Bettina Köster

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Bettina Köster (left), 1979

Bettina Köster (born June 15, 1959 in Herford ) is a German musician , composer , lyricist , music producer and author .

Köster was the singer and main lyricist in the band Malaria from 1981 to 1984 ! , she has been working as a solo artist ever since. Köster is known for her deep, warm, smoky voice, she is known as "The Hildegard Knef of Punk". Her singing style, androgynous styling and the image of women embodied by Köster made her an icon of queer subculture.

Start of career in Berlin

Mania D

The starting point for Bettina Köster's artistic development is Berlin in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the SO36 in Kreuzberg and the jungle in Schöneberg , a u. a. Favorite nightclub visited by Iggy Pop and David Bowie . Köster, who studied at the Berlin University of the Arts , played saxophone in the Berlin underground band DIN A Testbild from autumn 1978 . In May 1979 Köster started the all-girl-band project Mania D with Karin Luner, Beate Bartel , Eva Gössling and Gudrun Gut . This occurred in New York in the fall of 1979 in Arleen Castle A's and in Club Tier 3. With Gut, she opened Eisengrau in the summer of 1979 , a concept store that showed underground fashion, Super 8 films and art. Kösters Eisengrau concept developed into the Berlin hot spot for Tabea Blumenschein , Alexander von Borsig , Blixa Bargeld and others. From 1980, Eisengrau published music works by underground bands in small editions on cassettes, which made it a music medium. Köster is one of the Geniale Dilletanten , a group of musicians and artists in Berlin who from 1980 onwards in constantly changing, loose band formations as greed for love, thoughtful conscripts and Einstürzende Neubauten etc. a. played. Wolfgang Müller from Die Tödliche Doris coined the term “Geniale Dilletanten” with his book about the Berlin scene in Merve-Verlag . The Goethe Institute has been showing an exhibition of the same name since spring 2015. John Peel , a legendary British radio presenter, bestowed the title "Queens of Noise" on Köster, Gut and Beate Bartel on July 25, 1981, who had already separated. John Peel named the Mania D production track 4 single of the year on his radio show.

breakthrough

Malaria!

Köster and Gudrun Gut founded Malaria in 1981 after a falling out with Beate Bartel ! , the most successful German all-girl band internationally. Köster's singing had a lasting impact on the band's image. The musician Anne Clark conceded Köster's voice to be more varied than Marianne Faithfull 's: “Like few female singers, she not only masters casualness, but also passion and drama: the layers of Köster's singing could also come from three or four different singers ! It sounds like men and women who alternate and overlap, but it's all Bettina, and very sensual & apocalyptic. ”Köster sang in New York's Studio 54 and in the Mudd Club u. a. and toured with Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Birthday Party in Europe and the US. In 1982 she designed with Malaria! the opening evening of documenta 7 in Kassel. “Celebrity fans of the band included Catherine Deneuve and Nick Cave . Trailblazer Mick Harvey still speaks highly of Köster and Co. ".

From 1983 to 2001 Köster lived in New York, where she worked as a film writer and producer with the director Isabel Hegner. In 1997, Köster composed the score for the film Peppermills, which won the Teddy Award in the Best Short Film category at the 1998 Berlinale . Directed by the Swiss Isabel Hegner, whose 2003 documentary Burma: Anatomy of Terror Köster co-produced. While researching the film about Burma, Köster came across material about the drug princess Olive Yang, which resulted in the thriller Mandalay Moon , which she wrote together with author Martin Schacht . In 2005 Köster played with the musician Jessie Evans in the opening act for The Vanishing, from which the music project Autonervous developed, which released an album in 2006. Since 2009 Bettina Köster has appeared regularly with the Viennese drummer Ines Perschy and also solo in clubs such as the “Salon des Amateurs” and at festivals.

Queen of Noise

Köster's musical statement from 2009 is called "Queen of Noise". The solo album draws on the DIY strategy of punk and emphasizes its artistic autonomy and self-sufficiency. It is a deep, personal, hypnotic work, oscillating between the influences of the Beatles, DAF, Grace Jones, Marianne Faithfull, Nico, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and Kraftwerk on the one hand and a conscious self on the other.

Discography

  • 1980: Track 4 , ManiaD, Monogamous
  • 1980: ManiaD Live in Düsseldorf & SO36 , iron gray
  • 1980: White Christmas, Greed , Marat Records (7 ")
  • 1981: Malaria (12 ") , Marat Records
  • 1981: How Do You Like My New Dog? (7 "), Les Disques Du Crépuscule
  • 1982: Emotion (LP), Moabit Music
  • 1982: New York Passage (12 "), Jungle Records
  • 1982: White Water (12 "), Les Disques Du Crépuscule
  • 1982: The housewives - New York Berlin , Psycho Records
  • 1983: Revisited - Live (cassette), ROIR
  • 1984: Beat The Distance (12 "), Rebel Rec.
  • 1991: Compiled (CD), Moabit Musik
  • 1991: Kaltes Klares Wasser (CDM), Moabit Music
  • 1992: Elation (CDM), Moabit Music
  • 1993: Cheerio (CD), Moabit Music
  • 2001: Compiled 1981–1984 (CD)
  • 2001: Versus EP (12 "), Superstar Recordings
  • 2002: Track 22, Universal Musik (Jürgen Teipel, Frank Fenstermacher: Verschwende Deine Jugend. Punk and New Wave in Germany .)
  • 2003: Delirium: Remixed, Remade, Remodelled (CD) MFS
  • 2006: Autonervous (CD)
  • 2009: Queen of Noise (CD), Asinella Records
  • 2017: Kolonel Silvertop (CD), Pale Music

Filmography

Fonts

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b The Hildegard Knef of punk: Bettina Köster . In: Der Standard , September 22, 2009; Retrieved November 8, 2015
  2. ↑ siegessaeule.de Retrieved on November 7, 2015
  3. ^ Alfred Hilsberg: Girls, Girls, Girls. In: Sounds 11/79 , p. 46. (Interview)
  4. ^ Mania D in New York 1979. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . March 27, 2011, p. 31. Retrieved February 24, 2012.
  5. ^ Festival of Genialer Dilletanten . Retrieved November 7, 2015
  6. ↑ bbc.co.uk/radio1
  7. ↑ popshifter.com
  8. ↑ Martin Schacht: Mandalay Moon . Rowohlt, 2007, ISBN 9783499243622
personal data
SURNAME Köster, Bettina
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German musician, composer, lyricist, music producer and author
DATE OF BIRTH June 15, 1959
PLACE OF BIRTH Herford