Plattenbau

Hypnotic beats, dark minimal techno – but make it human, make it sweaty. That would be a fair way to summarise the Plattenbau experience. Active for over ten years, the Berlin project has really picked up speed since the end of the pandemic, going from strength to strength. Last year, Plattenbau played to a full house at the legendary Bowery Ballroom in New York and before that, remixed A Place To Bury Strangers’ track »I Might Have«. Their own repetitive post-punk and new wave songs have something breathless about them – and despite all the coolness in the group’s aesthetic, their sound is quite visceral and always seemingly overheated. In the closing track of their third album »Net Prophet«, released in 2023, the lyrics suddenly switch from English to German. »Stadtgrenze« is sung by bassist Sally Brown, who has already appeared at Pop-Kultur with Anika, and the song plays with telegram-style agitation prose. The bridge between disquiet and shimmering tension has never sounded better than with Plattenbau.