Saigon Soul Revival / Knarf Rellöm Arkestra

Saigon Soul Revival is a band from Ho Chi Minh City that brings back to life - and artfully expands upon - an entire pop cultural era with pre-1975 South Vietnamese music. The quintet was formed in 2016 and became so well-known in 2017 through the reality show »Ban Nhạc Việt« (The Band) that they subsequently played major festivals such as Vibe Nation and Quest Festival. In 2019, Frankfurt-based Jan Hagenkötter produced and released the debut album »Họa Âm Xưa« on his label Saigon Supersound, where two samplers of original music from the period had already been released: music that fused Vietnamese lyrics and sounds with Western rock, soul, bolero, tango and other genres that were banned after the war ended. Saigon Soul Revival manage the feat of, on the one hand, authentically reproducing this original sound and with Mai Lệ Huyền, one of the most popular singers of that time also makes a guest appearance on the album. On the other hand, the band designs a cosmopolitan contemporary sound, to which, for example, the Vietnamese rapper Blacka also contributes as a guest. The combination of Western and Vietnamese instruments (such as the moon lute Đàn Nguyệt) results in powerful original music with a tight groove and psychedelic textures, with which Saigon Soul Revival is now coming to Europe for the first time.

Also on the bill is the Knarf Rellöm Arkestra, the intergalactic brainchild of Hamburg's »still most original all-round genius« (Rolling Stone Magazine) Knarf Rellöm. DER SPIEGEL wrote about his latest album: »The veteran of the very old Hamburg funk school, to whom Deichkind owe a lot of pioneering work, stages himself with his new 'Arkestra' as a sexy left-wing futurist in the sense of Sun Ra. (...) King Tubby, Kraftwerk and McLuhan's media theory enter into a compelling but deeply relaxed dance community, which in turn offers slogan material for the next counter-demo: 'No discussion, percussion'. Soul punk!«