The German duo Milky Chance come to The Pageant on Tuesday, October 10th. Also, scheduleed to appear is Gene Evaro Jr. (CA). This indie-folk, indie-pop show is all ages. It starts at 8:00 pm and ends by 11:45 pm. Tickets are $31.50 in advance, $35.00 day of show. Minors also incur a $2.00 surcharge. Visit HERE for the event page on Facebook. Below is a link to Gene's music and more on Milky Chance, plus their website and social networks.
Gene Evaro Jr. :
MILKY CHANCE:
www.milkychance.net
www.facebook.com/milkychancemusic
www.twitter.com/MilkyChance
www.youtube.com/user/MilkysMusic
www.instagram.com/milkychance_official
Milky Chance shared a brand new video of their latest single “Blossom” via Republic Records just in time to return to the states for their U.S. tour. Check out video for “Blossom” which premiered on PaperMag.com HERE and the track HERE.
The multiplatinum-certified German duo reimagined and re-envisioned this delicate anthem. As a result, “Blossom” shuffles ahead on snappy drumming as the shimmering hook immediately takes hold, giving the track a whole new life. The original version can be found on the group’s second full-length album, Blossom—out now!
In addition, Milky Chance extend their stacked North American tour schedule with a series of high-profile festival appearances. They’ll be hitting the stage everywhere from Bonnaroo to Lollapalooza in 2017. Check out the full confirmed itinerary below.
SOPHOMORE ALBUM BLOSSOM OUT NOW
Milky Chance have released their sophomore album, Blossom on Republic Records.
Blossom is Out Today - Available for Streaming and Purchase HERE.
Watch Visuals For The Title Track HERE.
“Blossom was the first time we went into the studio with the intention to make an album, Sadnecessary was just us recording songs we worked on so we can play it to our friends without any expectations of a proper release.” recalls Clemens.
“After touring for almost four years on the back of this album we really wanted to create something with "Blossom" that is still "Milky Chance", keeps the mixture between melancholy, electronic and organic sounds but also captures our growth as musicians, songwriters and producers.”
“We locked ourselves in the studio and got rid of all expectations that come with a debut-album success. We were 19 when everything started so we've learned a lot about ourselves, developed a lot as musicians and went to places we've never thought we would go to, everything happened really fast. It was important to take some time off to realize what happened. All of this was very influential for us in making this record.”
BLOSSOM DIGITAL DELUXE TRACKLISTING
1. Blossom
2. Ego
3. Firebird
4. Doing Good
5. Clouds
6. Cold Blue Rain
7. Stay
8. Bad Things (feat. Izzy Bizu)
9. Cocoon
10. Losing You
11. Peripeteia
12. Alive
13. Piano Song
14. Heartless
15. Cold Blue Rain (Acoustic Version)
16. Alive (Acoustic Version)
17. Cocoon (Acoustic Version)
18. Ego (Acoustic Version)
19. Firebird (Acoustic Version)
20. Peripeteia (Acoustic Version)
Check Out The Band’s First Ever Interactive Documentary “Blossomentary” HERE
After worldwide success with their debut "Sadnecessary", Milky Chance is back with a new album. "Blossom" carefully expands the Milky Chance sound and presents a band at the peak of their creative power.
Let's start with the good ol’ chin-stroking question: how does the story go? It was high school, just before graduation. Sure, we were cool dudes, of course. But seriously, disregarding all the heroic stories, the Jacob Grimm School in Kassel was probably no different to any other. Over-achievers kept their noses firmly in the books, dreamers pined over the school beauty, and in the evenings you'd take your cheap drinks on a date to see the local student band. Everyone was preparing themselves for life in their own way.
Of course, there was a decisive difference at Jacob Grimm. While most student bands never even made it to the next city, Clemens Rehbein and Philipp Dausch became international pop stars. You read that correctly. The two school friends wrote and produced a global hit album, seemingly “on the side”, while they were at the Jacob Grimm School, a dedicated senior high school in Kassel, North Hessen, Germany. They still graduated.
Two high school graduates from a West German city managed, with what appears to be playful ease, precisely what generations of German pop artists have been desperately trying to achieve: international relevance, success in the USA, sold out tours, the whole shebang. So what happened?
To answer this question, we have to dig a little deeper. After middle school, previously-unacquainted Clemens Rehbein and Philipp Dausch switched to the aforementioned Jacob Grimm School and began an advanced course focusing on music. In the following months, Dausch and Rehbein played together in a band and bought a bus with friends, which they used to busk all around Europe. Most importantly, they met at Dausch's apartment in the after school hours to record some of the songs that Rehbein had been writing for a while.
In 2012, their last year of high school, they uploaded one of the songs to YouTube, where it gradually generating hundreds of thousands of views. Milky Chance, as Rehbein and Dausch were meanwhile known, started their own record label, pooled money from their circle of friends, got into debt, and released their debut album "Sadnecessary" on May 31, 2013. First, not much happened. It may always have stayed a charming, underground, self-realization campaign by a group of high school graduates from Kassel.
But it didn’t. Hidden at the end of the album was one song of the kind that many won't manage in the course of their entire career. "Stolen Dance" is a playful, folk-pop meditation carried by gently-plucked beats. It's about heartache and the transience of things. The song has a swinging, gentle groove and is dominated by the yearning expansiveness of Clemens Rehbein's voice – it's the Milky Chance sound. And this song, this first single, took on a life of its own alongside the album release. There's not enough space to list the almost unbelievable amount of records Milky Chance broke with "Stolen Dance". Among other things, the song has been viewed on YouTube over 300 million times, placed in the charts of nearly all pop countries, sold two million units in the US alone, and sold almost four million singles in total.
