Cultivated Weltschmerz by 16 Horsepower in small tent

The world of the Kulturufer Festival surrendered to darkness and weight the entire saturday. The rain poured down almost continuously into the evening. Weather seemingly made for the four guys from 16 Horsepower. The band from Denver, Colorado, made the darkness last with their short concert, the darkness that had given most visitors the blues already during the daytime.

Oppressive despair and stoical drama lay close together when singer David Eugene Edwards spreads his messages. Moreover, the sound is heavy stuff and has little to do with entertainment. Based on sometimes floating, sometimes noisy galloping country-blues, drummer Jean-Yves Tola, Pascal Humbert on stand up bass and bass-guitar and guitarist Steve Taylor play their sombre game.

If, in addition, Edwards whispers sentences full of threat and pain into the old(-fashioned)est of his two (!) microphones - vocals distorted - horrifying scenarios, that are hard to escape, are conjured up. When you come to the point where you think you have been transported to the darkests of regions once and for all, it gets worse still. Far, far above his knees the singing preacher stretches out his old bandoneon during many a song, to help him shake off the burden he carries. Pure nightmare, enveloped in sound, drives someone into his own abyss.

16 Horsepower doesn't provide untroubled evenings. Concentrated they perform their show, hardly moving at all. David Eugene Edwards doesn't leave his stool, the technician has to put on his guitars or banjo.