Popsalon: Max Rieger (Die Nerven, All Diese Gewalt)

The farmer harnesses the wagons! One day after the calendrical beginning of spring, Balzer and Müller invite us again to the Popsalon - this time with a guest whom one rather does not associate with mild temperatures. The musical polymath Max Rieger has been delighting and alienating us for over ten years with his radically negativist group Die Nerven. Together with Kevin Kuhn and Julian Knoth he plays in it the most gruff and great, sore and tender noiserock of the country. The album FUN from 2014 is without question a major work of German-language pop music in the decade, and in 2022 Die Nerven gave us the most valid musical reflection of the present with a long-playing work again titled Die Nerven: "A childhood, a youth / A tower of ivory / Everyone keeps saying / It'll never be like this again," it says in the track Europa: "And I somehow thought / In Europe you never die."

But Max Rieger also runs various solo projects: Under the name Obstler, he records bizarre black metal records that he says he hates himself. As All Diese Gewalt he weaves darkly sparkling bouquets of noises, drones, birdsong and wonderful melodies that immediately begin to hook your ears - the new album by All Diese Gewalt will be released in the spring, so maybe we'll be allowed to listen in. And finally, he is one of the busiest German producers, among other things he has worked with our penultimate guest Drangsal and with Casper, the Friends of Gas and Ilgen-Nur. So there's a lot to talk about when we're not watching uplifting spring welcome music videos. Afterwards - thanks to climate change - the first strawberry punch of the year is served on the terrace.