Watch: La Düsseldorf - Immermannstraße

Or: Japanese in Düsseldorf

“Immermannstraße” is the first video to a track from La Düsseldorf’s upcoming album Japandorf, showing footage of Klaus Dinger and his band on a 2006 boat trip on the river Rhine, around the Düsseldorf-Kaiserwerth area.

“Düsseldorf, du bist unsere Heimat” – Düsseldorf, you are our home – these were the lyrics on the 1976 debut album of NEU! successor La Düsseldorf, another great krautrock band born of Klaus Dinger’s genius. And this very home is also the location of Germany’s only Japantown, with Immermannstraße as one of its centres. Although being just a small minority, the Japanese expat community has been playing an important cultural and economic role in the Rhine metropolis for more than five decades.

In his search for a special collaboration with artists who all shared the same background, Klaus Dinger started an entire music project with artists from Düsseldorf’s Japanese “village”. As a vision of “the sound of the 21^st century”, Japandorf began in 2000 and took seven years to perfect, with recordings in both the Düsseldorf studio and in Zeeland. Even so, “Immermannstraße” sounds quite like the old 1976 style, but that’s just fine. Good to know that even at the beginning of the 21^st century, Klaus Dinger hadn’t lost anything of his multi-instrumentalist talents and driving “motorik” beat. What’s new is the extremely nice Japanese accent in the always somewhat angular German lyrics, giving the sound a very special touch. Like Damo Suzuki in Immermannstraße. Looking forward to hear the rest of the album!

R.i.p. Klaus Dinger, who passed away in 2008, shortly before the album was complete. The long awaited Japandorf will now finally be released on 25 March 2013 on Groenland Records.

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~ by annikahoge on January 24, 2013.