NAOMI

We met by the side of a road somewhere in northern Germany, Bernd driving up in his battered Opel, Nico holding up his thumb. We then discovered that we adored the same songwriters, were carrying the exact same books in our bags, and that our respective flats in Hamburg were just two streets apart. Two months later, we were sharing a rehearsal room, started to play in each others bands, wrote our first songs together and discovered the new love of building music out of samples lifted from old records.

Shortly after the millennium we moved to Berlin, where a big flat including a recording studio was affordable and the night life inspiring. There, we recorded the first Naomi album, Everyone Loves You (2002). It mixed long sample tracks with pop songwriting. amnesty international used one of the songs ("Go") for a TV and cinema campaign featuring Franka Potente. Compilers of compilation CDs started to discover our tracks, and today our music is featured on more than 100 compilations worldwide, from Buddha Bar to Erotic Lounge (no, really). Still we never felt quite at home in that whole downbeat scene, so on our second album, Pappelallee (2004), named after our studio‘s address, the songs started to take over. Aquarium (2006) was our first true pop record: few samples, live guitars and keyboards, sparse arrangements. In 2008 we released Tweak, a collection of new tracks and older ones in alternative versions that we had always wanted to try out. After getting that out of our system, we started working on The Big Shapes which, we think, is our most colourful and best album to date. But we would say that anyway, so go and ask other people or, even better, listen for yourself.