LAN The Band
Electronic Pop from Berlin
Lyrics
"We claim sunday whenever we like, ice cream flavoured whatever we like…"
"Wrong time, wrong place again – I need to talk to Curt Kobain…"
"Don’t care what’s out! Don’t care what’s in! We blame the night! We blame Berlin!"
They love jazz, master pop and dance techno – the band LAN is like Berlin in a singing bowl – individual, colorful, notoriously broke and megalomaniac. Now they are sending out UROP, their second album, into the big wild world of music. And they are news already.
LAN, that’s three musicians: pianist Henning Grambow, bassist Klaus Klose and singer Colya Kärcher. A perfectly matched troika that in countless electronic jam sessions has been playing the music and getting the party going. These experimental concert nights, known as LAN SESSIONS, are regularly celebrated in Kreuzberg’s backyard clubs and frequently known to go wild.
LAN have been buddies from way back. Henning and Klaus got to know each other in 2000, both scholarship students at the German Federal Youth Jazz Orchestra. Colya, Henning’s ex classmate, is quite good at a few other things too but not at living without music. A grown team that functions like an old married couple: They disagree ever so often, but in the crucial moments they stick together. Their creativity develops in interplay between emotions and know-how. That way, apart from their own things, they have also composed quite a number of tracks for commercials. They also tour Europe, especially the eastern part. Here their live performance usually is a blend of pop concert and jam session. „On stage, LAN destroy their pop songs with the same level of love for detail they invested to create them in the studio,“ says Henning. They use a LASER HARP that they developed and built themselves. With this musical instrument you can conduct electron ic sounds via laser beams by just moving your hands. That way, LAN concerts turn out to be audiovisual performances at the same time, a synthesis of the arts in complex interaction of analog and digital techniques.
LAN’s recipe is joining classical pop songwriting with the danceable electronic Berlin sound. Their second Album „UROP“ has become the logical consequence of this intention. To leave big-city stress behind, the band retreated to a small Polish village where they completely concentrated on the writing and composing of the new album, without telephones around, without any contact to the outside world. They deliberately focused more on the songwriting, danceability playing the minor part. „The LAN sound is ambitious pain-in-the-neck pop, but with good variety,“ says Klaus Klose, and Colya adds: „We play pop which, while sad, is always also cheerful, and when cheerful, never loses its sadness.“ Not craving for any dull cheer, you get catchy music you can really enjoy.