Stereo Total

A witty French-German duo with a kitchen-sink approach to pop music, Berlin's Stereo Total combined punk, hip-hop, disco, '60s pop, and rock from France, the U.K., and the U.S., as well as electro and new wave elements, into their own intentionally subversive trashy style. Taking inspiration from all the reminders of socialism that East Berliners threw away in the early '90s, Françoise Cactus and Brezel Goring's early albums, such as 1995's Oh Ah!, were vibrant, noisy collages of styles relegated to the trash heap and tongue-in-cheek covers of hits ranging from KC & the Sunshine Band's "Get Down Tonight" to Salt-N-Pepa's "Push It." The duo's musical and cultural dumpster diving grew a little more sophisticated on 1999's My Melody and 2001's Musique Automatique, but retained the smart joie de vivre of their previous work. Later in the 2000s and 2010s, Stereo Total found different ways to express their trash-pop aesthetic. Along with quintessentially bold, cheeky efforts like 2016's Les Hormones, they expanded their repertoire to include composing film scores and more pensive albums such as 2019's Ah! Quel Cinema! All of Stereo Total's releases were as catchy as conventional pop and as committed to challenging society's norms as more traditional underground art.

From 🇩🇪 Germany