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.

P:lot – Mein Name ist

P:lot (Pilot) from Saarland is an indie rock band that was initially a studio-only project founded in 1997. Their first album titled Debut was released in 2004 on the Goldene Zeiten label, but they soon grew uncomfortable with the constraints set by the label and decided to work independently from there on with no outside management or PR help whatsoever. It took four years, but P:lot’s second album Mein Name ist was finally released last autumn, preceded by the single Zeit zu leben. It’s just awesome to see such a young band that hasn’t really had the time to properly establish itself in the music industry fare so well doing precisely what they want to be doing, and completely on their own terms!

P:lot’s BuViSoCo 2009 entry song is the title track from their current album, Mein Name ist. It’s an emotional and gently rocking indie rock piece, much in the vein of bands like Coldplay or Kent. To promote their song for the contest, the band’s wicked DIY spirit has produced a single (available on Amazon.de) and a beautiful music video, viewable here. Don’t forget to check out some more of their songs on P:lot’s MySpace, you can find the full album on Amazon.de as well.

Marteria – Zum König geboren

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern’s pride Marteria started his rapping career at the age of 18 after a successful stint in modeling business. He immediately signed a record deal in 2000 with the label Punchline, but the release of his debut album failed as the firm went bankrupt. After that, he created his mysterious high-pitched alter ego Marsimoto, under which name the first album Halloziehnation was released in 2006. Next followed the first actual Marteria-album Base Ventura, and last year saw the release of Marsimoto’s second and latest album, Zu zweit allein. I for one am thankful that Marteria decided to enter this year’s Bundesvision as the more serious rapper Marteria and not as the annoying, Alvin and the Chipmunks-resembling Marsimoto.

Marteria’s entry song Zum König geboren is Deutschrap to the core: plenty of tough guy attitude, albeit just slightly tongue in cheek. You can catch the stylishly executed video here, or listen to some snippets of the work Marteria has done with other rappers on his MySpace. Marsimoto’s MySpace has amply samples of the other side of the rapper’s work. You can find the Zum König geboren single, Marsimoto’s Zu zweit allein and Marteria’s Base Ventura all on Amazon.de.

Cassandra Steen - Darum leben wir

Baden-Württemberg’s representative Cassandra Steen made her a name as part of the pop, soul and R&B trio Glashaus, which scored a number of critically and commercially successful albums and singles. Alongside Glashaus, she has started a solo career and sung backgrounds for numerous big names in the R&B and rap scene. Her debut solo album was released as far back as in 2003, but this year, she’s gearing up for a second round with the brand new album Darum leben wir. For me, the best part about Steen’s music is definitely the fact that she sings entirely in German. It takes special guts to do your own thing in a widely popular genre that is absolutely dominated by American, English-singing artists.

The artist’s BuViSoCo song is the title track from her upcoming second solo record. Darum leben wir is a melancholy and well-produced R&B ballad – I’m sure if she happened to be from the USA and sang in English, Steen would probably be known all around the world by now. You can see her music video here and catch some more snippets from the Darum leben wir album on her MySpace. Amazon.de has the single up for sale and the full-length (released on February 20th) up for preorders.

Claudia Koreck - I wui dass du woasst

Claudia Koreck, singing in her native Bavarian dialect, is a young singer who started playing music when she was just twelve years old. Nine years pass, and suddenly in 2007 her song Fliang gains huge popularity when played in the Bavarian radio station Bayern 3, enabling her debut release Fliang to easily achieve #1 in the Bavarian overall sales charts. A second album, titled Barfuaß um die Welt, full of her trademark bluesy pop-folk will be released on the same day as the Bundesvision Song Contest is held, February 13th. Singing in a dialect of any kind is definitely a rarity, so it’ll be interesting to see how the rest of Germany is going to take Claudia!

One way Claudia Koreck’s entry song I wui dass du woasst stands out from the other BuViSoCo songs in that there’s neither an official music video nor has a single been published to promote it. However, you can see Claudia and her band perform the whole song live on Stefan Raab’s TV show where he introduces the artists. The artist’s MySpace has snippets of five tracks from both her upcoming full-length as well as from the first one. You can find the album on Amazon.de for preorder.

What I really like about Christmas music-wise is that a lot of bands suddenly get all generous and allow people to download stuff for free. So does Silbermond, who are giving away the title track off from their upcoming album Nichts passiert. Nichts passiert, which will be released sometime early next year, is the band’s third album, and expectations are high: the latest album Laut gedacht was a smash hit in 2006, grabbing the number one position of the official sales charts in Germany and Austria, as well as the third place in Switzerland. It seems Silbermond’s energetic pop-rock goes rather well down in their home country, as the album has sold over 800 000 copies, granting it quadruple platinum status. The band has definitely come far from their humble beginnings in the TEN SING music project of Germany’s YMCA, where the band members met each other in 1998.

You’ll be able to download the free song Nichts passiert starting tomorrow until 28th this month on Silbermond’s website in the audio section. Silbermond’s MySpace also has three full-length live tracks and their latest single song Das Ende vom Kreis for you to listen. Amazon.de has both of Silbermond’s albums for sale, the debut Verschwende deine Zeit for 16,95 € and Laut gedacht for 12,45 €.

Curse feat. Silbermond

In addition to preparing for the release of their own album next year, Silbermond recently collaborated with the German rapper Curse. The song Bis zum Schluss featuring Silbermond can be found on the critically lauded album Freiheit which was released three months ago on 26th September, or as a single. You can check out the video for Bis zum Schluss here, or listen to half the song on Curse’s MySpace, where you can also catch some other tracks if you’d like to get to know the rapper better. Bis zum Schluss is available at least on Amazon.de for for 3,95 € or 5,95 € for the premium edition.

Thanks to Jutta for reminding me about Silbermond!

Also, for my part, it’s happy holidays to every single one of you! Just a couple more left, we’ll make 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.