Pop over the garden fence: The debut of a special indie supergroup from Hamburg.
A first life as a professional footballer: Ben Galliers from Coventry was under contract with the then upper division team Dynamo Dresden, fifth division, in the early noughties. His team is promoted, Galliers plays 23 games and scores two goals. He is not satisfied because he suspects that he does not have enough talent to dream of greater things. Hence a second life as a musician: Galliers is a singer/songwriter, joins the local scene in Hamburg and starts talking to his neighbor over the garden fence.
His name is Mark Tavassol, he used to be the bassist for Wir Sind Helden and was part of the duo Gloria together with Klaas Heufer-Umlauf. Three years after this encounter, the first album by the band Agassi is now being released. Nina Müller, a busy singer, songwriter and keyboard player, is also there. The guitarist is a physicist, Tavassol also works as a doctor – Agassi are an idiosyncratic supergroup.
That fits the namesake Andre Agassi, a good guy and court rebel who, with Steffi Graf, is an idiosyncratic ex-tennis super couple. The music on ARCADE MELODIES sounds like an indie mixtape set to music: bold vocals and uplifting choruses, post-punk and post-Brit pop, sometimes faded, sometimes jagged guitars. Frank Spilker from the stars is there on the neo-NDW banger “No energy is lost” – it’s a shame that not every song on the record is so forward-looking.