it´s a musical

(written by Clemens Niedenthal) Ella Blixt and Robert Kretzschmar are “It’s a Musical”. That’s what their band is called. But that’s how this band sounds only in a figurative way – when one loves great musicals for their conjuring entire worlds out of the membranes. But musicals depict an artificial world. “It’s a Musical”, however, are sincere about it. And they are a great fun being listened to. “It’s a Musical” means pop music in an absolute immediate sense. Two artists, their voices, their instruments. Going forward, turning somersaults. We don’t play guitars Two years ago they had got to know each other at common concerts with their current projects that time. Ella had still lived in the Swedish city of Malmö by then recording songs under the name of “Bobby Baby” when Robert had drawn up first ideas of his notion of pop music with his duo “Lady Boy”. Few months later, Ella also moved to Berlin. First common songs were written on an old organ with a charming name and an even charming sound. And because there was this organ and soon a piano, too, for Ella’s sparkling chords and since Robert’s airy and swinging play of drums went forward curiously, “there was no hand left for a guitar”. Indie pop without guitars? But the music that has taken the best from Stereolab and St. Etienne, from the likeable simplicity of LoFi as well as from the interwoven harmony landscapes of a Burt Bacharach or a Karen Carpenter, this music has left behind the drawer of indie anyway. Trumpets, vibraphones, canonical Choirs. “It’s a Musical”, it really is. Back in the year of 2005 the wires radioed Ella Blixt, alias Bobby Baby, across the Baltic Sea. Soon most of her downloads came from Germany. The tracks of Bobby Baby, her former, now resting project, could be recorded in the evening and listened to on MySpace the next morning. And like “Bobby Baby” “It’s A Musical” also lives in and from this dynamics. “It was important for us on the one hand to use a good studio’s tonal opportunities for the album. But on the other hand we tried to change our recordings afterwards as little as possible. It all should sound direct, live.” However, Ella Blixt released an album under the name of “Bobby & Blumm” together with Berlin-based avantgarde-pop-bricoleur F. S. Blumm recently. Gentle, delicate woven soundwriting – also released by Morr Music. “Where Frank (aka F.S. Blumm) draws up fine sketches with a thin pencil I make a thick brushstroke”, Ella says. Bathing in colours. Growing up in a small town The story of pop music as a landscape of longing, the two artists in their mid-twenties could sing songs about it, in Swedish as well as in German. One of them grew up in South Swedish smalltown named Hultsfred the other one in Thuringian village Weissenborn. Growing up in a small town, boredom, escapism into sounds. At first, one played the transverse flute or the drums in the local brass band. Lateron, one played with the thought of leaving theses places behind. “If you wanted something to happen it was only you to make it happen”, Ella Blixt says. Do it yourself, literally spoken. This summer she drives home to Hultsfred in order to fill young girls with enthusiasm for those opportunities at a “popcamp” (www.popkollo.se). Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.