Street Art: Take Berlin rescues discarded tape deck from the trash to record basic tracks for its ethereal, soulful Lionize debut EP
Take Berlin (L-R): Jesse Barnes, Yvonne Ambrée. Photo Credit: Fabrizio del Rincon.
Brooklyn / Berlin-based duo’s latest “Sebastian” premieres via The Wild Magazine. Hear “Vermona” single via BBC6, Black Book.
“Sebastian” is the first single from the Lionize EP by Take Berlin
[STREAM]: https://soundcloud.com/fanaticpro/take-berlin-sebastian
[DOWNLOAD]: https://soundcloud.com/fanaticpro/take-berlin-sebastian/download
[MP3]: http://www.fanaticpromotion.com/projects/takeberlin/mp3/takeberlin-sebastian.mp3
Check out the premiere of “Sebastian” by Take Berlin exclusively via The Wild Magazine!
Check out the premiere of “Vermona” by Take Berlin exclusively via BlackBook!
The Brooklyn and Berlin-based duo Take Berlin came together when, in the winter of 2011, guitarist Jesse Barnes pulled a discarded cassette deck from a snowy pile of trash in Brooklyn. A few months after that rescue, chance led Barnes to vocalist Yvonne Ambrée for the first time. After a half-dozen trips across the Atlantic, Take Berlin had realized the greater fate of that discarded tape deck, utilizing its inherent vintage qualities to record and enhance all of the basic tracks on the Lionize EP, out today.
The EP represents the first collaboration from these two established musical talents. For their “day jobs,” Ambrée is an in-demand backing vocalist with some of Germany’s biggest artists, and more recently with US-based acts such as Syl Johnson, Kendra Morris and Sleigh Bells. Barnes can be found playing guitar with Eli “Paperboy” Reed, Lulu Gainsbourg, and Aloe Blacc among others.
The latest single from the EP recently premiered via The Wild Magazine and is featured in the latest edition of the Bandcamp Weekly podcast. “‘Sebastian’ is largely influenced by Jose Saramago’s novel The Year of The Death of Ricardo Reis, according to Ambrée. “In the story, the protagonist is visited by the ghost of poet Fernando Pessoa. This magic-realism struck a chord in me as I began to consider the ‘ghosts’ that visit us from time to time – cultural ghosts as well as those from our own personal history.”
Barnez adds, “‘Sebastian’ was the last song we recorded for the EP and on the day we finished, we received word that a friend of ours had just given birth to a baby boy that they coincidentally named Sebastian! We later received a video of the proud father dancing to our song with his son. Quite out of tune, yet truly touching.” “Sebastian” is the follow-up to “Vermona,” the first single from Lionize which recently premiered via BlackBook and is currently receiving UK airplay on BBC6.
“‘Vermona’ was the first song we wrote together,” Barnes says. “The song focuses on the true story of a girl who is raised by her grandmother after the child’s mother escapes to the West in the trunk of a car.” Even with the heavy subject matter, “Vemona” is still hopeful. As Ambrée puts it, “These children who grew up under communist rule were experiencing the world for the first time and since they had nothing to compare it to, the world was still a beautiful place.”