Isolde by Ströme

“Isolde” is the second single taken from the forthcoming Ströme album „Ströme 2” is a little earworm. Dynamic, wiry, warm analogue like everything of Ströme. The singer ist he movie actor Anton Weil aka Anton Zucker, who act in various movies: Fucking Berlin, Spielmacher, Seitenwechsel and ARD, ZDF, Arte series, for example: Barcelona Krimi, Lissabon Krimi, Soko Leipzig, Soko Potsdam, Letzte Spur Berlin, In Aller Freundschaft – Die Jungen Ärzte.

Ströme “Ströme Nr. 2”
Ströme’s longplay debut “Ströme Nr. 2” is a characterful, wonderfully warm and sensitive yet powerful body of work. It is loaded with the ultrarare and cult Moog IIIp modular synthesizer sound (read more about the unique Moog IIIp below, and check the photos inside the 2xLP), and features other analog synths almost equipoised live-, or session-like with the modular system A100 by Doepfer. The A100 is Ströme’s main live equipment.
An album that fulfills all your dance needs (“Trang & Flinky” / “Panta Rhei”), let you relax to ambient spacey tracks (“Wasser” / ”Niki”) as well as serving pop (“Das Modul”, “Isolde”) and a booster dose of 60ties/70ties injected krauty songs. For the latter, Ströme (Mario Schönhofer and Tobias Weber) have hit pure gold here, as they team up with Nick McCarthy of Franz Ferdinand for “Right Now”, “Das Modul” and the beautiful “Stadlberg”.
Ströme and Nick McCarthy
There are some funny stories about Ströme and how they met Nick McCarthy. You may get more crazy details if you interview Nick McCarthy and
Ströme. Nick mentioned he was looking for the old machines. From
Germany. Nick was born in Lancashire, England in 1974, but moved to Bad Aibling, Germany in 1977 because of the “sad and bad economic situation in England” says Nick.
Then he studied upright bass, piano and composition at the Richard Strauss Conservatoire in Munich, joined the Krautrock band Embryo during his studies, and he played bass for the artschool band Kamerakino. Then he moved to Glasgow in 2001and was a founding member of Franz Ferdinand, which had a worldwide hit with “Take Me Out” (written by Nick and Alex Kapranos), from their Mercury prize winning and Grammy nominated debut album, they toured several times around the globe and recorded four albums. He is also a member of Box Codax, Manuela, The Nix.
Nick accidentally met Mario and Tobias at his London studio: Sausage Studio.....with the machines ...nuff said (more stories in interviews).
Nowadays Nick is back in Munich working in a studio complex with Ströme. His London studio is still in use. Sebastian Kellig is his right hand man for productions like the 2018 album WAX by KT Tunstall.
Before Mario Schönhofer (professional bass player) and Tobias Weber (professional drummer/percussionist) founded Ströme in 2015 (so far they have released one EP „Ströme Nr.1“, released 2016 on Compost Records), they were members of the very popular brass band “LaBrassBanda”.
Ströme have played more than 170 live gigs since. The reason is evident: Ströme are one of the very unique and rare acts performing live with analogue modular synthesizer systems, as well as the Cirklon sequencer, Emulator 2 and Mini Moog.
Their shows are energetic, intense and powerful. Their Music is in the vein of raw analogue techno, electro, synth-pop, while the sound identity is reminiscent and has ingredients of the early krautrock and synthesizer music scene from the late 60s like Popul Vuh, Amon Düül, Tangerine Dream, Embryo, Guru Guru, Cluster, Eberhard Schoener, Kraftwerk and onwards to the more experimental analogue
techno live outfits of the Nineties (Sähkö, Panasonic, Air Liquide et cetera).
It was a pleasant surprise for the duo, spotting and meeting luminary electronic pioneers Karl Bartos, Florian Schneider, Anne Clark or Eberhard Schöner at Ströme’s live gigs.
Although with a challenging mixture of live experiences, dozens of live recordings, hundreds of hours of studio session work, traveling to the countryside to get inspiration and alternative inputs, while also incorporating the original analogue instruments, it turned out to be a huge challenge, merging live

analogue patterns and session sets, vocals and all those components into a homogeneous compact yet exciting debut album. So “Ströme No. 2”, their first long player, took it’s time, with an effort, and fortunately an accident (the Moog IIIp). So it was worth the wait. The result sounds amazing. It’s not a techno live album, it’s a listening pleasure and a milestone.
About the Moog IIIp
Not only in the analog freak circles worldwide, the Moog IIIp modular synthesizer counts as “the best” of all synthesizers ever. Only very few copies of this mad magic machine (äh Nick was looking for it, but Ströme had it) exist worldwide and it was Bob Moog's first commercial modular machine, after prototypes and several component developments of this module.
Worth mentioning, it isn’t a fake: on most of the Ströme tracks you hear the original and the exact SAME Moog IIIp which was in the studio with The Beatles when they recorded “Here Comes The Sun” or “Maxwell's Silver Hammer” among others, and the SAME instrument that Giorgo Moroder used since the early 70ties and of course on his Donna Summer hit production “I Feel Love” in 1977. Now you may wonder how exactly did Ströme get their hands on this machine? Well, the machine has been in Bavaria since the 70ties.
It’s a long incredible story.
To make it short: Ströme met Eberhard Schöner, or maybe the other way around, Eberhard Schöner was interested in the analogue sound of Ströme (A100) and he got in contact with them in 2018 and they met each other in Schöner’s country house in the Bavaria. One of those days Eberhard Schöner handed the keys to his house to Ströme and said: “hey guys, I’ll leave you alone, do it, play with the machines.”
You’ll get the story of the Moog IIIp and Eberhard Schöner here:
https://blog.deutsches-museum.de/2019/05/17/ein-stueck-musikgeschichte
Worthwhile facts to mention: Eberhard Schöner was the first person ever to experiment with the Moog IIIp, he founded the first laboratory for electronic music in 1968 at Bavaria Studios, and Schöner made the official German music contribution to the EXPO 1970 in Osaka.
Only last year, Eberhard Schöner donated the Moog IIIp to the Deutsches Museum, where it is the highlight of the music instrument division. At the day of handover Ströme played live at the Deutsche Museum. Inside the LP are pictures of that gig.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFy0gD1zqA8
Ströme Live
There will be lots of live gigs by Ströme in the near future

Ströme Videos:
Stadlberg
Das Modul
Trang & Flinky
Gig At Compost office
Various live gig videos on YouTube

Assorted club gigs references:
Festivals:
Fusion Festival, Utopia, Echolon Festival, Digital Analog, c/o Pop, Ikarus, Puls Festival, Sea You, House Of Vans (London), MEzizm Beach (Tel Aviv)

Clubgigs:
Blitz (Munich), Harry Klein (Munich), Sisyphos (Berlin), Distillery (Leipzig), Grelle Forelle (Vienna), Rote Sonne (Munich), Boui Boui (Düsseldorf), Ritter Butzke (Berlin), Flex (Vienna), Club Caramel (Valencia)

Links:
https://www.facebook.com/StroemeOfficial/ https://www.instagram.com/stroemeofficial/
https://stroeme.com/

Two musicians from the brass techno band “LaBrassBanda” have successfully joined forces to create a mix of driving beats, analog synth melodies and live trumpet. They bring these sounds to the festival stages and into the clubs. Clear, unpolished sounds and dynamic drums are made completely live by modular synthesizers and by hand. That makes Ströme a unique live act.