Never Work: Dinner, Better Person

NEVER WORK Vorteilswelt presents a sentimental yet experimental double feature with pop music’s finest ego-crooners Dinner and Better Person. With a new album called „Psychic Lovers“ (Captured Tracks) Anders Rhedin aka. Dinner returns to Berlin for this intimate performance at Acud Macht Neu. He is joined by Berlin-based new emotionalist Adam Byczkowski aka. Better Person.
 
LINE-UP
 
DINNER [Captured Tracks]
BETTER PERSON [Mansions & Millions]
 
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ABOUT
 
DINNER is Danish producer and singer Anders Rhedin. Dinner leads a nomadic existence, dividing his time between Los Angeles, Copenhagen and Berlin. So far, Dinner has 3 EPs and a guided hypnosis tape under his belt. This April sees the release of his debut album Psychic Lovers. “Dinner’s music is about parties. And women. Late nights and early mornings in strange cities. But mainly it’s about magic and the communion with spirits,” Dinner says. “It’s like sexual Christian rock, really. But with out all the Christianity.” Recorded in Copenhagen and LA, Dinner finished a version of Psychic Lovers after 4 months of intense work, but decided to scrap everything and start over. “One morning in LA, as I was meditating in the garden, I saw this mental image of saturated, distorted light. Inside this texture was this emotional longing. And I instantly knew that I had to start over. I had to put this mental image into sound. That this new music would be different from my previous music, somehow.” The reworking of the album took an additional 5 months. Whether the finished album lives up to Dinner’s vision only Dinner knows. Musically, the album exists in its own space between the 80’s, 90’s and the present. The songs are pop songs held together by somewhat idiosyncratic arrangements. Opener “Cool As Ice” sounds like the soundtrack to David Lynch directing Miami Vice with overdriven synthetic strings and an equally eerie and funky slap bass that slowly grow into a pop structure. “Turn Me On” invokes the feeling of Sade recorded on VHS fronted by Klaus Nomi’s baryton-possessed ghost, or a warped jingle from The Home Shopping Network. The song “Lie” has distinct Nico-esque undertones and John Cale-ish overtones wrapped in 80’s melancholy, while “Wake Up” and “The World” explore inverted 90’s Euro-pop. In the words of mix-engineer Filip Nicolic (Poolside), “The whole album sounds like Chimo Bayo produced by Marquis de Sade.” An even more concise definition of Dinner comes from label-mate Mac Demarco: “Great face, great body, great tunes.” // Youtube1 - Youtube2
 

 
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With pomaded hair and a trench coat draped over his narrow shoulders, Adam Byczkowski aka BETTER PERSON is a promising candidate for senior class president at the school of new emotionalism. The Poland-born Berliner calls on 80s synthesizers and distorted drum machines to drench his youthful romanticism in style and revel in fragile emotional territory. The neo-dandy’s springtime melancholia is so impeccable, his vulnerabilities so blissfully enraptured, that we might assume irony plays at least a minor role in the whole affair. But who are we to say?—perhaps that’s exactly how it feels to find yourself in a spartan room on Pannierstraße at sunrise after a long night of transitory candle-lit bars and acquaintances. The Sean Nicholas Savage protegé delivered a bona fide internet hit with “Wake Up Tired”, and his first collection of songs, “It’s Only You”, appeared recently on the Berlin label Mansions & Millions. Byczkowski’s pieces of musical equipment are dreamcatchers in his bedroom, also soaking in all of waking life’s big feelings. That trademark Neukölln DIY stands firmly behind the singer’s seemingly untouchable facade, and contradictions like these are the most fascinating thing about the project: so young/so sensitive. So handsome/so lonely. This homemade glamour is as modest as it is larger-than-life, blurring the internet-controlled lines between appearing and really being. Which is the better person? All that I have is a sentiment. // Youtube
 

 
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DINNER // BETTER PERSON
presented by neverwork vorteilswelt
Thursday, 15.09.2016, ACUD club
Doors: 20H
Admission: 10€ - RSVP
FB Event