Antilopen Gang - Open Air / AUSVERKAUFT

ANTILOPEN AIR 24
Presented by: Fritz (rbb)

Ladies and gentlemen, please hold on tight, impressive news is coming: The great Antilopen Gang has two (!) new albums in the can. Just in time for the band's 15th anniversary, Danger Dan, Koljah and Panik Panzer are not only releasing their sixth hip-hop record together, but also their long overdue punk rock debut. Both albums together make up the double LP "ALLES MUSS REPARIERT WERDEN" and emphatically bundle what has always gone hand in hand in the Antilope cosmos. "ALLES MUSS REPARIERT WERDEN" is not a simple crossover experiment, but the first half-rap-half-punk double album in music history. It will be released on September 13, 2024 on the band's own label Antilopen Geldwäsche.

The Antilopen Gang are not back - they would have had to be gone for that, and by no stretch of the imagination were they. Instead, events in the small state of ALG have been happening almost non-stop since 2020. The album "Abbruch Abbruch" had barely been released when the gang unceremoniously launched their own label and followed it up with the rapid-fire project "Adrenochrom" in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. The surprising and groundbreaking success of the Danger Dan solo record "Das ist alles von der Kunstfreiheit gedeckt" (This is all covered by artistic freedom) abruptly presented the Antelope money laundering system with unexpected challenges in spring 2021. The multi-award-winning piano album spent thirty-eight weeks in the German album charts, even shooting to number one in the meantime and giving Danger Dan a double sold-out Wuhlheide for his 40th birthday.

In the penumbra of his great triumphs, Panik Panzer has mutated more than ever in recent years into the label boss, manager and "DIY CEO" of his own posse. In 2023, he published his ludicrous book debut "Der beste Mensch der Welt" (The Best Man in the World) in passing. And Koljah has also been busy outside of the long-established band formation: his real rap collabo "Vielleicht ist es besser so" with Bobby Fletcher was released in 2022, and he has recently appeared increasingly as a co-host on the music podcast "Reflektor". In the midst of all these events, the "Gazellenbande" played a number of concerts, bagged the "Best New Music Business" label prize at the 2021 VUT Indie Awards and - that's right, this too - released the "Antilopen Geldwäsche Sampler 1" for the Christmas season. To sum up: the gang has always been there, steadily expanding its empire since 2020 - and yet the focus has often been on solo or side projects and typical Antilope experiments. It's high time for a new, fully-fledged album in a band constellation ... Or, even better: a double one.

Danger Dan, Koljah and Panik Panzer have been back in the studio together regularly since the fall of 2023. After all, someone has to pull the cart out of the mud, fix this messed-up world, this disgusting music landscape, this goddamn hip-hop circus. Within a very short space of time, various punk rock songs grew alongside new rap songs. After all, even punk - that corpse that had long since grown cold and was rotting in its coffin with a musty "DESTROY" shirt - was in urgent need of repair. Soon the concept of a double album was being discussed in the band plenum. At the end of a comparatively harmonious process by Antilope standards is "ALLES MUSS REPARIERT WERDEN", a mountain of music that can be divided into two fully-fledged records. If these records were released separately, they would probably be on two completely different vinyl shelves: one in the rap sector, the other in the punk section.

Anyone familiar with the Antilopen Gang knows that this is more a logical conclusion than a surprising reinvention: the "Lopis" are thoroughly punk-socialized, having performed for many years as hip-hop exotics in musty AJZ cellars. They were signed to JKP - the label of the Toten Hosen - and have already gathered together various punk rock legends on the guitar-driven bonus album "Atombombe auf Deutschland" in 2017 and always have a band in addition to a DJ on their tours. Nevertheless, there has never been a punk album in the classic sense - with new, stand-alone songs that are not interpretations of existing songs - in the Antilope legacy. Nor has there ever been a record that is exclusively sung or shouted, but not rapped. In a way, "ALLES MUSS REPARIERT WERDEN" is a kind of reinvention after all: After all, Danger Dan, Koljah and Panik Panzer have never played the punk rock card so offensively.

Such a milestone must of course be duly celebrated. Following this year's festival summer and exactly one day after the double album release, the Antilopen Gang will be staging an already sold-out concert at the Waschhaus Potsdam: The "ANTILOPEN AIR 24", the biggest show of their own in 15 years of band history. It will be interesting to see who will be more confident with all the brand new songs: The audience or the gang? One thing is clear: the summer will end with a big bang. Everything will have been repaired.