Von Spar

VON SPAR is an artist collective from Germany consisting of Sebastian Blume, Jan Philipp Janzen, Phillip Tielsch and Christopher Marquez.
They made their critcally acclaimed entrance (e.g. coverstory in SPEX magazine) in the pop circuit in 2004 with their debut album Die Uneingeschränkte Freiheit Der Privaten Initiative (L’Age D’Or).

Three years later and the supergroup returned with an uncompromising album Von Spar (Tomlab) that got ahead of all expectations and surprised their audience and critics were shocked. This was not a band following the latest trend. Their new musical language was inspired by seventies Krautrock taking lines of flight to Fluxus Art and Minimal Music. With two new members the five-headed pack recorded in the legendary Electric Avenue Studio in Hamburg, with producer Tobias Levin.

For HyBoLT (12″, ITALIC, 2009), Von Spar had drawn inspiration from the Krautrock of the 1970s again but took their love of experimentation to the dance floor with a real disco happening, all refracted psychedelic colour and fluid dreams. Musically, Von Spar have produced a brilliant piece of prog-disco, one that tells of cosmic pop science and combines Can’s spirit of discovery with the dance-floor instinct of Giorgio Moroder.

On their third album, Von Spar have once again put themselves to the task of juxtaposing seemingly disparate musical spheres. The spectrum ranges from electrified pop and krautrock elements to fusion experiments to clubby electro tracks. Based in Cologne and Berlin, the four musicians celebrate an elaborately constructed disorder. Like their previous releases, it defies categorization.
Foreigner (CD / LP, ITALIC, 2010) is a science-fiction album chock full of trippy pop, which tumbles through unexplored terrain without forgetting to look in the rearview mirror and allowing the listeners enough room to use their own imagination.

Their fourth album Streetlife (ITALIC, 2014) has been released to a in Von Spar‘s case almost traditional acclaim, which was especially true in case of the two hits Chain Of Command or Breaking Formantion.