Looking for more current German language music, German learners? Then may I suggest none other than Düsseldorf based band Susanne Blech? The synthpop band make high energy, catchy and thoughtful music. As it would happen, they released a new album, Welt verhindern, last month. What a coincidence. As a German language learner, if you don’t learn some new vocabulary from Susanne Blech, well, then you probably just aren’t trying very hard.
It is always a winning combination when the fun things in life have substance behind them. All too often, especially in pop music and pop culture, they don’t. But that’s exactly what Susanne Blech do. With Kraftwerk influenced electronics and racing singing-slash-spoken delivery of lyrics, the band have no problem getting pulses racing and feet dancing. It was their 2012 album Triumph der Maschine that first grabbed my attention. The album features pop gems like “Die Maschinen laufen heiß” and “I love Wagner,” as well as the aggressive, brutal “Metastasen,” as stand out tracks.
With their newly released full-length album, Welt verhindern, Susanne Blech maintain their status as both current and modern. The album sees them experimenting with a carefully produced, more hip hop leaning sound (Sorry, guys, “Killer is a Man Who Don’t Fuck with the Music” loses me but I’m a square) while maintaining their dance-ready synthpop. The band’s frontman and lyricist Timon-Karl Kaleyta collaborated with an admitted favorite of mine, Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre, on two of the album’s tracks (“Wir werden alle nicht Ernst Jünger” and “Die Katzen von Beate Zschäpe”). Other notable tracks include the dark, creeping “1.000 Jahre Kraftwerk” and the fun “Hände Hoch, Feuerwehr!” while “Manhattan” races like the soundtrack of an old school video game.
Susanne Blech also put out some high quality music videos to accompany their music. Be sure to check them out.
Pingback: German Music 2014 Recap - Reverberations