The Warsaw-born musician BALBINA is known for her cinematic art-pop sound and stands out pleasantly from the mainstream: Words, images and sound go hand in hand for the artist, her productions create spaces of perception in which her melodies are at home. Her back catalog proves that her niche is by no means too offbeat, but appeals to a broad and interested audience: BALBINA has released four albums as well as two EPs and mostly performs with the German film orchestra Babelsberg. Her single "Das Gefühl ist tot.", released in February 2024, provides a first glimpse of the fourth longplayer Infinity Tunes, which is expected at the end of 2024.
"Das Gefühl ist tot.", her first release in four years, is a homage to digital apathy, according to BALBINA: "Everything I observe, write, formulate and stage is an attempt to capture the present. We often live as if we were immortal, we plan years in advance and don't even notice how beautiful the sunset is right now."
The artist made her debut in 2014 with the EP Nichtstun, followed by her first album Über das Grübeln in the same year and made her breakthrough in 2017 with the long-player Fragen über Fragen. In 2018, BALBINA was awarded the German Music Writer's Prize for "Best Lyricist". After that, the musician reset everything to zero: "I wanted to be free. To free myself from structures that challenged me to fight forever."
The result was Punkt, the artist's third album: melancholy about the relentless transience of existence met powerful emancipation anthems and bittersweet confrontation with her own weaknesses. On the album released in 2020, she sang not only in German but also in English for the first time.
The album was presented for the first time at a sold-out performance at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, where BALBINA was accompanied by her band musicians and the Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg. The extraordinary Hearing Experience under the dome of the Zeiss Planetarium in Berlin, where the musician impressed with monologues and spherical visuals, also made it clear that BALBINA had matured with "Punkt." and had found the strongest version of herself to date.
A logical development, because genre boundaries have always been completely irrelevant to the musician:
"I think in the German-speaking world, people think a lot in pigeonholes in order to clearly delineate content. But art actually thrives on the freedom to create."
BALBINA's versatility - despite or perhaps because of her sophisticated music - makes her one of the most promising talents and immense pop hopefuls in Germany, who manages to unite supposed opposites with a confident naturalness - she toured with Herbert Grönemeyer, was also part of the rap scene and performed with Die Atzen.
"I used to have to fight my creative ideas through the authorities to make sure they reached the listener intact," says BALBINA. That's history - she has long since established herself as her own boss.
To ring in her new release cycle live, the artist invites you to two larger than life shows in 2025 with newly created sets, costumes and orchestra - one in Berlin at the Philharmonie, the other in Hamburg at the Elbphilharmonie - which, thanks to BALBINA's mindset, will not lack subtlety amidst the grandeur.
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AB 52€