Publication : NDRKultur By : Juliane Reil Date : 25.05.2023
Ute Lempers Interpretationen von Marlene Dietrich sind legendär. Ihr neues Album “Time Traveler” ist tatsächlich eine Zeitreise.
Die Zeitreise führt bis ins Jahr 2000. Damals schrieb Ute Lemper zum ersten Mal eigene Songs. Aber sie gingen verloren. Bekannt blieb sie daher als Interpretin – von Kurt Weill und Bert Brecht, von Marlene Dietrich. Jetzt sind ihre frühen eigenen Songs aus der Versenkung aufgetaucht. Drei dieser Aufnahmen finden sich – leicht überarbeitet – auf “Time Traveler”, aber auch sieben neue Lieder wie das Titelstück.
Songs mit groovigem Lounge-Charakter
Die melancholisch-kraftvolle Stimme von Ute Lemper ist der Dreh- und Angelpunkt des neuen Albums. Teilweise schichtet sie sie zu Chören. Trotzdem hat die Musik Lounge-Charakter. Man stellt sie sich im Hintergrund einer Hotelbar vor, die Lemper – ganz Diva – vielleicht mit einem Glas in der Hand an die Bar gelehnt. Fast jedes Stück ist mit einem Groove unterlegt. Sogar wenn Lemper bei einem Stück stärker in Richtung Chanson geht.
Zehn Songs zwischen Jazz und Pop
Schauspielerin Ute Lemper sitzt verkleidet als Marlene Dietrich lasziv auf einem Barhocker.
Keine Frage, Ute Lemper ist eine ausdrucksstarke Sängerin. Und sie kennt ihre Rollen. Mal klingt sie sanft und verführerisch, dann wieder rau und hart. Sie wird begleitet von Schlagzeug, Bass, Gitarre, Klavier, manchmal von einem Saxophon. Und trotzdem ist es immer die Stimme, die den Songs etwas Besonderes verleiht. Zwischen Jazz und Pop changieren die zehn Songs.
Biografie zum 60. Geburtstag
Pünktlich zum 60. Geburtstag der Musikerin in diesem Jahr erscheint neben dem Album übrigens eine neue Biografie von Ute Lemper. “Die Zeitreisende” ist der Titel. Wie im Buch reflektiert Ute Lemper auch auf dem neuen Album über ihr Leben, wie sie sagt. Es seien persönliche Songs über Freude, Schmerz und Sehnsüchte.
Lemper als Singer-Songwriterin?
“Time Traveler” zeigt eine Ute Lemper, die wir vorher noch nicht kannten. Aber kommen wir ihr mit diesen Songs näher als mit ihren Interpretationen anderer? Aktuell ist Ute Lemper mit einem Liederabend zu Marlene Dietrich zu erleben. Und auch mit Musik von Astor Piazzolla. Dafür liebt sie ihr Publikum. Die Frage, die das Album “Time Traveler” stellt: Welche musikalische Richtung wird Ute Lemper als nächstes einschlagen? Ist das der Beginn von Ute Lemper, der Singer-Songwriterin?
Publication : NeuFutur Magazine
By: James McQuiston Posted on: May 25, 2023
Ute Lemper’s Time Traveler is one of the most fascinating songs we’ve covered in NeuFutur. The track adopts influences from mid-1970s easy listening, funk, and soul performers all while furthering an absolutely inimitable set of vocals. There are multiple layers here that will continue to yield new twists and turns each time one queues up the song. This is an experience much more than a simple pop track. What is most beautiful about Lemper’s latest is that it can be enjoyed as the artist statement it is, or it can be purely understood as fitting in among the most radio-friendly efforts from the era. Time Traveler has something for everyone who tucks in.
Publication: Neufutur By: James McQuiston Date: May 25, 2023
Ute Lemper’s Time Traveler is one of the most fascinating songs we’ve covered in NeuFutur. The track adopts influences from mid-1970s easy listening, funk, and soul performers all while furthering an absolutely inimitable set of vocals. There are multiple layers here that will continue to yield new twists and turns each time one queues up the song. This is an experience much more than a simple pop track. What is most beautiful about Lemper’s latest is that it can be enjoyed as the artist statement it is, or it can be purely understood as fitting in among the most radio-friendly efforts from the era. Time Traveler has something for everyone who tucks in.
Publication: Close-up Culture By: JAMES PRESTRIDGE Date: May 15, 2023
Iconic Chanteuse and dancer Ute Lemper joins us on Close-Up Culture to discuss her new album, Time Traveller.
Hi Ute, welcome to Close-Up Culture. I believe your journey to make your new album, Time Traveller, began some 23 years ago. What are your memories of writing this songs?
In the year 2000 I had just found new love with my partner Todd and started a new passage in life after a divorce and a few years in shows in the West End and on Broadway. I was touring with my album “Punishing Kiss” and was highly inspired to start writing songs myself. I was filled with ideas, lyrics, poetry and harmonies on my piano. Todd and I recorded the songs on a 16 track analog tape machine in his music studio in Chelsea. 2 years later we had switched to a protools set up and the old tapes disappeared for more than 20 years in the basement… until we discovered them again by coincidence.
Now a lifetime later, still together making and producing music, we had the old tapes carefully digitised and could not believe the originality of the old songs. By touching them up, partly re singing, partly keeping the youthful voice, blending old and new stories, laying a more contemporary sounding groove under it I suddenly found the inspiration to write music again.
