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Electronic Beats Recommends Apparat Band in review

Electronic Beats Recommends Apparat Band in review It was one hour in to the first of three highly anticipated Berlin shows from Apparat, when the young man passed out. The bass was heavy, the air a bit stuffy and the young man got a bit too excited. No worries, he soon recovered shortly after but it seemed as if this incident was a mirror image of the Apparat Band‘s intensity.

The opening night at Berlin-Kreuzberg’s Hebbel am Ufer theatre started early. Mexican producer Cubenx brought his debut album On Your Own Again to the stage and was joined by contributor and friend Alfredo Nogueira. Cubenx warmed up the crowd well, although his slow and intimate electronica and folk influenced tracks made people sit on the floor rather than making them shake. Still, tracks such as ‘Grass’ were even more powerful in this setting.

At around 9:15pm, Apparat and his Band entered the stage. There was tension in the air, but of the positive kind. Starting slowly out with older works from albums Walls and Arcadia, Ring then moved onto more recent material from his Mute Records released The Devil’s Walk record.

A stripped down version of ‘Song of Los’, then songs such as ‘Ash/Black Veil’ and ‘A Bang in the Void’ followed this intimate and emotional section complete with a live string section. Sascha’s voice, guitar play and effect machines were in total harmony with the drum section, the single bass drum pinches and the classical musicians. Can we call this epic, please? Goose bumps ahoy! Oh, and there was dancing a bit earlier: Apparat played ‘Rusty Nails’, part of his collaboration project with Modeselektor known as Moderat.

The first part of the show closed with ‘Escape’, but it didn’t take long until the band was back to the stage for an encore. After a handful of tracks, Sascha asked Soap&Skin to the stage, with whom he collaborated on the track ‘Goodbye’ – could there be a more fitting closing title? We guess not!

What followed was roaring applause, a very happy audience and two further nights with Apparat at Hebbel – on Tuesday Markus Popp aka Oval opened up, the last night saw support of T.Raumschmiere‘s band Shrubbn.

We at Electronic Beats would like to thank all of you for a great year in 2011, and add special wishes to everyone who joined us for the grande finale of Sascha Ring’s Electronic Beats recommended ‘The Devil’s Walk’ tour. See you lot in 2012 with even more great artists and live events.

Published December 21, 2011.