popnoname: 50 degrees

Jens-Uwe Beyer lives in Cologne -- he founded the band Cologne Tape, the label Magazine and you know him under his moniker Popnoname. Most recently, he remixed the Eurythmics and Brian Eno & Cluster for the Conny Plank tribute compilation on Grönland. He is a frequent guest on Kompakt's Pop Ambient series and just released probably the longest album in the world -- the almost 80-minute ambient piece Red Book on Magazine. His third album 50° is an elegant, accommodating, direct hi-fi pop album which fears neither death nor pathos. It was produced in the Oneartist studio together with Bertil Mark. The journey takes us from pop ("Happens at Night" and the first single "Change") through ambient soundscapes ("Timenation"), to early '90s shoegaze moments ("Meteor" and "Passing By"), but at its core always remains the techno ideal, without promising club functionality. For the release of 50° Beyer specially founded the new label PNN with Kompakt's Gesine Schönrock. Accompanying the album, PNN presents four music videos, an app for the iPad and the fashion piece "Popnoshirt," and you can find them at Popnoshop.com or Kompakt.fm. Bodo, who features on the cover of the album, used to live from the bottle recycling system in Germany but is now running a trust-based shop near the PNN offices. Jens-Uwe Beyer performs as both a solo act and with Beritl Mark on drums and the enigmatic Isis Lacé on vocals.