The four East Berlin construction workers and their female inspector.
A spectacular live show from demolition to roofing ceremony.
Multi-faceted Electro in a mix of Pop, Ambient, Industrial, Club and Techno.
From Electropop ballads and instrumental Ambient titles to driving Club tracks.
A stage secured with barrier tapes, men in orange work clothes with protective helmets
on construction equipment, synthesizers and micro.
Your profis for Electronic Building Music: The legendary PATENBRIGADE: WOLFF
MAIL
CONTACT e-mail-adress: post@patenbrigadewolff.com
André Hartung, Brigadier Wolff, Antje Dieckmann, Lance Marshall Murdock, Stefan Leukert. Photo byFrank Bentert
Facts!
P:W are a Berlin-based electronic band whose music employs construction-worker motifs and is stylistically diverse, incorporating aspects all kinds of synthesizers.
P:W was originally founded in 1998 by S. WOLFF and LANCE M. MURDOCK citing influences including Kraftwerk, Future Sound of London, Front 242, Depeche Mode and Tangerine Dream.
P:W's very unique sound they prefer to set trends instead of following them – since 1998 – and their exciting live shows will be remembered forever!
P:W (Patenbrigade: Wolff) is a multi-faceted Electro mixture of Pop and Beats, Ambient, Techno, Club, Industrial and Wave. The legendary German Alternative magazine 'Zillo' wrote: "When it comes to Electronic Music, P:W have the same status that Metallica holds for all Metal fans!"
Rob Dyer wrote:
The style of this theatrically-inclined musical collective (built around Sven Wolff and Lance Murdock) varies from epic instrumentals sounding like Jean-Michel Jarré pretending to be Kraftwerk, through beautiful female vocal-led melodic synth ballads, experimental electronica and foot-stomping quality industrial dance tunes. So attempting to pigeonhole them is a fatally flawed exercise. It also makes describing or recommending them to others something of a challenge. Then there’s their actual live delivery. Fuelled by a brilliantly eccentric worldview, you can usually expect these guys and gals (whose line up from event to event depends largely on the logistics of location and availability of contributors) to build and perform in a make-shift construction site, complete with a panoply of high-visibility safety clothing, goggles, traffic cones, hazard tape, construction equipment, flashing warning lights and so forth setting the scene. […] Their manifesto is to produce ambient electronic music for construction crane workers! […] It’s their tongue-in-cheek, ironic world view even if this is almost alarmingly poppy at times [...]
Our boys in yellow hardhats retain the title track for themselves turning in a sublime democratic electronic ode to plumbers everywhere with its title vocodered into a chorus that's as thrillingly old school as it is convincing. Play it blind (to someone who doesn't know the title!) and you could easily get away with passing it off as an outtake from Kraftwerk's “Electric Café/Technopop”. Brief glimpses of the unadulterated beauty of the other P:W can be found on “Arbeit an der Oberleitung’s” calming warmth of space travel, whilst single “Voyage” subtly blends the best of Angelo Badalamenti's Twin Peaks theme with the mellow album tracks or B-sides so favoured by Depeche Mode. It’s great fun to listen to.
[…]
Their shows are theatrical affairs with several accomplices and an extended live band family contributing either to the music or to the presentation. The band's obsession with construction site workers is represented on stage by groups of men sporting P:W's trademark orange overalls and yellow safety hats who, guide proceedings, establish safe areas by using caution tape, send sparks flying from their grinding tools, take official photographs of the performance and occasionally fall foul of the authorities. So, as a piece of tongue-in-cheek live theatre, this delivered in spades (literally!). Yet that was nothing compared to the music. This was as perfect a live rendition of their songs resulting in a heady mixture of relief and excitement. Taking in ”Popmusik für Rohrleger” (the subtitle from their album “Baustoff”) and including fan favourites like “Ostberliner Bauarbeiter”, and “Demokratischer Sektor” this was quality non-stop, electronic soundtracks. Absolutely brilliant. […] Text byRob Dyer // DSOAudio.com
Lars Schmidt
wrote:
The Berlin Electronic Act P:W (Patenbrigade: Wolff) makes no secret of their obsession with heavy machinery. Already at an early age, these two childhood friends preferred the fascinating bustle of large scale construction sites over playgrounds, observing the plethora of busy construction workers and their, in theses boys’ eyes at least, dramatic interactions.
Endlessly fascinated with what appears to others as the monotonous daily routines of a construction site, they early on became enraptured with loud and gigantic machines, the glare of orange safety vests, yellow hard hats, and striped cordoning tape. However, the focus of their fervent adoration became the gravity-defying conductors in their seemingly never-ending tower cranes.
Though it was clear to them that they did not want to turn their veneration into a career (sic!), their calling was nevertheless quickly apparent – at least supply the construction business with an up-todate sound. It is exactly this bizarre source of inspiration that seems to have fuelled P:W and the band’s zest for musical achievements since 1998.
The musical output of the self-styled tower crane conductors is an invitation to follow them on their mostly instrumental trips across the rooftops of any large city. The observed activity of a day’s work from sunrise to sundown compressed into time-lapsed seconds. Majestically swiveling tower cranes, passing clouds, the hectic flurry of traffic, skyscraper silhouettes. P:W is the soundtrack for this situation and offers a matching mood to any mode of operation.
It simply is THE „Pop Music for Pipe Fitters“, “Club Music for Electro Installateurs“, „Ambient Electro for Tower Crane Conductors" and remains dedicated to tower crane conductors across the world. Text by Lars Schmidt
The four East Berlin construction workers and their female inspector.
