Isolation Berlin - Electronic Babies Tour 2025

The kings of pub poetry can not only do post-punk and no wave, but also art song.

Yes, you have to write it, even though it sounds really tacky: If there's one band at the moment that manages to accompany people through middle-aged city life, it's Isolation Berlin. Because whatever we do with our twenties, Tobias Bamborschke and his band are already there. While the Berliners still wanted to "go to the movies, take cigarettes and booze" with "Annabelle" in the early single of the same name, two years ago, at the end of their great study of melancholy UND AUS DEN WOLKEN TROPFT DIE ZEIT, they swore to cure the tired heart by not feeling anything at all.

Their second album VERGIFTE DICH continues this development: "I've been everywhere, I've experienced everything," Bamborschke whines in the first single "Kicks", teetering between apathy and aggression. Hello DAF, hello waste of self. No Wave and post-punk break through here in a more physical, compelling way than before; in the record's night moments, on the other hand, the guitar sounds as gentle and sad as fresh snow on dirty asphalt.

Sure, Bamborschke still writes the most beautiful everyday lyricism, which gives an idea of what the early Element of Crime would have sounded like if they hadn't always been old souls. But Isolation Berlin reach unprecedented heights when they raise the level of abstraction, for example on "Melchior's Dream", probably the band's most complex song to date. All of this adds up to an album that tries to keep us at a distance. And that's exactly why it grabs us romantics, snobs and hedonists all the harder.