Here we are with the second installation of the Bundesvision Song Contest 2009 series, presenting the next four bands that are competing for the win…

Chapeau Claque - Pandora (Kiss Miss Tragedy)

Chapeau Claque is the band representing Thüringen in the 2009 Bundesvision Song Contest and is a little-known pop band created by the singer of Zweiekkenkreis, Maria Antonia Schmidt, and is essentially a solo project with the only one “real” member of the band. Various musical elements were contributed by Northern Lite, from the 1st Decade indie record label that they share. To return the favor, she was a guest vocalist on Northern Lite’s single “Enemy”. Since Chapeau Claque’s founding in 2006, the band has released 2 albums: the 2007 debut Hand Aufs Herz, and the followup Fabelweiss released just a few months ago in October of 2008.

The band’s entry in the contest is the first track from Fabelweiss, “Pandora (Kiss Miss Tragedy)”. It will be released as a single this week on Friday, February 13th, just before the contest which is on the 16th. The single will have 2 versions of the song, plus an unreleased bonus track called “Fluss Amur”. The song itself is pretty generic soft pop-rock with some electronic elements sprinkled in. The vocals seem to be the highlight. There’s a pretty interesting music video for the song that you can watch on Youtube. The Chapeau Claque Myspace page also has additional songs to listen to.

Olli Schulz - Mach den Bibo!

The indie rock band Olli Schulz is representing the city-state of Hamburg in this year’s Bundesvision contest with their song “Mach den Bibo!” They started several years ago on the terrific indie label Grand Hotel van Cleef, but have since experienced some bigger success and moved up to Columbia. In total, they have released 3 albums and 7 singles and EPs, including “Mach den Bibo!” which will be appearing in stores this Friday the 13th. You can listen to the song in the video on the front page of Olli Schulz’s website, you just have to skip ahead past the intro/talking. There are other songs available on the band’s Myspace page. Naturally, you can pre-order the “Mach den Bibo!” single on Amazon.de.

Peter Fox - Schwarz zu Blau

Peter Fox is a musician from Berlin and is perhaps best known as one of the singers of the famous German reggae band Seeed. However, the song he currently has competing in the Bundesvision Song Contest is his own solo work and is in more of a hip-hop or rap style, a genre that has become increasingly popular in Germany in recent years. Due to his past success, Peter Fox is quite well known and should do pretty well in the contest.

His song “Schwarz zu Blau” is meant to be somewhat of a representation of Berlin’s nightlife. The music video for the song kind of goes along with this theme, but the most impressive thing about it is all of the animations that have been added in to look like moving graffiti on the walls and sidewalks and so forth. It’s definitely worth it to watch it, even if you’re not a big fan of rap. If you are, then you should definitely stop by his Myspace page and listen to some of his other songs, especially “Alles Neu” which possibly the coolest rap song ever. A “Schwarz zu Blau” 2-track single is available on Amazon.de

Flowin Immo et les Freaqz - Urlaub am Attersee

Flowin Immo et les Freaqz is described as a rap group, which may be somewhat true, but that description is simply too simplistic to capture their true sound. I would say they are more like electrofunk… like some kind of a combination of old school Afrika Bambaataa and modern day electroclash. It’s definitely an interesting entry for Bremen.

Unfortunately, their website is pretty much useless (and very strange), and they seem to be pretty unknown to most people, so we’ll have to leave it at that. But you can watch the music video for “Urlaub am Attersee” and find the single on Amazon.de here if you’re into it.

I realized that there’s one MAJOR type of music we for some reason haven’t talked about at all here on Germaniac.com - rap. I can’t really see how we’ve managed to overlook Germany’s hip hop scene for so long, since especially German rap has seen a significant upswing in popularity in Germany in the last few years. And who would be a better artist to start covering hip hop than one of the most popular, famous and controversial German rappers? Ladies and gentlemen, I present you: Bushido.

Anis Mohamed Youssef Ferchichi, alias Bushido, grew up with his mother in Berlin. His Tunisian father he never met until he had already broken through the German sales charts, and he lived a troubled childhood where his criminal tendencies led him into a lot of trouble and he eventually quit school early. In the late 90s he he came into contact with the hip hop scene through graffitti-painting circles, and finally in 2001 he released his first solo recording, King of Kingz. 2003 saw the release of his first official album, Vom Bordstein bis zur Skyline, on the label Aggro Berlin, which Bushido later left to form his own label erstguterjunge. His next album, Electro Ghetto (2004) was his first huge success in his home country, reaching the 6th position in the official album chart. His consecutive releases were each more successful than the last, and this year Bushido’s newest album Heavy Metal Payback, released this Octover, took positions #1 in Germany and #2 in both the Swiss and Austrian charts. The album actually sold gold before its release. Equally successful was his autobiography Bushido which was released just last September, as the book instantly gained bestseller-status in Germany.

Bushido has been provoking controversy from the very beginning of his career. He and his music and lyrics have been accused of extreme right-wing, racistic and sexist tones, and also of promoting and glorifying violence, especially the youth kind. The artist has, however, repeatedly distanced himself from these claims and in addition to himself having a Tunisian background, he has worked with a lot of artists from minorities. In the end, his very numerous fans are a highly diverse group of both immigrants and Germans from all walks of life, so perhaps one can be fairly confident that such extreme claims should be taken with a grain of salt for the most part and understand the volatile material in the artist’s works as tools of provocation, which is, after all, an integral part of rap music. I for one really do hope that all his hundreds of thousands of fans are right about him… They can’t be wrong, right?

Surprisingly, there’s quite a woeful amount of free sample material that you can check out if you’re interested in Bushido’s rap. He has a MySpace site, but there’s just one song. At least it’s full length. Your best bet would probably be to listen to the short samples on Amazon.de, which is also most likely the best place to shop for Bushido’s records. They have the latest album Heavy Metal Payback for 14,45 € (or 15,95 € for a limited double CD edition), and a brand new single Für immer jung (feat. Karel Gott) for 3,95 € (or 6,95 € for an enhanced version). There’s also a video available for the single track, viewable here.