Ever since his very first cassette releases on the Cologne label Entenpfuhl in 1993 Jo Zimmermann aka Schlammpeitziger has granted an international audience a glimpse into his own private cosmos. The musician, illustrator and inventor of song titles that don’t want to end, has a course yet sophisticated humor and has shaped his very own unmistakable style.
Jo Zimmermann slips us his deep musicality with such ease that we are only too happy to let him do as he pleases. His kind of club compatible pop music (or radio friendly club music?) has such hidden qualities that only on the second or third listen come to light, as if by themselves. This ambiguity is another characteristic of this Cologne institution.
Schlammpeitziger’s live concerts have a special quality. For his music appears on stage in simultaneous “Irony and holy seriousness” (Olaf Karnik). Jo Zimmermann is no great joker, but in contrast, many of the sounds and solos that he throws into his live sets are positively hilarious. And so one never really knows where one really is. And Schlammpeitziger masterfully manages to sustain this level of suspense throughout the length of his concerts. His live performances work equally well in clubs as they do on a theatre stage, in a strobe cloud or in front of rows of chairs. One permanent fixture of these happenings are Ulrike Göken’s videos, an artist who is a Schlammpeitziger band member since 2003. Her films are surprising, experimental, funny and surreal. Per track there is one film, so they’re like real music videos if you will.