Keep in mind that all of this was completely self-organized. Without any kind of corporate backing, the DIY project of two high school graduates from Kassel became a global pop phenomenon. Rehbein and Dausch toured the USA for months on end. They played at the legendary Red Rocks Amphitheater, were guests on late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel, received an "Echo" award back home in Germany, toured through half the world, went gold with the album "Sadnecessary" and the singles "Down By The River" and "Flashed Junk Mind", and had stars like Jessica Alba and Miley Cyrus publicly proclaim themselves as fans.
In October 2016, the pair finally took a break. Two months in Kassel, family, friends, everyday life, and, of course, the question: what exactly happened? Right now, Rehbein and Dausch are still only in their early 20s, but they've tasted blood and never wanted to do anything except music anyway. Slowly, they needed to take the next step, wipe their mouths and continue. Not least because it would be wrong to reduce this band to "Stolen Dance".
This puts the classic at centre stage, an eternal cliché of pop music, which, unlike many others, is also true. You have a whole lifetime for the first album, but a year at most for the second. There was no old material to fall back on. There were a few ideas and pieces that came about during their three crazy superstar years, but the new and second Milky Chance album "Blossom" was essentially made from scratch.
Rehbein and Dausch's methodology stayed basically the same. Clemens wrote the songs, showed them to Philipp, he created a few beats, came up with sounds and samples, and then they continued working on it together. "When we made the first demos, our vision was to stay with our tried and tested style, but take a bit more of a handcrafted approach", says Dausch, which means more of their own samples, more "real instruments", more space. The Houdini trick "Sadnecessary" owed itself to liberalized production means thanks to the Internet, and increased technical possibilities. They needed nothing more than a MacBook, a guitar and an Internet connection.
It was different now. They met up with producer Tobias Kuhn in April 2016 after producing twelve demos at Dausch's house since February of the same year. Kuhn has written German indie history with his own projects and worked with big pop artists on their music. Since Kuhn was familiar with both sides, he was the ideal man for "Blossom".
"You have this cliché in your head that the producer will come and say 'This part doesn't work, we'll take it out, do it like this instead'", says Philipp Dausch. "It wasn't like that with Tobi. He's a very sensitive guy who also engaged with us as people, and really picked up on what was important to us and what wasn't". This was a first for Milky Chance, as they'd always done everything on their own. To now, at such an important point, hand over responsibility, even for content, was something that had to be learned.
However, the Kuhn/Milky Chance pairing proved to be a good one, especially when the direction became clear. "Essentially, the task was to gently transfer the basic vibe of the first album onto a wider chassis", says Rehbein. "As a matter of fact, we come from making music with instruments, there's a bit more of that in this album", he adds. Just like before, Milky Chance take the stage as a three-piece, which, aside from Rehbein and Dausch, includes guitarist Antonio Greger. And this component, the music’s feasibility in a live context, was consistently considered from the very beginning.
Thus, an album was created that gently expands the Milky Chance sound while staying true to the basic spirit of the music. In the town of Rothenburg, Milky Chance met with Tobias Kuhn at the Toolhouse Studio time and again throughout the whole year. In between, they played the odd concert at a festival, tested the songs in front of an audience, and carried the spirit of these performances into the studio. A more organic approach was developed than the first time around. Milky Chance relied on their gut feeling, letting things and ideas just happen. "There was no conceptual framework for 'Blossom', we approached the album song by song", says Rehbein. "We had faith that the whole thing would make sense in the end, because all of it is us and the songs were created in a particular phase".
It worked! "Blossom" is unmistakably Milky Chance, only an advanced version. "Ego" begins with an extremely smooth, gently bouncing 80s keyboard, but then quickly finds itself in a typical Dausch groove. Because that's what's special about this band – they had their own sound from the start. This comfortably-swinging relaxing element, paired with the streetwise, scratchy voice of Clemens Rehbein also permeates every note of the song "Blossom". It's music that doesn't see the sky as a limit, and is grounded at the same time.
The first single is carried by a unique guitar groove as only this band possesses. With "Cocoon", Milky Chance succeed at international pop, combining reggae, house, flamenco, pop, singer songwriter and folk. Sometimes they're reminiscent of Manu Chao, you can hear a little Jack Johnson, but the music is always principally one thing: Milky Chance. Born of a deep organic warmth and love. Because songs such as "Cold Blue Rain" always have a dreamy element, are minimalistic in the choice of their means, but are in effect spatially all-consuming.
This, of course, is due to the fact that Milky Chance rely on the power of the composition, such as in "Losing You", and also in the voice of Clemens Rehbein. The singer carries "Blossom" and gives the piece an ingenious moment. Then, Rehbein sings "Bad Things" over a house beat in a duet with the English singer Izzy Bizu, who brings another style to the album. Her voice permeates as if from a distant fairy tale land, filling our hearts with yearning and the belief that everything will be alright in the end.
Last but not least, "Blossom" is carried by a spirit of deceleration, the realization that sometimes, only the view to and from the outside helps. You could say it's escapism, but most of all, Milky Chance transport a gravity-defying pop-lightness that is not only rare in Germany, but unheard of. So the question of all questions is still: how the hell did such a thing happen in Kassel?
"Kassel is the place where we've learned to not get lost", says Rehbein. After the successes, extensive tours and countless human encounters, this is where they can relax and recharge their strength to continue, to focus on the essential, stay grounded. "Three months of touring the US feels like five years", says Dausch. "After that whole spectacle, Kassel is where we find our footing again with our family and friends."
They can enjoy the peace and quiet for a few more weeks, and then it's "crunch time", as they say, and they’re looking forward to it! Because that's what's special about Milky Chance: "The circumstances and conditions have changed, but we, as people, have not".
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