipp Poisel touch both the anthem-seeking people in the ether of youthful pop radio and the somewhat dusty vinyl connoisseurs, who sit dreamily with closed eyes in headphone chairs, while they longingly hum along to his lyrics? Or to put it another way and a bit more concretely: How does Philipp Poisel manage to move the sometimes demanding guests at the Haldern Pop Festival with the same songs while also being regularly interpreted in prominent positions on the commercial casting and talent shows of private broadcasters? How can one float on the surface while simultaneously diving into the deepest depths? The answer lies, oh wonder, in the work behind which the floating diver likes to hide. So much is not known about Philipp Poisel...
The video for “Was uns bleibt” can be seen here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-TPmvpL-PY&feature=youtu.be
What is certain: It always goes on. With the same intensity, between buoyancy and heaviness. Poisel's musical versatility has brought him to a new place with "Neon". A place that deserves a little explanation. "Neon" is perhaps even the key to his poetics.
Or at least a skeleton key.
Bright at the center, but always again in diffusely seeming offshoots towards darkness, the light of this album feels its way between euphoria and melancholy into the distance, to touch the still unrecognizable there. Philipp himself calls it a "complete immersion" – a diving into another time, into memories, while simultaneously looking into the future. And that is what he sees in the motif "Neon". The medium for this is fantasy, for which he feels almost a humble gratitude, as it allows him to move into other spheres. Especially because, like everyone else during the last two years, he mostly stayed in his homeland during the creation process: While "Mein Amerika" from 2017 was an album in which he concretely traveled to the titular place of longing, on "Neon" he now dreams more of breaking out of the province, into both the past and the future. Even between times, a person can cover great distances. It shows: "Neon" is a milestone of imagination.
