The new supergroup DIE BENJAMINS releases first single from upcoming EP. The video for “Aus Liebe” comes up with a reference to Austria and features the legendary former PROJEKT X member Gerald Votava.
The new super group THE BENJAMINS is an intergenerational project with amazing melodies. Now DANGSAL, Charlotte Brandi, Julian Knoth (DIE NERVEN) and Thomas Götz (BEATSTEAKS) recorded a first EP together with the legendary HANS-A-PLAST singer Annette Benjamin, it will be released on June 2nd, 2023. The first single from it, “Aus Liebe”, will already be released today.
One day Annette Benjamin’s phone rang. Benjamin had been a singer in the legendary punk band HANS-A-PLAST from 1979 to 1984 and the caller now reminded her of this past: Max Gruber, better known by his stage name DRANGSAL, was on the line and he became enthusiastic.
“Max is to blame for everything,” says Annette Benjamin three years later, laughing. »One of my daughters knew him, so shortly after the phone call we went to a DRANGSAL concert in Munich, I really liked that.«
For decades, Annette Benjamin had played almost exclusively classical music, but now, after the DRANGSAL concert in Munich, she went to Berlin and met up with Gruber. There were talks, a session, and shortly afterwards the phone rang again: “I’ve put together a supergroup for you here,” DANGSAL said this time.
The term supergroup has been overused a bit over the years, but this really is one: The first thing DANGSAL asked was Julian Knoth from the group DIE NERVEN. “I knew that Julian was a HANS-A-PLAST fan,” says Gruber. Knoth, in turn, meets BEATSTEAKS drummer Thomas Götz at a concert shortly afterwards. »On my first punk cassette were HANS-A-PLAST and SLIME«, he says, »that changed my life at the time.« So Götz was there. Finally came the songwriter, pianist and singer Charlotte Brandi, who Gruber had met at a Tristan Brusch concert.
THE BENJAMINS – For Love (Music Video)
The Benjamins were together in the rehearsal room for the first time in January 2020. At that time they wrote their first single »Aus Liebe«, which is released today. More sessions followed in several blocks over the next two years. In January 2022, the band recorded the five songs of the Benjamins EP in three days in Thomas Götz’ studio. Max Rieger from DieNERS produced, the »mastermind of German indie rock« (»Der Spiegel«) worked with Casper and Stella Sommer, among others. As I said: super group.
“Love surrounds your soul, love controls your ways, love knows that you miss me because I never, never, never give up” – on the song “Aus Liebe” we hear one of the most important and stirring voices of German punk in a duet Charlotte Brandi and suddenly yesterday is today and everything is happening at the same time.
Annette Benjamin’s singing has an outshining, completely ageless power. A haunting voice that effortlessly spirals into the highest register, but does not rely on show values, but always serves the song.
Last but not least, »Aus Liebe« thrives on the matter-of-factness with which Annette Benjamin lives feminism and the precise powers of observation of the singer. A cross-generational perspective on power relations and eternal gender issues, whose musical foundation is the spirit and anarchic gesture of punk and post-punk from the late 1970s and early 1980s, but which clearly tells of the here and now.
On June 2nd, Die Benjamins will release their self-titled debut EP.
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