Recommendations of the Editorial team
There are bands that consciously swim with the flow of time in order to build on previous successes. Bands that adapt to the new age of artificial intelligence and make the most of it. And then there are bands that go to the de facto North Pole to film scenes for a music video in the style of Werner Herzog. May I introduce: picture book.
The times we live in are grotesque. While artists try to get their studio album, which they have been producing for years, to reach a hundred thousand streams using precise album release strategies, Kevin manages to crack the million streams with an AI. We prefer to listen to the music that Spotify pours into our timeline, and diligently curated cassette mixtapes belong to a long-forgotten era. The big keyword is: algorithm. Because this determines what we hear and see. The Austrian band doesn’t like that at all.
David versus Goliath
While A&R managers talk in Berlin club toilets about the “importance of your song rollout plan,” Bilderbuch turns the tables. On June 5th they released the song “Push Reality” – but thousands had already heard it on a dying medium: radio. The accompanying music video will be released on June 7th. At the end of February, the Austrians had already uploaded the song “somewhere”. The song “captures the feeling of a generation that lives between threat and the longing for humanity,” says the press release. In keeping with this, picture book singer Maurice Ernst sings: “Drones in the sky above us / Shine like stars”. A generation living through a changing era caused by geopolitical and technological threats sees the absurdity of it in an avant-garde music video for “somewhere” – a 14-minute fever dream that reflects the musical direction of the indie band.
But not only time itself is changing, but also the structure of picture books. Guitarist Michael Krammer retired from the band after over 17 years. The reason for this is a changed lifestyle, which could also have something to do with being a father.
The new album: “∞+1”
The new studio album is titled “∞+1” and is announced for September 18th. In addition to the two songs that have already been released, it is also expected to preserve the DNA of Bilderbuch. Because as you can hear in “Push Reality”, neither onomatopoeia nor the wild German-English mix is dispensed with.