datashock: krauter der provinz

"... Datashock 2018: Eighty fingers playing, but what are they all up to? Are Datashock in command of their instruments or is it the other way around? What we do know -- this is freely improvised music, complete with rattles, rumbles and whistles. Music as a social happening, both in terms of process and outcome, where individual and collective development can thrive -- an ecstatic experience! . . . Imagine gathering eight people under one roof and ushering them into a recording studio -- everybody's busy nowadays (sometimes in precarious situations, but always doing one thing or another, incessantly), this being the age of late capitalism and all that. Anyway, diaries checked and off we go. Next stop: Oetinger Villa, Darmstadt. Kolter has already swept the place clean, DJ Ulf Eyes has brought beer from the waterfront, MC Cobra is dressed in the latest threads from Berlin, McWerner and Cha Cha have everything they didn't forget to bring from Cologne and up the Rhine and -- natch -- El Haze and Biber Bergi line up alongside LL Cool P from Saarbrücken. Pizza delivery number dialed, bottles opened, lights, camera, action. Machines bleep, a violin cries out, a clarinet howls, guitar and bass weave their way around the drums. The spell lasts for several days, then the magic goes back in the box, the recording is done. Everyone heads back to where capitalist realism awaits in fifty shades of gloom. Alas, it was over so quickly! . . . Groups like Datashock are few and far between, more's the pity -- raise your glasses to friendship! -- groups who, in spite of everything, meet up regularly to record free improvisations and then hit the road to share their experiences with an audience. It's a trust thing. So: bring on the herbs! Not provincial in the slightest -- but they get everywhere, into every last nook and cranny. They may not have any songs to speak of, but they do have their instruments." --Salvador am Ei Datashock is an artist collective with changing personnel that create psychedelic (krautrock) improvisations. They were founded in Saarlouis in 2003. "Like a free-folk-informed update on Amon Düül" --The Wire. "A splendidly righteous motherfucker" --Julian Cope on Pyramiden in Gießen (2011).