UNHAPPYBIRTHDAY - Forced Exposure

$16.50 IN STOCK

Unhappybirthday from Hamburg have been releasing dreamy avant-pop records and touring Europe consistently for over ten years now. The group was founded in the port city of Wismar in northern Germany in 2012 by singer and keyboardist Daniel Jahn and guitarist Tobias Rutkowski and producer Jonas Meyer joins the band for this, their fifth album. Stella Loops circles around the vast cosmos offering refuge from the feeling of confinement that has enveloped us all over the last few years and to help achieve this Unhappybirthday have mixed their trademark elements of electronica, house, and ambient music and for this release invited a guest list that includes Andreas Dorau, Martha Rose, and Jimi Tenor to contribute.

"Hamburg's masters of emotional pop Unhappybirthday return via Tapete this fall with their fifth LP, Stella Loops, a fantastic voyage through outer and inner space in a craft comprised of mid-90s electronica, pastoral house and sun-blushed downbeat. On their previous LP, the moonlit Mondchateau (TR 469CD/LP, 2020), Unhappybirthday explored the suave sophisti-pop of the late '80s, serving their trademark beauty and sadness with a poolside spritz. For Stella Loops, the Hamburg outfit swap the Mediterranean for the Sea of Tranquility, slipping their terrestrial moorings in the name of auditory escapism. Written in part as a response to the enforced inertia of the pandemic and ever-present anxiety of life in the now, Stella Loops finds the group staring skywards, seeking solace in the possibilities of the infinite. Using the sci-fi literature of the GDR as a lyrical launchpad, Unhappybirthday stumble, tumble, float and fall through the galaxy, finding freedom in each mantra like vocal. With space as their place, the group take inspiration from the dreamy electronica of their teenage daze, filtering their yearning melodies and intricate arrangements through core memories of Ultramarine, Gus Gus, and The Beloved. Processed beats and blinking sequences underpin nonchalant basslines and graceful guitar licks while nebulous pads provide a woozy weightlessness befitting their cosmic concerns. Recorded once again in Hamburg and Berlin, Stella Loops sees Daniel Jahn and Tobias Rutkowski working closer than ever with regular collaborator Jonas Meyer, who joined the group in addition to his usual production duties. Hamburg's Andreas Dorau and Zwanie Jonson return to lend their vocal talents alongside Berlin based Martha Rose, while Finnish legend and Bureau B sibling Jimi Tenor graces album closer 'Jimmy' with an enchanting flute solo..." --Patrick Ryder

$26.00 IN STOCK

LP version. Unhappybirthday from Hamburg have been releasing dreamy avant-pop records and touring Europe consistently for over ten years now. The group was founded in the port city of Wismar in northern Germany in 2012 by singer and keyboardist Daniel Jahn and guitarist Tobias Rutkowski and producer Jonas Meyer joins the band for this, their fifth album. Stella Loops circles around the vast cosmos offering refuge from the feeling of confinement that has enveloped us all over the last few years and to help achieve this Unhappybirthday have mixed their trademark elements of electronica, house, and ambient music and for this release invited a guest list that includes Andreas Dorau, Martha Rose, and Jimi Tenor to contribute.

"Hamburg's masters of emotional pop Unhappybirthday return via Tapete this fall with their fifth LP, Stella Loops, a fantastic voyage through outer and inner space in a craft comprised of mid-90s electronica, pastoral house and sun-blushed downbeat. On their previous LP, the moonlit Mondchateau (TR 469CD/LP, 2020), Unhappybirthday explored the suave sophisti-pop of the late '80s, serving their trademark beauty and sadness with a poolside spritz. For Stella Loops, the Hamburg outfit swap the Mediterranean for the Sea of Tranquility, slipping their terrestrial moorings in the name of auditory escapism. Written in part as a response to the enforced inertia of the pandemic and ever-present anxiety of life in the now, Stella Loops finds the group staring skywards, seeking solace in the possibilities of the infinite. Using the sci-fi literature of the GDR as a lyrical launchpad, Unhappybirthday stumble, tumble, float and fall through the galaxy, finding freedom in each mantra like vocal. With space as their place, the group take inspiration from the dreamy electronica of their teenage daze, filtering their yearning melodies and intricate arrangements through core memories of Ultramarine, Gus Gus, and The Beloved. Processed beats and blinking sequences underpin nonchalant basslines and graceful guitar licks while nebulous pads provide a woozy weightlessness befitting their cosmic concerns. Recorded once again in Hamburg and Berlin, Stella Loops sees Daniel Jahn and Tobias Rutkowski working closer than ever with regular collaborator Jonas Meyer, who joined the group in addition to his usual production duties. Hamburg's Andreas Dorau and Zwanie Jonson return to lend their vocal talents alongside Berlin based Martha Rose, while Finnish legend and Bureau B sibling Jimi Tenor graces album closer 'Jimmy' with an enchanting flute solo..." --Patrick Ryder

