(Photos by Martyn Goodacre and Steve Gullick) Following the release of their first LP in 10 years on Mute, the Berlin-based collective Crime & the City Solution gets on the road UK/EU tour. The new “The Killer” album is out on CD, vinyl and as digital download or streaming.

The new Crime & the City Solution album began life as a PhD application that came to life when the band’s core members’ nomadic lifestyle put on pause by the pandemic. Simon Bonney and Bronwyn Adams found themselves stuck in their native Australia, under one of the world’s strictest lockdowns. “Naturally”, says Simon, “I sat and I pieced together a PhD application about decision making in Afghanistan in the late 80s. But as it turned out, it was actually more of a record than it was a PhD.”

The PhD and, by turn, the album found inspiration from Bonney’s work delivering aid programs across the Indo-Pacific region. Through that work, he visited places with high levels of violence and the album, in part, acted as a way in which to process the effect that turmoil has had on his psyche, of the “dead bodies in my dreams,” that he sings about in the title track. He explains, “There’s no mention of American decision making in Afghanistan on the album, but in terms of subject matter there’s a lot that’s pretty similar; a lot of the record is about loss of faith. There’s a veneer of normalcy and civilization that people hold onto until they just can’t hold on anymore, I’m interested in normalcy that exists within what we would consider to be extraordinary situations.”

While the idea came from Simon Bonney and Bronwyn Adams, the musical aspect was created by the combination of artists that became the second Berlin-lineup of Crime & the City Solution. Core members Simon Bonney and Bronwyn Adams were joined by Frederic Lyenn (piano, bass, synth), Donald Baldie (guitar), Georgio Valentino (synth, guitar), Chris Hughes (drums, percussion) and Joshua Murphy (piano, guitar), and for the first time they worked with a producer, Martin J. Fiedler, who also added synth and mellotron to the album.

Tour dates Crime & the City Solution

*All dates – supported by Joshua Murphy.

• 23/11/2023: Haacht, BE – Can’t Live In a Living-Room
• 24/11/2023: London, UK – The Moth Club
• 25/11/2023: Bristol, UK – The Cube Cinema
• 26/11/2023: Colchester, UK – Colchester Arts Centre
• 29/11/2023: Paris, FR – La Boule Noire
• 30/11/2023: Geneva, CH – L’Usine
• 1/12/2023: Karlsruhe, DE – P8
• 2/12/2023: Ebensee, AT – Kino Ebensee
• 3/12/2023: Zagreb, HR – Vintage Industrial
• 4/12/2023: Milano, IT – Arci Bellezza
• 5/12/2023: Munich, DE – Muffatwerk
• 6/12/2023: Prague, CZ – Fuchs2
• 7/12/2023: Budapest, HU – Instant
• 8/12/2023: Linz, AT – Stadtwerkstatt
• 9/12/2023: Poznan, PL – 2Progi
• 10/12/2023: Warsaw, PL – Niebo
• 12/12/2023: Dresden, DE – Chemiefabrik
• 13/12/2023: Hamburg, DE – Hafenklang
• 14/12/2023: Copenhagen, DK – BETA
• 15/12/2023: Oslo, NO – Salt
• 16/12/2023: Stockholm, SE – HUS7
• 17/12/2023: Gothenburg, SE – Musikens Hus
• 19/12/2023: Berlin, DE – Urban Spree

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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The Anglo-Dutch experimental rock act The Legendary Pink Dots will tour Europe in February 2020 to promote their current studio album “Angel In The Detail”, which was released in the late summer of 2019 via Metropolis Records. The tour also marks the band’s 40th anniversary since forming in 1980 and it concludes with a London show on 29th February.

And that’s not all says Edward Ka-Spel: “We’re cramming this anniversary with a lot of special, often handmade releases. Next up is a DVD-A edition of ’40 Angels – The Archive’, with just 89 being individually made that contain all 4.5 hours of the epic archive which appeared on our Bandcamp page last autumn.”

The full itinerary is as follows:

• 07.02.20 – GOTHENBURG (SE) Musikens Hus
• 08.02.20 – COPENHAGEN (DK) Alice
• 09.02.20 – MALMO (SE) Inkonst
• 11.02.20 – HAMBURG (DE) Markthalle Club
• 12.02.20 – BERLIN (DE) Quasimodo
• 13.02.20 – GDANSK (PL) Drizzly Grizzly
• 14.02.20 – POZNAN (PL) U Bazyla
• 15.02.20 – PRAGUE (CZ) Cafe V Lese
• 16.02.20 – VIENNA (A) Replugged
• 17.02.20 – BUDAPEST (H) Robot
• 18.02.20 – MUNCHEN (DE) Backstage
• 19.02.20 – LJUBLJANA (SLO) KUD Channel Zero
• 20.02.20 – BOLOGNA (IT) Freakout
• 21.02.20 – MILANO (IT) Ligera
• 22.02.20 – LUZERN (CH) Sedel
• 23.02.20 – FRANKFURT (DE) Nachtleben
• 24.02.20 – PARIS (F) Le Petit Bain
• 26.02.20 – KOLN (DE) Helios
• 27.02.20 – AMSTERDAM (NL) OCCII
• 28.02.20 – NAMUR (BE) Belvedere
• 29.02.20 – LONDON (UK) Moth Club

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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(By our Norwegian correspondent Jan Ronald Stange) Poznan, Poland was the host for the Dark Sounds Festival on June 25th. The event was  held at Eskulap Akademickie Centrum Kultury, a great concert venue (panorama picture here).

The evening started with DJ James (Grzegorz Długoszewski) spinning various 80’s synth pop/new romantic music, then the Polish electro industrial/wave duo Dark Side Eons started the concerts of the evening.

They were followed by the German/Spanish futurepop act Mondträume, and Damasius Venys was for the occasion joined on stage by back up member Daniele Jaeger due to the illness of band member Pikotto VondMond.

Third act this evening was Electro Spectre from Norway, and all members of the band – Alexander Bjørneboe, Isak Rypdal and Marlina Bjørneboe – agreed this was probably their best concert to date. Great audience and atmosphere, their performance was top notch, and Polish fans have always treated them well.

Finally Covenant, the headliner of the festival, entered the stage, delivering a set full of hits and energy, one of the highlight probably being when Daniel Myer captured the stage and walked among the audience during a highly entertaining version of ‘Lightbringer.’

The evening ended with DJ Alex Hunter doing a dark wave/future pop set, and DJ James sent the audicence home with more 80’s ear candy 🙂

Big thanx goes to the organizer Anna Butkiewicz (SynthNoir Booking & Promotion) and her helpers; Aleksander Czichos (aka. DJ Alex Hunter), Joachim Andrzejewski (aka. the language wiz kid!) and Krzysztof “Karis” Kaszkowiak (technician)  for making this a great weekend for all of us – Norwegians, Swedes, Germans, Polish and others!

Jan Ronald Stange

Sometimes – when I’m not cooking, biking, listening to music or attending concerts, I write stuff for Side-Line.com. Mostly about Norwegian bands, but it’s been some Swedish, English, American, Danish, German and others too… 😉

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