Madsen performed at the LG Action Sports Tour event in Munich on Saturday, June 18 at 8:00pm.

This far and then a lot further
Madsen, a young band from northern Germany, has landed an astonishingly perfect debut album

June 3, 2005 By Johanna Adorjan
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

A few weeks ago, a letter arrived from the Humboldt University in Berlin informing Sebastian Madsen that he could consider his studies of Contemporary German Literature over. Not that this should have surprised him - he had only attended two lectures since enrolling last summer. Sebastian had had other things on his plate. Together with his band, which is simply called by his family name, Madsen, the 23-year-old had recorded a debut album in the previous months which is a rare gem in contemporary German rock history.

Madsen's first single came out in March. It is called "Die Perfektion" (Perfection) and can be regarded as exemplary for the entire album. All of the album's songs are actually quite similar. They are passionate, powerful and elegant, and do not beat around the bush either musically or lyrically, but go straight to the point: verse, bridge, chorus; me, you, the world. Madsen makes the sort of music that sounds loud even when it is played softly - bellowed choruses, rock guitars and drums that appear to be somehow in a hurry, but there are also tender moments and melodies that sound like they are from a children's song.

To explain it another way: Madsen sounds like a cross between Tomte, the Indie band from Hamburg, and the hard rockers from AC/DC - or like the New York band The Strokes, if they were to sing Rammstein songs. Anyone who likes guitars and melodies and does not shy away when things get a bit louder now and then will not go wrong with this band.

Sebastian Madsen, the literature student who has just left college, is the brains behind the band. He writes the lyrics and composes the songs - but he would be very pleased, he says, if one of the other four band members also came up with an idea once in a while. "They make it very easy for themselves," he says, and does not sound as if he is joking. "They trust me and say they like what I do and think it's OK. However, I think it would be really good if I did not always write everything alone."

Apart from Sebastian, who sings and plays guitar, the band comprises a bass player with dreadlocks, Niko Maurer, 23, who is studying computer graphics at Magdeburg and Folkert Jahnke, 29, who plays the organ. He works as a teacher in a school for the disabled, but is going to give up his job to have more time for his music. Then there are also Sebastian's two brothers, Johannes, 26, guitar, and Sascha, 21, drums, who still lives at home, like Sebastian.

This band's basic attitude appears to be rage. At least, that is the energy that it transports - and this is probably what lends the group its magic. In this country, where almost everyone is hanging their heads at the moment, where countless stories are being written and oil paintings are being painted about how young people are lying on their backs and watching as the dust slowly trickles to the ground in the sunlight, a group of young people, which initially and first and foremost sounds enraged, or let us say, extremely furious, is having the same effect as a decent electric shock during a resuscitation attempt. Punk, says Sebastian, was a good teacher for him in this respect. He had to give everything he had right from the start and develop energy, he says, and now everything is just rocking.

The release of the first album, also simply called "Madsen," has been preceded by a kind of inaudible drumroll. Music journalists have been whispering the name Madsen to each other for months now. Thees Uhlmann, the singer with the band Tomte, publicly called the album "the best debut LP since I have been writing about music." Madsen played as warm-up to Wir sind Helden (they turned down an offer from the band Juli), are booked to appear at all the better festivals this summer, and their second video is showing on MTV.

Now Sebastian has to answer questions more and more frequently in interviews like "Do you see yourself as the representative of a new self-confidence in German pop music?" Moreover, he has heard the accusation more than once that all of this has been done thousands of times before and that Madsen sounds exactly like Tocotronic on their early albums. Welcome to the music business.

For more information on Madsen visit the Madsen official web site