$17.00 IN STOCK

Arriving at their fourth album with only eight candles on the cake, unhappybirthday have always tempered youthful energy with an impressive maturity, but this is the moment when they truly come of age. Armed with deeper grooves, tighter arrangements, and unconventional hooks, the German trio have found the perfect balance between song and sound on their most irresistible work to date. The briefest trip through their back catalog unearths a wealth of artifacts from an unremembered '80s, be it the cassette tape fuzz which saturated early releases or the genuine love of the decade's underground outcasts. Recall a distant teenage memory of hours lost in an older, cooler friend's record collection; a blur of bedsit anarchists, jangling romantics and monochrome poets alive in polyphony. The result is a mirage of post-punk and Postcard, Penthouse, and Pavement, inspired by the past but impossible to pigeonhole. Ever referential but never reverential, unhappybirthday have that rare ability to distill their influences into an innovative expression far more potent than the sum of its parts. For mondchateau, their second LP on the mighty Tapete Records, unhappybirthday swap Cocteau cool for cocktails by the pool, fusing their sophisticated pop with the louche grooves and ambient beauty of Deutsche Balearic. Taking a stroll through Miko's garden, the trio find Sade under the Kalimba Tree, enjoy an I.C. spritz and savor the tristeza of the late afternoon sun. Punctuated by rhythm box exotica and Diana Kim's limber bass, the nine songs lilt and sway from T.V. Scene to Same Old Scene, the beguiling combination of optimism and melancholy yielding a yearning beauty. Equal parts brooding and ringing, Tobias Rutkowski's guitar is the embodiment of this tension, while the digital keys, glassy mallets, and moonlit chimes of Daniel Jahn's SQ1 provide a shimmering home for his seductive croon and husky introspection. Their ongoing collaboration with Berlin producer Jonas Meyer continues to lend a maturity and clarity to the unhappybirthday sound, while guest vocals from the likes of indie pop icon Andreas Dorau and label-mate Sebastian Lee Phillip (Die Wilde Jagd) add nuance and texture to their sonic palette. A resort collection for SS20, mondchateau offers horizontal dancers, beachfront dreamers, and tidal drift; an aspirational statement undercut by the inescapable feeling that the summer ends only too soon.

$22.00 IN STOCK

LP version. Arriving at their fourth album with only eight candles on the cake, unhappybirthday have always tempered youthful energy with an impressive maturity, but this is the moment when they truly come of age. Armed with deeper grooves, tighter arrangements, and unconventional hooks, the German trio have found the perfect balance between song and sound on their most irresistible work to date. The briefest trip through their back catalog unearths a wealth of artifacts from an unremembered '80s, be it the cassette tape fuzz which saturated early releases or the genuine love of the decade's underground outcasts. Recall a distant teenage memory of hours lost in an older, cooler friend's record collection; a blur of bedsit anarchists, jangling romantics and monochrome poets alive in polyphony. The result is a mirage of post-punk and Postcard, Penthouse, and Pavement, inspired by the past but impossible to pigeonhole. Ever referential but never reverential, unhappybirthday have that rare ability to distill their influences into an innovative expression far more potent than the sum of its parts. For mondchateau, their second LP on the mighty Tapete Records, unhappybirthday swap Cocteau cool for cocktails by the pool, fusing their sophisticated pop with the louche grooves and ambient beauty of Deutsche Balearic. Taking a stroll through Miko's garden, the trio find Sade under the Kalimba Tree, enjoy an I.C. spritz and savor the tristeza of the late afternoon sun. Punctuated by rhythm box exotica and Diana Kim's limber bass, the nine songs lilt and sway from T.V. Scene to Same Old Scene, the beguiling combination of optimism and melancholy yielding a yearning beauty. Equal parts brooding and ringing, Tobias Rutkowski's guitar is the embodiment of this tension, while the digital keys, glassy mallets, and moonlit chimes of Daniel Jahn's SQ1 provide a shimmering home for his seductive croon and husky introspection. Their ongoing collaboration with Berlin producer Jonas Meyer continues to lend a maturity and clarity to the unhappybirthday sound, while guest vocals from the likes of indie pop icon Andreas Dorau and label-mate Sebastian Lee Phillip (Die Wilde Jagd) add nuance and texture to their sonic palette. A resort collection for SS20, mondchateau offers horizontal dancers, beachfront dreamers, and tidal drift; an aspirational statement undercut by the inescapable feeling that the summer ends only too soon.

