One of the finest selections coming to this year’s Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg can be found at Uwe where the Canadians present their finest exports over the course of two days: Thursday and Friday, Sept 19/20. One of the most exciting of the 24 acts playing the Canada House are Montreal krautrockers Yoo Doo Right. Their noisy smashy melange of guitars and reverb should be a wonderful experience on the fine soundsystem this venue usually prepares, scheduled for Thursday night, 20:30.

Yoo Doo Right released an EP this year on Mothland, titled The Sacred Fuck, which is a little bit less accessible than their refreshing album from 2022 whose opening track is attached below, at your convenience.

Hamburg’s Reeperbahn Festival will take place this month for the 19th time, from September 18-21. It has grown immensely in the past decade, this is in terms of size as well as international reach. What started as a club festival at the end of summer has developed into one of the most important music industry conferences in the Northern hemisphere. This happened partly by its own success, and partly by large amounts of city money being invested. So much so, that even the Mayor himself shows up for its grand opening, celebrating this year’s motto Let the Music Grow.

But while the festival became a nice little badge of cultural and economic success for the city, the name-giving Reeperbahn street and its many small clubs and music venues experienced much less city-supported growth in the past decade. If you walk down Reeperbahn and its side streets, you will see many empty store fronts and unoccupied buildings as well as vacant construction sights. Many of the music venues that made the neighborhood in the 80s and 90s and gave rise to Reeperbahn Festival in the early 2000s have since been forced to move or to close, crumbling the microcosm they had created.

Now, change is always welcome of course, and neighborhoods experience all sorts of gentrification, but while the city happily spends millions elsewhere, the smaller players of the scene need to fight hard to “justify” a few thousand euros that would make a real social impact that is so sought after. For the average music head then, Reeperbahn Festival is the only time of the year, when music and culture are returning to Reeperbahn.

Frustrating as this may be, Reeperbahn Festival is once again a big stage and a great opportunity for a lot of rising musicians and market participants: 400+ concerts in more than 80 venues. It creates a wonderful atmosphere around this failing street and its large audience from across the globe give Hamburg what it so often lacks: international appeal.

It would be great to see the same enthusiasm that the city authorities have shown for this festival for almost two decades bear fruit for the neighbourhood in which it is located and whose name and cultural brand it happily carries.

Team Poule will present our favorites from the line-up right here, in the next few days.

It’s festival season and one of the finest, longest festivals in the Hanseatic City of Hamburg is Draussen im Grünen – a concert series throughout the month of August. The shows are taking place outside, under the city skies, in the evergreen park belt of Planten un Blomen. On the ticket this summer are, among others Allah-Las, Ty Segall, and German producer Orbit.

On August 2nd, Orbit’s trajectory leads straight into the mighty circular of Musikpavillon. Team Poule got together with the festival to co-present this gig – and as avid fans of the Poule d’Or you are once again in luck! The show was sold out quickly but we managed to get 2×2 tickets under our wings, waiting for two lucky winners.

All you need to do to win a pair, is send an email stating your name to win-big@pouledor.com before Tuesday, July 16, 12 pm CET sharp. It also doesn’t hurt to follow Team Poule on Instagram. The winners will be drawn at random and notified immediately.

If you like what you hear, check his fall tour dates that take him to Vancouver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and many more!

Photo credits go to Julia Preiß, and Julia Preiß only.

Atlanta’s finest, the green and blue, the global phenomenon that is Faye Webster is ready to play a few dates in Europe and the UK this month! With her beautiful line of albums – and after an exclusive photo-interview with this website in 2021 – she has gained mainstream success and all the privileges and duties that come with it. Her distinct style and witty song writing have found new and broad audiences that are now eagerly awaiting her taking the actual center stage.

She is set to perform live in London tonight and tomorrow night, May 15/16. Next up are Brighton’s The Great Escape, Bristol, Brussels, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Berlin, Munich, Cologne, Paris and finally Barcelona, all between now May 31, when she will head back into United States of America, for more shows. Some tickets are still available, check your local listings, or here.

Attached below is a breezy new track off her latest album Underdressed at the Symphony that came out in March, via Secretly Canadian. Go see her! If you want to.

Title photo by the one and only, by Michael Tyrone Delaney.

Poule d’Or’s prized photo-interview series celebrates its 30th edition today! Jeshua here out of Glasgow up in Scotland has been busy making some great music for years, combining warm and full riffs with a healthy dose of dreamy reverb. He released a wonderful debut album in 2021 and now announced new material for this calendar year.

The first single is cautiously titled Innocent and provides a neat companion to both evening walks and morning routines this time of the year, streamlining and developing his sound. Now, we here at Team Poule don’t know anything about the making of music or the structures and processes of songwriting, but this new track sounds absolutely marvelous, so pull out the proper headphones for this one.

You can find the track on the official Team Poule Spotify playlist and also more conveniently attached below. So hit play, and dive into the visual worlds of Jeshua.

Also – if you happen to be in the Glasgow metropolitan area on May 8, catch him live at Audio Glasgow in support of James Walsh of Starsailor.

Where did it all begin? [continue reading…]