SEOI NAGE (GER) & DELTAWELLE (GER) live @ Ilses Erika

In the organizer's words:

Admission 21:00 / start 22:00

VVK via TixforGigs!

SEOI NAGE

No Retreat, No Surrender (Vinyl release date: 10.10.2025)

Hendrik Otremba (MESSER) writes:

"'Playin' cool like it is 1974!

But what's wafting out of the bassy speakers is from the year 2025 and goes by the name of Seoi Nage, who are presenting their album debut here - a hybrid of 1970s funk and film scores between Eastern and Italian giallo.

Detective music, but beyond noir, more in brightly colored tones, with chases, hedonism and the occasional exchange of blows: Seoi Nage, a judo throw, was an obvious name due to their shared martial arts past when the four musicians met in Münster a few years ago. Jakob Hersch (Taishogoto), Anton Zimmermann (drums), Pascal Schaumburg (electric guitar & synthesizer) and Pogo McCartney (bass guitar, electric guitar, percussion, synthesizer & piano), the latter in the role of the group's idea generator. In recent years, the studio project has also dared to perform live on stage time and again, accompanied by Simon Büchting's film projections, which adequately illustrate the retroesque sound. After a first EP, now in full lenghts and without commercial breaks: NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER.

On the eleven tracks of their album debut, Seoi Nage sound like a quote, perhaps even better played than the original, which knows how to tell stories without vocals
stories without vocals, serves up a thriller without lyrics, here and there sleazy, in the pleasurable unseriousness of a bygone decade. Cinematic martial art in sound. And as in artistic, Far Eastern martial arts, we encounter the eleven pieces from McCartney's script in aesthetic perfection of form. Under his direction, four musicians have come together who could not harmonize better.

The multi-instrumentalist, who also produced the album in his Münster studio, creates an unbroken groove with drumming prodigy Anton Zimmermann. They lay down a rhythm on which Pascal Schaumburg, with whom McCartney played for many years with his other band Messer, can realize his meandering guitar ideas and offers Hamburg's Jakob Hersch (Der Ringer, Monako, wohinn) a space to emphasize melodic peaks with the stubborn instrument Taishogoto.

Their subtle interplay gives the album a great catchiness.

McCartney is something like the hub of the group, holding the reins with his hands on the controls, overseeing the aesthetic vision that has long grown within him. "For me, there's a lot in Seoi Nage that simply gives me great pleasure, both playfully and aesthetically - and that goes back to my childhood: martial arts, action films, slapstick. Always with a compelling groove. And ultimately, I also enjoy the fool's freedom that it all brings."

If cinema could still be as radiant as the music here reminds us, this quartet would be the dream cast for the soundtrack!

Interspersed with samples from films from half a century ago, there is also a youthful pop affinity to be found in the completely different genre of hip-hop and sample legend MF Doom, who died in 2020 - which here also means an attitude towards the material: music is always a quotation, in the sense of a bow and a pleasurable and reverent continuation.

Seoi Nage dive into distant realms of sound, pursue daring musical architecture, conjure up imaginary spirits in order to stimulate the imagination of their listeners in the supposed escapism of their fictional scores.

If there were ever a section in the record store for such a sound, it would be labeled Fan Art-Mucke. Pogo McCartney recorded and mixed the album himself, Alexander von Hörsten mastered it and Benny Demmer was responsible for the equally cinematic artwork.

And now: Keep watching. With your ears..."

https://seoinage.bandcamp.com/album/no-retreat-no-surrender

https://kaput-mag.com/critics_de/record-of-the-week_interview_seoi-nage-the-gentle-way-e-p/

DELTAWELLE

The sound of Deltawelle plays in a space without a sense of time, and their colorful lyrics find words for the great contrasts and tensions of life. Euphoric New Wave soundscapes are joined by melancholy observations and thoughtful musings. The not always entirely serious lyrics and views of Deltawelle songwriter Franz Schneeweiß match their indie and punk influences. Deltawelle describe themselves as a new wave quartet and commute between Berlin and Leipzig.

"Many ideas come unexpectedly from the subconscious, often just before sleep," says the frontman, which also explains the name Deltawelle, because Franz Schneeweiß named his band after a brainwave that the brain generates during the deep sleep phase and the observation of which fascinated him deeply. So it can happen that the one or other song written from the subconscious finds no way out, feeling more drawn to dynamics and the spherical than to the classic 3:30 banger. Some long passages invite you to dance and drift along, while other songs wittily tell of a world full of contradictions and evasions.

https://deltawelle.com/

Price information:

VVK 14,30 Euro incl. fee, B.O. 17,00 Euro