ISolation Berlin are living proof that the abyss can be beautiful enough. It’s all a matter of perspective. “Now we are playing our summer hit, known on radio and television”, jokes frontman Tobias Bamborschke at the quintet concert in Offenbach’s Hafen 2, and then he sings “Alles Grau”: that wonderfully rock song in which the lyrical self change sings its existence from gray to gray “Finally I have no more dreams, finally I have no more friends, finally I have no more emotions, I am no longer afraid of dying”, he says, and he loves to go under this umbrella of bittersweet melancholy, Isolation Berlin opens.
The melancholy sound of the band fits perfectly into our time, however peculiar it may be in our hedonistic society. Not only in view of the abysses that open up at every corner, but because Isolation Berlin is the musical counterpart of that virulent nostalgic clamor that also serves series like “Stranger Things”. With guitar, keyboard, drums and bass, the quintet sounds like a timeless mix of New German Wave and Rio Reiser poetry. Bamborschke’s street dog lyrics and his singing style suggest that as a child he must have fallen into a large pot of clay shards.
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