Down

Fritz Kalkbrenner's fifth album marks a new chapter. It is the first of his albums not to feature his vocals. Freeing himself from the song approach with which he first made a name for himself, he is now focusing on the pure sound of the house music that he discovered as a young man in the Berlin club scene. With hit singles such as "Get A Life" or "Back Home", Fritz Kalkbrenner has played a part in forming our modern understanding of electronic music today. After Sky And Sand alongside his brother Paul (BPCWL 002EP, 2010) as well as four successful albums, two of which reached the Top 10 of the German album charts, Fritz Kalkbrenner is now heading in a different musical direction. In the spring of 2017, Fritz dusted off his old drum machines and his Jupiter 8 and immersed himself in the sounds that first brought him to electronic music twenty years ago and which were to form the basis for his present album Drown. At the beginning of his career it was about establishing himself through a new approach for Fritz. Now it is about celebrating those sounds and their liberating effect on our consciousness. The focus is electronic music as Fritz Kalkbrenner first got to know it in the German capital's now legendary techno and house clubs as an impressionable young man. The cut, that leaving out the now so familiar baritone voice represents, opens the door to a whole world of electronic music, which is suitable for home listening as well as for the club. There are no confining conventions on these 12 tracks and at times one could also say no restraint. Fritz Kalkbrenner indulges in his fascination for dub techno, in clear and dominant house arrangements and also in anthemic melodies. Fritz underlines this new beginning, which is at the same time a reflection on his own beginnings and his own origins, by choosing not to appear on the album's artwork himself this time. Cover art is the work of Fritz's grandfather, the famous East German painter Fritz Eisel - it's title is "Winterabend (winter evening) in M." and it was created in 1990, when Fritz was nine years old.