$17.00 IN STOCK

Unhappybirthday, continue their cycle of a new album every three years here with Schaum. It's an unusually prolific rate of output for a band as young as Unhappybirthday, yet wholly in keeping with their anachronistic nature. In contrast to most of their contemporaries in the class of 2010 who took to the stage, the next generation inspired by Beggar's Banquet, Factory, and ZickZack, the synthesizers and drum machine they borrowed were not tools of sheer irony or approximations of raging rebellion. The last Unhappybirthday album, Schauer, was released in 2015, influenced by Georges Perec's novel Un Homme Qui Dort (1967), a young man's meditation on melancholy, indifference, inertia. Here, they took the jangly pop of carefree youth and bestowed upon it a degree of earnestness and sincerity; traditional values perhaps, seen through the prism of today. Schaum is the trio's first album to have been created without the aid of a tape recorder. Working closely with Berlin producer Jonas Meyer, their sound has matured, shattering the raw lo-fi veneer of the past to explore complex spaces with unimagined agility and clarity. The dry baritone of Daniel Jahn conjures up images of hazy summer evenings and gossamer rain, evaporating before it touches the hot asphalt surface. Tobias Rutkowski's guitar is a conduit for deep-rooted desire, the likes of which has not surfaced since the Cocteau Twins. Diana Kim, who joined on bass in 2017, adds her own kinesthetic counterpoint to spherical keyboard motifs. If Schaum were a person you had met, you would be enraptured and helpless in equal measure, unable to find words for such magic. If the eight new tracks can be attributed to a particular genre, shoegaze comes closest, albeit with a sense of form skillfully distilled from the 1980s; a diaphanous essence found less in concrete, constituent parts and more in the work as a whole. There is a shimmer of the vitreous elegance once epitomized by David Sylvian, without actually sounding like Japan; an echo of Sade's silky stylishness without for a moment implying that this should be added to a cocktail party playlist. Instead, like the finest traces of perfume, a note here and there sparks recollections, hinting at the playful experimentation of Les Disques Du Crépuscule releases. The result is sophisticated pop, overcast with dreams, music falling like light on mother of pearl, a transient memory of moist, warm skin.

$26.00 IN STOCK

LP version. Includes CD. Unhappybirthday, continue their cycle of a new album every three years here with Schaum. It's an unusually prolific rate of output for a band as young as Unhappybirthday, yet wholly in keeping with their anachronistic nature. In contrast to most of their contemporaries in the class of 2010 who took to the stage, the next generation inspired by Beggar's Banquet, Factory, and ZickZack, the synthesizers and drum machine they borrowed were not tools of sheer irony or approximations of raging rebellion. The last Unhappybirthday album, Schauer, was released in 2015, influenced by Georges Perec's novel Un Homme Qui Dort (1967), a young man's meditation on melancholy, indifference, inertia. Here, they took the jangly pop of carefree youth and bestowed upon it a degree of earnestness and sincerity; traditional values perhaps, seen through the prism of today. Schaum is the trio's first album to have been created without the aid of a tape recorder. Working closely with Berlin producer Jonas Meyer, their sound has matured, shattering the raw lo-fi veneer of the past to explore complex spaces with unimagined agility and clarity. The dry baritone of Daniel Jahn conjures up images of hazy summer evenings and gossamer rain, evaporating before it touches the hot asphalt surface. Tobias Rutkowski's guitar is a conduit for deep-rooted desire, the likes of which has not surfaced since the Cocteau Twins. Diana Kim, who joined on bass in 2017, adds her own kinesthetic counterpoint to spherical keyboard motifs. If Schaum were a person you had met, you would be enraptured and helpless in equal measure, unable to find words for such magic. If the eight new tracks can be attributed to a particular genre, shoegaze comes closest, albeit with a sense of form skillfully distilled from the 1980s; a diaphanous essence found less in concrete, constituent parts and more in the work as a whole. There is a shimmer of the vitreous elegance once epitomized by David Sylvian, without actually sounding like Japan; an echo of Sade's silky stylishness without for a moment implying that this should be added to a cocktail party playlist. Instead, like the finest traces of perfume, a note here and there sparks recollections, hinting at the playful experimentation of Les Disques Du Crépuscule releases. The result is sophisticated pop, overcast with dreams, music falling like light on mother of pearl, a transient memory of moist, warm skin.