2023-11-04 00:40:13
There’s nothing like the ability to practice healthy self-irony. Especially in our time of the braggart and the poser. The people of The Chap, this crazy London-Berlin experimental rock band, say things about themselves like: They are “the most broken geography teacher band ever – but they’re not geography teachers at all, they just look like one.” Splendid.
The Chap were founded in London in 2000 by Keith Duncan, Panos Ghikas, Claire Hope, Berit Immig and Johannes von Weizsäcker. (Yes, his great-uncle was the Federal President. And he himself writes brilliantly about music for the Berliner Zeitung, most recently about Laibach.) Some of them now live in Berlin. The band’s CV states that the members had previously “worked in music therapy centers, cocktail bars, IT departments of major banks, call centers and as composers of corporate jingles.” Now they make music together. And what a.
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The Chap are world famous in the indie bubble. Some of the most important Anglo-Saxon music magazines celebrate them: Pitchfork, The Quietus, NME and The Wire. But also Les Inrocks in France and the Musikexpress and the now unfortunately discontinued Spex (bless their music!) in this country. The Chap are scene favorites and artists’ artists with their adventurous mixture of avant-pop and Schrammel noise, which somehow brings to mind post-atonal piano music and BBC newsreaders at the same time: Bloc Party and Beck, for example, rely on their remix skills.
According to the band, The Chap songs are about “everything being bad.” Great! But of course you shouldn’t take this any more seriously than geography teachers. By the way, The Chap have two of their most loyal fans in the team for their Berghain canteen concert: loop machine maestro Guido Möbius and DJ Jens Balzer, formerly known as Pop editor of the Berliner Zeitung. Sounds like a wild after-show party at Berghain next door until Monday lunchtime, right? Especially since their most recent, seventh LP is a techno album: “Burger Sauce” from 2023. You see, The Chap, it’s not all bad.
Canteen at Berghain Sunday, November 5th, 8 p.m. Presale 13 euros
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