Clean up in the small form: Julian Knoth
Photo: Imago/Müller-Stauffenberg
Since 2010 the band has been singing and shooting the nerve songs about fear, doubts and difficult ego states into the world. The three people who are the band are among the most productive rock musicians in Germany. Everything has to go out, but through different channels: there is not enough room in the mother ship. And of the three is bass player Julian Knoth, who plays in just three bands on the side (Benjamins, Peter Muffin Trio, Yum Yum Club) and has operated or operated a somewhat peripheral electronics project (oh what!), The least busy. So in direct comparison to the nerve guitarist Max Rieger (various albums with the dark-black electronics structures all this violence!, Black Metal with fruitler, something that is called the salvation army, and electronics with Yaucche) and drummer Kevin Kuhn (also the salvation army, sometimes caries and scharping and above all the very good queepop band Shitney beers).
This is only mentioned here at the beginning because all of these projects and bands and albums combine something. You must at some point the overall nerve work as a single body. Also with regard to the outsourcing: In the mother ship, for example, there is a striking absence of humor, which can then be found in the Salvation Army and in Scharping.
And Julian Knoth’s first solo album, which this is actually about, is seriously right and never cheerful. The texts are mostly formulated in the first person and act on the irritation, reflections and the world relationship of the lyrical ego. This is touching if you find yourself in these descriptions and otherwise not. What Knoth sings. is of a mandatory simplicity that, when these songs catch you on the wrong foot, gently touches the banal.
In any case, it is best to hear that the emphasized simple here is and works if you allow it. “The rain falls on my head / wind hits me in the face / and the rain makes my hair wet / but I don’t feel all of this.” You know it, rain, hair, and in this respect you can connect to this voice if you want. With the ten songs on “Invisible Sea” it takes a while, and then they get caught. The distance disappears, the “invisible sea” that the album title promises, has nothing oceanic: Julian Knoth sings relatively directly above what could be described roughly as depressive conditions. And not in the crying mode, but with acoustic guitar, a few supplementary instruments and a small string ensemble, the trio smear.
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The chamber -musician preserves “invisible sea” from the campfire. And structured. While Rieger and Knoth sing the perceived devastation of their own biographies according to the nerves, the small form tidy and sorted. The nerves tell because they are a noiserock band, from which now also in the songs that act from before (“Thank you very much about the youth / God, it is over”). Julian Knoth looks out of the then sad events, depression and questions that you don’t get answered. “I don’t see much because it is dark / I don’t know much because I know how to forget”, but sung so that it doesn’t complain. Already comforting, all of this.
Julian Knoth: “Invisible Sea” (Italic Recordings)