Patenbrigade Wolff (D)

(https://www.bosworthcreative.com/artist/MTc5NjU4LTllZDU2Yg)

PATENBRIGADE: WOLFF are a Berlin-based electronic band whose music employs construction-worker motifs and is stylistically diverse, incorporating aspects electro, ambient and all kinds of synthesizers. P:W was originally founded in 1998 by S. WOLFF and LANCE M. MURDOCK. Citing influences including Kraftwerk, Future Sound of London, Front 242, Depeche Mode and Tangerine Dream. Their very unique sound they prefer to set trends instead of following them – since 1998 – and their exciting live shows will be remembered forever…

The style of this theatrically-inclined musical collective (built around Sven Wolff and Lance Murdock) varies from epic instrumentals sounding like Jean-Michel Jarré pretending to be Kraftwerk, through beautiful female vocal-led melodic synth ballads, experimental electronica and foot-stomping quality industrial dance tunes. So attempting to pigeonhole them is a fatally flawed exercise. It also makes describing or recommending them to others something of a challenge. Then there’s their actual live delivery. Fuelled by a brilliantly eccentric worldview, you can usually expect these guys and gals (whose line up from event to event depends largely on the logistics of location and availability of contributors) to build and perform in a make-shift construction site, complete with a panoply of high-visibility safety clothing, goggles, traffic cones, hazard tape, construction equipment, flashing warning lights and so forth setting the scene. […] Their manifesto is to produce ambient electronic music for construction crane workers! […] It’s their tongue-in-cheek, ironic world view even if this is almost alarmingly poppy at times. […]

Our boys in yellow hardhats retain the title track for themselves turning in a sublime democratic electronic ode to plumbers everywhere with its title vocodered into a chorus that's as thrillingly old school as it is convincing. Play it blind (to someone who doesn't know the title!) and you could easily get away with passing it off as an outtake from Kraftwerk's “Electric Café/Technopop”. Brief glimpses of the unadulterated beauty of the other P:W can be found on “Arbeit an der Oberleitung’s” calming warmth of space travel, whilst single “Voyage” subtly blends the best of Angelo Badalamenti's Twin Peaks theme with the mellow album tracks or B-sides so favoured by Depeche Mode. It’s great fun to listen to. […]

Their shows are theatrical affairs with several accomplices and an extended live band family contributing either to the music or to the presentation. The band's obsession with construction site workers is represented on stage by groups of men sporting P:W's trademark orange overalls and yellow safety hats who, guide proceedings, establish safe areas by using caution tape, send sparks flying from their grinding tools, take official photographs of the performance and occasionally fall foul of the authorities. So, as a piece of tongue-in-cheek live theatre, this delivered in spades (literally!). Yet that was nothing compared to the music. This was as perfect a live rendition of their songs resulting in a heady mixture of relief and excitement. Taking in ”Popmusik für Rohrleger” (the subtitle from their latest album “Baustoff”) and including fan favourites like “Ostberliner Bauarbeiter”, and “Demokratischer Sektor” this was quality non-stop, electronic soundtracks. Absolutely brilliant. […]