Melt! 2010 documentary video

Without many comments, it is finally here, the ultimate video looking-back to the most awesome Melt! festivals ever. This year, I actually had the time to shoot some videos and finally (erm, 1,5 months later..) edit together a 15 minute piece of our experiences as artist hosts at Melt festival. Me and a friend had the pleasure to work there and took some time to bring you music and impressions by Skate, Shout Out Louds, Two Door Cinema Club, Black Rose, Groove Armada, The XX, Modeselektor, Daniel Haaksman, Hurts, Edu K, DJ Shadow, Moderat, Get Well Soon, Broken Bells, Massive Attack and Who Made Who.

All condensed in some very intense 15 minutes, filmed with a flip camera.

If you are looking for the official all concerts of Melt professional high quality documentations, you can find it at 3min.de

Berlin Music Week

Berlin has a fashion week, a social media week, a week full of movies (Berlinale), but despite the vibrant scene, no established big music event. Now, for the first time, Berlin will host the Berlin music week which is bunch of events like conference, fair, festival, lots of concerts and parties.

Of course, in its parts, it is nothing new. Alltogethernow (#a2n) as a conference saw it’s first issue last year. Popkomm as a global trade fair for the music industry has a tradition of over 20 years and is slowly getting back some of the relevance it lost while the major music labels had to fight with revenue losses. And the Berlin festival started 2005.

From a branding aspect, it is good idea to put all this under one umbrella and attract people from all sorts of music business, whether it be major or indie labels, concerts, live events or distribution. It will be a week packed with talks and meetups and of course many concerts. I am personally looking forward to being present at a panel at a2n about the myriad of possibilities of self marketing for artists and will be attending the Berlin festival, of course.

Louis Theroux: Law and Disorder in Philadelphia

Louis Theroux ist einer der interessantesten Dokumentarfilmer und Journalisten. Er ist frech, witzig, stellt sich gern als naiver dar als er ist, er provoziert, er geht dahin, wo sich andere nicht hintrauen und wirft einen Blick auf Umgebungen und Menschen, der sehr unverstellt, offen und aufmerksam ist. Bekannt geworden ist er durch seine Reportagen zu sehr vorurteilsbehafteten und auf den ersten Blick kontroversen, wenn nicht sogar reisserischen Themen: Pornographie, Straßengewalt, Drogenkriminalität, Bodybuilding, Gambling. Dabei lässt er Menschen zu Wort kommen, die manchmal die Vorurteile brechen, manchmal bestätigen, aber zumindest einen tieferen Blick auf Lebensverhältnisse werfen, die wir alle gut zu kennen glauben, aber von denen wir (oft gottseidank) eigentlich gar keine Ahnung haben.

Exemplarisch dazu eine Reportage zu Straßengewalt in Philadelphia, die u.a. Polizisten, Straßendealer und Heroin-Abhängige zu Wort kommen lässt. Für einen Krimi-Serien-Fan wie mich (The Shield, The Wire, Sopranos) sind die allzu bekannten Bilder beklemmend, weiß man doch dass es sich dabei nicht um Fiktion handelt sondern um die Realität.

The best bands of 2010 (so far)

The Guardian and Soundcloud put together a list of bands they consider to be great in 2010. The bands had to be featured in the “New band of the day” column. Certainly, there can be disagreement in the selection but there are some really interesting artists featured. All very indie, poppy music, some digitally experimental. I like Washed Out, Elle Goulding and James Blake.

New Band Of The Day