GROUP HUG & FRIENDS - RELEASE SHOW
DI 10.10, ACUD Club
Doors: 19.30H
Show starts: 20H
Tickets: https://t.rausgegangen.de/tickets/group-hug-release-show
Line Up:
GROUP HUG with special guests
LISA HARRES
ANDY AQUARIUS
HEART—CHOR
WALLS & BIRDS performing songs for two guitars
To celebrate the release of their debut single ECHO PARK, Berlin-based chamber-folk ensemble GROUP HUG will be playing their first full band set, featuring guest performances and small sets of friends that were involved in the making of the record.
GROUP HUG
Nicolas Fehr is the classic case of a musical phantom, a nebulous revenant, secret accomplice, shining stuntman. He always appears on some stage, or is heard on some album. Always appealing, exciting, virtuosic. Fehr is always in high-class company, always for pricked ears, but he never really became tangible until now. Think to oneself: Who is that anyway? Fehr grew up in Connecticut (USA) and moved across the pond to Germany at the age of ten He is reminiscent of Lou Reed's blond phase in the mid-1970s - only as an (impressive) sympathizer, not as an (impressive) psychopath, but just as eager to experiment.
What would it sound like if he made a record? He certainly can do everything. Art studies in Karlsruhe and Bremen, exhibitions, performances, and yes - he has already made records, and always in the shady canyons of Berlin’s music scene. He has played with Jungstötter, Lea Porcelain, made music with Ilgen-Nur and Finn Ronsdorf, released under his real name, and pulled up an innovative discography with his band ooi, which makes music in Munich (and could have come from a hotbox in California).
And now: GROUP HUG. The EP title POURING LIGHT FROM A JAR fits. It flows in full stream, the glistening light of beauty. The songs were conceived when Fehr was stranded in L.A. during the first harrowing months of the pandemic in the 2020s, with Ilgen-Nur, who was also stuck in the States. The two struck up a lively musical exchange and friendship. Then, when he caught the last plane back before the world shut down, he began songwriting, back in old gray Germany, dreaming himself back into an imagined, fantasy-expanded Los Angeles, an imaginary vanishing point that became the foil of his narratives and the impetus of his sound.
If Nicolas Fehr's music has been rather dark so far, here we find a sound full of Californian sun, recorded by a band that sounds like a group hug. Music as something communal. With POURING LIGHT FROM A JAR by GROUP HUG, Nicolas Fehr shows himself to be an impressive songwriter and person with a big heart, a wide soul and a sense of humor. Music that we need more than ever, because it knows that life is beautiful.
The GROUP HUG live band on this evening will consist of Nicolas Fehr, Tillie Bedeau, Laura
Schenk, Leo Hilsheimer, and Federico Corrazini, with guest performances by FINN RONSDORF and RALPH HEIDEL.