No. 2 Erobique

Vacation. A backpack trip through Australia, a campfire in the Schrebergarten. Cruising in the car with friends through the Lüneburger Heide or just a short holiday in the mind, during a rainy lunch break or with a glass of Sprizz on the balcony. And this all includes music, music, music! Grooves which roll like an intercity train into the horizon, Rhodes chords as soft as sand on the beach and synthesizers that sparkle like the reflections on the ocean. Music as colourful as a Hawaiian shirt and as warm as the morning sun. Welcome to Erobique’s second album “Erobique No. 2”. Here even the song titles are in a holiday mood: “Ahoj!” greets the young “Springinsfeld”. The “Mantas” glide elegantly around the “Acquamarina”. “Salut Les Copines!” we shout to the yacht next to us. “Come on the ‘Ravedave!’” they echo cheerfully. “Riding Low” is the motto while the “Arpeggiator” beautifully condenses the “Synaesthesia” of our dazed senses. The “Italotape” in the cassette deck plays the “Hitsong Von uns Beiden”. It’s all so beautiful “Verkackt”, it sounds like “Zukunftsmusik”! Carsten Meyer released his debut album “Erosound” in 1998 under the name “Erobique”. Exactly 25 years later, the now 50-year-old releases his second Erobique album on his own label A-sexy. Thirteen diverse tracks ranging from holiday disco to rhythm box rave, recorded and produced with many of his friends and companions. Twenty-five years, that's pretty much the time it took disco to evolve from the legendary loft parties of pioneer David Mancuso to the impressive mass spectacles of Daft Punk's performances, or from Meyer's birth to his first full-length record. So why only now a second album as “Erobique”? Meyer has been improvising performances for years in front of dancing audiences. Even his hits “Easy Mobeasy” and “Urlaub In Italien” are not pop songs in the proper sense, but were created from spontaneous inspirations, in the adrenaline rush, in the party flow, in the middle of the moment! Sung along and fallen into oblivion at the same instant. Recorded live and there you go! Don't look back! Every Erobique concert is an attempt to build the unforeseen, failures and accidents into a unique moment of being there. “Fehler Ist King” once said the witty Knarf Rellöm - and Carsten Meyer is the King of Errors! How are you supposed to conjure up such moments in the studio without a party, without the energy that spills back onto the stage on such a children's birthday for adults? Meyer remembered another Erobique hit and changed its title accordingly: He collaborated with an overdose of joy! Drummer Lucas Kochbeck (The KBCs, Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band), who now also supports Carsten in his live gigs, as well as neighbour and buddy Christoph M. Kaiser, (former bass player with The Jeremy Days, now film music and pop strategist) laid the groove foundation with shining tiles, like once at Trinity, Hamburg's legendary 80s disco. Sophia Kennedy came by to sing from the neighbouring studio and Lieven Brunckhorst dragged the whole brass set of Jan Delay's big band Disco No1 in front of the microphone. Meyer recorded harps, xylophones and violins in his music room at the Hamburg Fish Market or with Tobias Levin in his Electric-Avenue Studio with Fleet View. In Berlin Carsten finally met up with his hero Siriusmo to spin some ideas through the electronic shredder. Nicola Rost stopped by and delivered some unbelievably dense choirs and wonderful songs. Finally, all tracks were sent to Ludwigsburg in Swabia, where Freundeskreis-DJ and disco expert Martin Welzer alias DJ Friction added an incredibly warm and dancefloor-friendly overall sound to the whole madness. Now for the drawing board: The cover artwork is, like in all A-sexy publications, painted and designed by Meyer himself. After all, his original career was being a schoolbook illustrator. In the course of one summer a musical box of chocolates was created, which not only enriched the holiday playlist of its fans and listeners, but also made Meyer’s several quantum bytes deep archive of ideas and sketches a little thinner. Outside his disco services, everywhere and nowhere, Meyer has not remained idle in the last quarter of a century. In the years from 1998 to 2006 he developed ultra-modern electronic soul with DJ Koze and Cosmic DJ as International Pony. Together with Jacques Palminger and Chris Dietermann he supervised amateur songwriters making pop music in the project “Songs for Joy” at the Maxim-Gorki-Theater Berlin. In 2007 he created the secret hit “Wann Strahlst Du?” with the great lyrics by Barbara Stützel. Speaking of theatre: For theatre director Herbert Fritsch he arranged the hits of Gino Paoli and Hugo Wolff for overcooked evenings at the Schauspielhaus Zürich (2016) and the Residenztheater Munich (2015), for Stefan Pucher he put Hans Christian Andersen's fairytales through the home organ mill (2010). For his colleagues at Studio Braun, he brought the “Dorfpunks” to life at the Schauspielhaus Hamburg, and immediately afterwards he developed the authentic new wave sound for their mockumentary “Fraktus”, which was released in cinemas in 2012. So this is film and TV music. Here, too, Meyer has had a lot to do in recent years. The soundtrack for the popular TV series “Der Tatortreiniger” with Bjarne Mädel in the title role probably was the best one. By the way, the “Tausendsasa” (= ‚jack of all trades’, quote Peter Bursch) also released several albums on his own label A-sexy: Rumple Funk as “Babyman”, finest chanson-pop with Palminger and Yvon Janssen for “Yvon im Kreis der Liebe” and warm, modern Hammond-Jazz with the “Hamburg Spinners”. And now finally his anniversary album, the silver wedding with himself. 25 years of Carsten and Erobique, together forever and happy as never before! Here's to the next. . . no, stop it! We don't want to wait that long!