Crime & the City Solution start UK/EU tour to support new album out now on Mute
Simon Bonney
(Photos by Martyn Goodacre and Steve Gullick) Following the release of their first LP in 10 years on Mute, the Berlin-based collective Crime & the City Solution gets on the road UK/EU tour. The new “The Killer” album is out on CD, vinyl and as digital download or streaming.
The new Crime & the City Solution album began life as a PhD application that came to life when the band’s core members’ nomadic lifestyle put on pause by the pandemic. Simon Bonney and Bronwyn Adams found themselves stuck in their native Australia, under one of the world’s strictest lockdowns. “Naturally”, says Simon, “I sat and I pieced together a PhD application about decision making in Afghanistan in the late 80s. But as it turned out, it was actually more of a record than it was a PhD.”
The PhD and, by turn, the album found inspiration from Bonney’s work delivering aid programs across the Indo-Pacific region. Through that work, he visited places with high levels of violence and the album, in part, acted as a way in which to process the effect that turmoil has had on his psyche, of the “dead bodies in my dreams,” that he sings about in the title track. He explains, “There’s no mention of American decision making in Afghanistan on the album, but in terms of subject matter there’s a lot that’s pretty similar; a lot of the record is about loss of faith. There’s a veneer of normalcy and civilization that people hold onto until they just can’t hold on anymore, I’m interested in normalcy that exists within what we would consider to be extraordinary situations.”
While the idea came from Simon Bonney and Bronwyn Adams, the musical aspect was created by the combination of artists that became the second Berlin-lineup of Crime & the City Solution. Core members Simon Bonney and Bronwyn Adams were joined by Frederic Lyenn (piano, bass, synth), Donald Baldie (guitar), Georgio Valentino (synth, guitar), Chris Hughes (drums, percussion) and Joshua Murphy (piano, guitar), and for the first time they worked with a producer, Martin J. Fiedler, who also added synth and mellotron to the album.
Tour dates Crime & the City Solution
*All dates – supported by Joshua Murphy.
- 23/11/2023: Haacht, BE – Can’t Live In a Living-Room
- 24/11/2023: London, UK – The Moth Club
- 25/11/2023: Bristol, UK – The Cube Cinema
- 26/11/2023: Colchester, UK – Colchester Arts Centre
- 29/11/2023: Paris, FR – La Boule Noire
- 30/11/2023: Geneva, CH – L’Usine
- 1/12/2023: Karlsruhe, DE – P8
- 2/12/2023: Ebensee, AT – Kino Ebensee
- 3/12/2023: Zagreb, HR – Vintage Industrial
- 4/12/2023: Milano, IT – Arci Bellezza
- 5/12/2023: Munich, DE – Muffatwerk
- 6/12/2023: Prague, CZ – Fuchs2
- 7/12/2023: Budapest, HU – Instant
- 8/12/2023: Linz, AT – Stadtwerkstatt
- 9/12/2023: Poznan, PL – 2Progi
- 10/12/2023: Warsaw, PL – Niebo
- 12/12/2023: Dresden, DE – Chemiefabrik
- 13/12/2023: Hamburg, DE – Hafenklang
- 14/12/2023: Copenhagen, DK – BETA
- 15/12/2023: Oslo, NO – Salt
- 16/12/2023: Stockholm, SE – HUS7
- 17/12/2023: Gothenburg, SE – Musikens Hus
- 19/12/2023: Berlin, DE – Urban Spree
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