Music: Labrass banda celebrate the “Polka Party”

With their new album “Polka Party”, the musicians from Labrassbanda want to go back to their roots. “We used to have our first major appearances at Balkan parties,” says front man Stefan Dettl of the German Press Agency. “These were our first steps in the dance audience.” And the new record that appears this Friday (March 21) is to remember.

Abroad, they are always on the road as a Bavarian “Balkan Party Punks”, said Dettl, who recently performed with his band in Kazakhstan or Estonia. “When cultural exchange happens, it has something magical.”

Eleven songs are on the album, where this time the successful combination of Bavarian brass music, pop and ska mixes a good pinch of Balkan sound. Thematically, the band moves between its now almost legendary party sound and social criticism.

“Goassn size” and “devil dance”

The “Goaßnmand”, published in advance as a single, celebrates friendship, good company and beer, “Teufelstanz” warns of no longer talking to each other in society and against it. All texts are of course Bavarian again.

Since 2007, the Upper Bavaria – all of them studied musicians – have been doing a common thing. After they had already turned the understanding of brass music upside down in Bavaria, they made the Germany -wide breakthrough in 2013 in the pre -selection for the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC).

“The most beautiful appearances” in small beer tents

He still prefers to play in small, Bavarian beer tents today, said Dettl. These are “the most beautiful appearances”, also because you often get to know Bavaria and Bayern there very differently. The audience’s age range is great, he says: “The grandpa with the grandson”. And since the Corona pandemic he has taken a greater emotionality among the audience: “radical, emotional” – in all directions. The audience had become more exuberant and melancholy at the same time.

For Dettl, Labrassbanda is not the only musical project and other bandmates are musically alien from time to time. If in doubt, however, everyone would know where they belong, the singer said: “Labrass banda is our home port.”