Date
Friday 18 November 2022 — Saturday 19 November 2022
Location
Kulturbrauerei
Schönhauser Allee 36,
Berlin,
10435,
Germany
Link
Description
Synästhesie began in 2015 but its heart and soul began much earlier. Motivated by the key success factor of his 8MM Bar, the music, Alex ‘Olli’ Remzi devoted a portion of all future profits toward maintaining a live music tradition in his adopted home of Berlin.
In 2006, Remzi organized the first 8MM Musik label night at the Bassy Cowboy Club next door to 8MM Bar. A crowd of over 300 gathered to watch the Icelandic Cramps and the Jesus and Mary Chain-inspired band Singapore Sling, as they shared the stage with Powers, a new band by former Stereolab drummer and 8MM stalwart Joe Dilworth.
For the next 10 years, Remzi hosted a series of non-mainstream concerts that quickly came to be known as the most reliably raucous and enlightening late-night performances in Berlin.
To keep overhead costs low, concerts took place on Wednesday nights and notoriously ran long, spilling back to 8MM Bar until the time when the rest of Berlin was enjoying their breakfast. The shows were driven by the ambition that each should be better than the one before.
For all intents and purposes that goal was met, culminating in a three-week stretch of performances in 2015 which Anton Newcombe would coin as Synästhesie — a name that stuck, featuring bands like The Warlocks, Crocodiles, and The Lumerians.
In 2016, Remzi met Michael Rother (NEU!) at Alexanderplatz and invited him to play at the hauntingly gorgeous bombed-out former brewery known as UFO Studios, the location of Synästhesie II. With not much of a plan (or walkie-talkies for that matter) Remzi and a committed group of music-loving friends successfully pulled off the festival, making it look easy but behind the scenes holding it all together by the threads.
In 2017, Synästhesie Festival moved to the acclaimed Volksbühne theater.
After 15 years of being considered an outsider venue, 8MM’s important contribution to the Berlin music scene was finally recognized.
In 2017, Arne Buss joined Synästhesie Festival as head of production to pair quality artistic content with a world-class production team.
In 2018, the festival relocated to its current home in the Kulturbrauerei, where Synästhesie cajoled Spiritualized into their first Berlin performance in 15 years.
Synästhesie continued to maintain its tradition of always building upon what came before and making it better.
In 2019, the festival achieved the epitome of its vision by bringing together Michael Rother (NEU!), Stereolab and Deerhunter.
The stage was shared by three generations of music inspired by Krautrock, a massively overlooked-at-home music phenomenon in Germany during the late 60’s and early 70’s.
During the pandemic’s dark winter of 2020, the Synästhesie crew managed to string together five nights of live music, offering a beacon of hope for many and the opportunity of paid work for stage crews and bands whose industry was shattered overnight.
In Summer of 2021, Synästhesie announced its November return with yet another impeccably curated lineup featuring Krautrock legends Faust, Beak>, The KVB, Anika, Automatic, among others.
In 2022, Synästhesie Festival was established as a not-for-profit gGmbH, to support and encourage live music and this unique aspect of German musical heritage.
Line-up (23)
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