Five years after their last album, Les Agamemnonz return with "Die Sommerreise" (“The Summer Journey” in German), an adventurous fourth album glowing with [here we had issue translating the word "solaire" which means solar and also bright glowing like an "aura"].
During a German tour, the band stopped in Berlin. For five days, the musicians took over a vast red-brick building, typical of the city’s eastern part, to record about ten tracks under the direction of Axel Praefcke. The Berlin-based sound engineer, who has created a kind of Sun Studio Funkhaus-style here, is known for his organic and direct approach. Everything is recorded and mixed live, in the urgency and energy of the moment: the amps are cranked up, the days stretch on, and the band's chitons dry in the sun on the truck parked in front of the studio. Further exploring the rhythmic and structural aspects of their songs, "Die Sommerreise" revisits and reinterprets various styles often associated with the 1960s, such as the polka, the jerk, the waltz (Sfumato), the bolero, and so on. Here we find what has always been the hallmark of Les Agamemnonz: effective rhythms and audacious arrangements.
It's worth noting that, while the group had extensively explored orchestral arrangements on their previous "Amateurs" LP by adding brass and string sections during overdub sessions, this time they experimented with a live recording of the group/orchestra encounter, everyone in the same room, the old-fashioned way. A small section was brought together, resulting, in the midst of this short, focused, and laborious week, in a kind of joyful brass band happening (Der Mondmann) but also the most "dramatic" facet of the album (Le Vieux Manteau).
The album also features several distinguished guests. Graham Mushnik (Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek) joined the band in the studio, playing a rare ondioline (an early form of synthesizer popularized by Jean-Jacques Perrey) to several tracks (Davet, Gel gel gel), and Antoine Berland, an iconoclastic pianist, provides the album's introduction using a clavicorde, an equally unique instrument. A leading figure on the international surf scene, the band distinguishes itself as much by its ability to evoke the genre's classics - The Ventures, The Astronauts, and The Challengers - as by the originality of its songwriting.
For about seventeen years, Les Agamemnonz have performed hundreds of concerts throughout Europe and the United States. Always dressed in their Greek chitons and barefoot like the lyre player, come rain or shine, they captivate audiences of all ages and – instrumental music being what it is – without any language barrier. They sweep audiences of all ages away in sun-drenched instrumental celebrations. "Die Sommerreise" also marks the group's second collaboration with the American label Hi-Tide Recordings, as well as with the artist Elia David, who once again created an entirely hand-painted cover, brick by brick, immortalizing this intense and fruitful stage in their grand summer voyage.
