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FRIEDE MERZ
Everything that can be said about Friede Merz always has to include the opposite. She‘s a gentle extremist. To play with extremes you have to know them very well...and always be willing to move on.
Raised in a tiny village in Germany, she can’t remember a time where she didn’t wanna get far away and always further away from it. She was looking for a home in classical music whilst studying in Mannheim and tried the same later with jazz during her studies in Berlin just to realize that one home alone could never be enough, neither geographically nor musically.
That’s what Friede’s debut single Soho is all about, always being on the move, looking for familiarity within the outland. A few years ago Friede fled Berlin with a broken heart to spend some time in London. The distraction tactic turned into a momentous shift in direction.
In Soho’s drag pubs Friede found new inspiration and in the infamous Denmark Street, name giver of her upcoming EP, the sound she had been looking for. And finally the people to refine her recordings she made at Nalepa Studios Berlin: mixing engineer Alex Killpartick and the mastering-goddess herself: Mandy Parnell.
In the meantime having arrived in Hamburg, Friede have herself a lot of time for her debut. No manager, no label and most of all no things done halfway.
Friede produced both her recordings and the music video for Soho herself: “To be honest I couldn’t imagine it any other way.
I’m driven by the need to always improve myself and try new things. And having a visual component in my creative output now is something I’m very grateful for.”
The elimination of gay bars in Soho and questioning what we assume to be „natural“ is the pink thread running though the music video for Soho. With this gentle voice, loud guitars and peaceable harmonies music itself becomes a shelter.
And maybe the only home Friede would agree to commit to.
