Finch (band)
Fink was a German independent band from Hamburg - St. Pauli . It was founded in the mid-1990s and existed until the end of 2006. The head of the band was the musician and visual artist Nils Kopagh . He was also responsible for the demanding, idiosyncratic German lyrics. The music can be attributed to alternative country . Another long-time band member (since 1997) was bassist Andreas Voss, who also plays for Halma .
Band history
The Hamburg band Fink was formed in 1996. Nils Kopagh (guitar, vocals, harm) and Thorsten Carstens (guitar, lapsteel, vocals) previously played in the underground country group Tex Fury and The Silver Spurs . Hauke Evers (drums), previously a member of the band Huah! , added the duo to the trio. The three-man cast initially played in the opening act for Lambchop . In the same year, further appearances followed with 16 Horsepower , The bride hits the eye , The Jayhawks and Hank McCoy & The Dead Ringers .
Winter Bird Watching , the group's first CD, was released in 1997 on the independent label XXS Records . The first release documents fragments of the band's typical combination of country influences, rock music and German lyrics. The band's “Folk Noir”, which was heavily influenced by singer, songwriter and guitarist Nils Kopagh, was well received by the music press. On the occasion of the Fink Prelude, this raised the question of whether German-language country music with demanding lyrics would be possible.
The years 1997 and 1999 brought an ever increasing level of awareness. In the course of 1997 Andreas Voss (bass) joined the group. Joint concerts and tours with Element of Crime in 1998 and 1999 documented a musical and personal bond between the two bands. In 1998 the second Fink CD (Hole in the World) was released .
After Thorsten Carstens and Hauke Evers left in 1998, Nils Kopckt and Andreas Voss formed the framework that ensured continuity at Fink. This basic line-up was expanded on the one hand by permanent members (Dinesh Ketelsen and Henning Wandhoff on bass and drums), on the other hand by befriended guest musicians who joined on tours or recordings. The trumpeter Martin Wenk from Calexico has become a regular guest at concerts and recordings .
In 1999 the Hamburg label L'age D'or released the third release ( Mondscheiner ). 2000 followed number four with the simple title Fink . In addition to the regular tours and publications, recordings for soundtracks ( The return of the Tüdelband , a documentary film about the odyssey of two Jewish folk musicians fleeing the National Socialists) and a limited live album were made. Fink caused a sensation in 2003 with the single Bagdad Blues , an ironic statement against the US Bush administration and the Iraq war, recorded together with actors Peter Lohmeyer (vocals) and Ulrich Tukur (accordion) .
The album Haiku Ambulanz followed in 2003 on the new Trocadero label . Ecki Heinz (Cow) and Oliver Stangl added Kopagh and Voss. In 2004 the band performed in the Rockpalast . In 2005 the band's last album, Bam Bam Bam, was released . Like its predecessor, Bam Bam Bam documented an increasingly clear move away from the country reminiscences of the founding phase in favor of rock, funk and other influences. From 2004, Red (keyboard) and Oliver Stangl (guitar, banjo) from the Hamburg band Missouri added to the regular line-up consisting of Nils Kopagh (vocals, guitar, harm) and Andreas Voß (bass).
After the end of the Bam-Bam-Bam tour in 2005, the band members first turned to other projects. Founder Nils Kopracht began working on his solo debut Den Teufel Tun , which was released in April 2007, while Voss released the third album, Back to Pascal , with his second band Halma in 2006 . Shortly before the release of his solo album, a newsletter email from the official Fink website announced in December 2006 that the band Fink had broken up. The reason given was that the group could only continue to exist with further personnel changes or new appointments, which is why Kopagh decided to publish under his own name in the future. Kopagh died in October 2012 at the age of 46.
Style and reception
The band distanced themselves from the label “Country with German texts” in several interviews. On the one hand, she admitted that she contributed to this determination through her own statements and ambiguous statements. The influences of alternative country from US bands like Lambchop and Giant Sand have been expanded over the years to include elements from chanson , rock , funk and reggae . The band's trademark remained Koppruch's often told first-person, laconic song stories.
Fink have been compared again and again to Element of Crime . The social criticism that came along in a laconic noir style, which completely ignored pedagogical agitprop concepts, repeatedly provoked comparisons with Ton Steine Scherben , the political rock band from the 1970s. This discussion was promoted, among other things, by the film Der Traum ist aus or die Erben der Sch towards (The Heirs of the Shards) from 2001, which addressed the continuity of content between Ton Steine Shards on the one hand and musicians from the current independent, songwriter and hip-hop scene on the other ( see also: Lassie Singers , Britta , Die Sterne , Tilman Rossmy , The bride hits the eye , Bernadette La Hengst , Hans Söllner and Funny van Dannen ).
Discography
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Studio albums
- Bird Watching in Winter (XXS Records / Indigo, 1997)
- Hole in the World (XXS Records / Indigo, 1998)
- Mondscheiner ( L'Age d'Or / Rough Trade Records , 1999)
- Fink (L'Age d'Or / Rough Trade Records, 2001)
- Haiku Ambulance ( Trocadero Records / Indigo, 2003)
- Bam Bam Bam (Trocadero / Indigo, 2005)
Live albums
- Last September (Normal Records, 2002, limited to 2000 copies)
Web links
- Official website
- Interview (2005)
- Fink singer Nils Kopocht on “Do the… blah blah blah” traditions and reading in between . Interview on kritische-ausgabe.de (May 2, 2005)