Krieg & Ferien

Description

An expressionist poem from 1911 at the top of a 2023 press release? Was this invented by ChatGPT? Not at all. Jakob van Hoddis's poetry greatly moved Daniel Meteo, YELKA's guitarist, when he was young, and it came back to him during the recording of "Krieg & Ferien", meaning "War & Ease", YELKA's third album this year. Thus, the poem became the title of the first, ten-minute track: an improvised funk jam, recorded in a single take, with an uncertain outcome. YELKA's new album may have a lot in common with Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace," to which the album's title clearly alludes, as it was created at a time when we are all — for well-known reasons — confronting Russian society as we haven't in a long time. But the Berlin trio — besides Meteo, Christian Obermaier on drums, and Yelka Wehmeier on bass and vocals — was more interested in other questions related to pop music: is it an experienced escape (i.e., ease?) or a subculture, meaning is the struggle against the mainstream declared here (i.e., war)? Or does one merely condition the other? Does subculture ultimately offer only relief from the mainstream? Or does it automatically become the mainstream upon success?