The album shows a time warp, a wrinkle in time and a beautiful encounter with our younger selves, but at the end the new songs dominate as they express my more mature contemporary philosophy of life.
What was your journey like to make this album?
I wrote the new as much as the old songs on paper then at the piano, I play some keyboard and sing, then record a first version of the songs. After this core is identified we start producing, inviting musicians to play and programming some elements. I sing many harmony vocals , I love a wall of vocals, harmonised in a cool fashion. I learned to be a protools engineer and can execute edits and mixes myself and I love creating the work from scratch to a perfection. But the emotion of the track rules at the end.
What kind of experience can audiences expect from Time Traveller?
It is a mature adult contemporary poetic journey in a contemporary sound picture. The songs are sung intimately but also express great joy of life in accordance with beautiful thoughts about the quickly passing time.
I understand the opening title track is accompanied by a cutting edge video that uses AI. What can you reveal about this?
I asked a great team in Berlin to experiment with newest technology, so you see me in different ages walking through a hundred years of history in time.
What are your hopes for the album and the impact it has on audiences?
I hope to show that making music and creating new even cutting edge creations continues also for us older generations. We can still come up with something wonderful that can influence the younger generations and my attempt was to build a bridge from yesterday into tomorrow. The songs have a certain sensitivity that speaks of a lived life.
Click here to read article on Close-up Culture site.
VENTS Magazine recently had the pleasure of interviewing German musical legend Ute Lemper about her new music video, “Time Traveler.” The interview can be read below!
Your music video has incredibly detailed graphics that take viewers on a journey through time. What inspired the story behind this music video?
The idea was to be a time traveler, through a hundred years of history from the past into the future. I am experiencing time running too fast or sometimes stalling in my own life, wondering about our planet’s evolution and the years marking our faces.
Important human beings appear to accelerate progress and contribute to culture and humanity, others destroy it all over again. Is it a cycle of history, simply the human condition? The video is a fun movie, that takes us on a visual adventure enhanced by AI, a journey through time and into our mind. The song is sensual and offers philosophical ideas.
How has your German heritage influenced your sound?
In this kind of repertoire of soul music with a contemporary edge and my own songs I do not see any specific influence from my German background. It is not theatrical music or chanson; this one is straight from the heart and simply vibey. The storytelling, though, might always have a certain edge and depth due to my heritage. I always search deeper and try to poeticize the mysteries of life.
Has your history in musical theater impacted your music career today? If so, how?
I spent years on stage in shows and theatrical plays, but always was the happiest when I could dedicate my time to my own creations, when I do not have to fit into anything but can be utterly free in my creation. A sparkle of an idea often starts off an entire project and it’s wonderful to go all the way, without any compromises.
How has the theme of change demonstrated in “Time Traveler” affected your own journey in the music industry?
Ha, I definitely have seen the evolution from vinyl in the 80s to CDs in the 90s, to digital distributions over the last 10 years. The change in musical production from tape to Pro Tools and the worrisome disappearance of the human performance in its imperfection in the contemporary pop music. Where will this lead? Will my children still have an ear for raw and authentic performances? I do not mind the minimalist approach of many contemporary pop productions, but I do mind the absence of humans giving their soul into the music.
How does “Time Traveler” differ from music that you have released previously?
The album carries only my own songs in lyrics and music. I had composed many of the previous albums but mainly to poetic literature, like Bukowski, Neruda and Coelho. These songs have my own words. It is not really jazz or cabaret, chanson or lied; they have their own language in a soulful universe.
What is next for you and your career?
I just wrote a substantial autobiography, now published in German and soon to be licensed in other languages. I am thinking of conceiving a show with stories about my life from cold war Berlin to Paris in the poetry clubs and New York in many transitions since 9/11, all accompanied by the essential songs expressing those moments in time.
What can you tell us about your upcoming album?
In the year 2000 I had just found new love with my partner Todd and started a new passage in life after a divorce and a few years in shows in the West End and on Broadway. I was touring with my album Punishing Kiss and was highly inspired to start writing songs myself. I was filled with ideas, lyrics, poetry, and harmonies on my piano. Todd and I recorded the songs on a 16 track analog tape machine in his music studio in Chelsea. Two years later we had switched to a Pro Tools set up and the old tapes disappeared for more than 20 years in the basement… until we discovered them again by coincidence. Now a lifetime later, still together making and producing music, we had the old tapes carefully digitised and could not believe the originality of the old songs. By touching them up, partly re-singing, partly keeping the youthful voice, blending old and new stories, laying a more contemporary sounding groove under it, I suddenly found the inspiration to write music again.
The album shows a time warp, a wrinkle in time and a beautiful encounter with our younger selves, but at the end the new songs dominate as they express my more mature contemporary philosophy of life.
What is your favorite lyric from “Time Traveler”, and why?
In these dark times, the eyes start to see…. If you move the wall sideways it becomes a bridge Was there ever innocence, I am fine with its loss I am a time traveler looking for you, here to save you
What have you learned from your time as a musician that has helped you with your upcoming album?
Follow the instinct, make space for the words inside the music and the silence within.
Invite incredible talent to contribute and shine.
Make the music embrace humanity in its beauty.
It is a teamwork, but stay faithful and truthful to your vision.
