Urlaub in Polen · Mess Machine

Vacation in Poland

Please go on, please don't stop here! More than two decades after their formation, Urlaub in Polen still celebrate an aesthetic of the passing, the temporary experience within a continuous stream of new impressions and memorabilia accumulating in their luggage. After a long break, the album All was released in 2020. The new release Objects, Beings and Parrots follows on from the band's twisted version of Krautrock, but in the best eclectic tradition continues to explore all kinds of genres without ever losing the common thread. For nine tracks, multi-instrumentalist Georg Brenner and drummer Jan Philipp Janzen follow a trail of references (see also the cover collage of tile catalog, retro serving suggestion and archaeology textbook), which creates a pleasant feeling of being carried away while listening - despite the band's refusal to be clearly categorized musically.

The opener Abacus, for example, rolls off with a drum machine and little flourishes in the guitar, and even the title refers to the band's roots in the mechanically clicking motorik sound of first-generation Krautrock. Then the first hook is hit and the track turns into a grooving jam with an increasingly dense sound, howling guitars and the band's typical vocals consisting of short phrases that are sometimes reminiscent of 90s noiserock. The next object along the way is a washing machine, manifested here in the form of a layering of broad synth sounds, erupting drums, distorted guitars and vocals ending in a staccato cough as a jarring and shaking trip into a cosmos of self-contained machinery and a soothing embrace of the imperfect. It continues in such a versatile way, sometimes in the form of lilting retro-futurism (Fame & Fortune), sometimes as surprisingly melodic acoustic pop including a woody brass solo (Jaki's Love Time) and again and again in the interweaving of finely crafted rhythmic repetitions with sonic experiments. The Objects, Beings and Parrots form vague images, orientation and stopping points in this stream, on the one hand as recognizable elements from pop and art history, on the other hand as fleeting and abstract as the track of the same name.

The decelerated creation time of the album is audible: after a lengthy writing phase, the tracks were recorded in several sessions in the MARS studio in the seclusion of the Eifel. The result is a self-contained and trippy celebration of moving on, an ongoing movement that does not exclude pausing and suggests the occasional glance in the rear-view mirror.

Mess Machine - The future of German alternative rock


Mess Machine was born in 2024 from a simple but powerful idea: to bring back the raw, honest sound that the world has been missing for so long. Inspired by the likes of Nirvana, Queens of the Stone Age and Weezer, the trio brings back the energy and intensity of the 90s - only without the dust and nostalgia. Fat riffs, driving drums and catchy melodies merge with modern influences to create a sound that is loud, direct and unmistakable.
Even though Mess Machine is still very new, the musicians are not newcomers to the scene: frontman Matthias Ballke has also been in front of the mic with shoegaze band Casino Garden since 2017 and, as a former member of the
bassist and Warwick endorser Mario Smida won the German Rock and Pop Award 2009 with his former rap-rock combo Crushhour and has been showing off his skills in the nu metal band Nuking Crownz since 2019, while drummer Jan Matthes earned his diploma at the Drummers Institute and has toured all over Germany with various combos.
with various combos throughout Germany.
Now they are pooling their experience to shake up the German alternative rock scene. Anyone who has heard them once knows that this is no empty promise.