Simone White

Hawaii-born singer-songwriter Simone White plays the indie keyboard like no other: from simple acoustic folk to Americana to electronic indie. She has not only released eight critically acclaimed albums—German Rolling Stone magazine called her “one of the truly great American songwriters”—but has also written several songs for film and television. In addition to collaborations with Fol Chen, Reinier Zonneveld, Dive Index, The Wedding Present, and The Happening, she has toured with Little Dragon, Victoria Williams, Mark Eitzel, Andrew Bird, Nouvelle Vague, and Thao, among others.

After a ten-year break from touring, she is finally returning to Europe and the UK. At the Musikbar im Bunker, she will present new material from her upcoming album “Semaphores” as well as excerpts from her current album “Letter to the Last Generation” and fan favorites.

"Simone White has a voice like ether. It's sweetly airy and hypnotic. Those who hear her are drawn into a strangely beautiful, glittering world where nothing seems real. " – NPR

“The enchanting singer Simone White is known as much for her whispered vocals as for her intelligent songwriting.”
– THE HUFFINGTON POST

Daniel Benyamin

Since childhood, Daniel Benyamin has had an insatiable longing to combine different genres of music. He revered J. S. Bach's melancholic masterpieces from his parents' living room just as much as obscure wave bands, whose records he had to buy secretly because rock music was forbidden at home. 
This ambivalence is clearly evident in the songs on his second solo album, which the composer, singer of Sea + Air, and drummer of Jumbo Jet will release on Ghost Palace Records in spring 2026 and present at Schleuse Zwei.
The album plays with different extremes: it is both minimalist and opulent, catchy and atmospheric. Daniel Benjamin's craft is the great songwriting of the 70s and 80s. You can experience the musician live, solo, and as a multi-instrumentalist on his joint tour with Simone White.

Presented by ByteFM and Kaput Magazine

Supported by:
Initiative Musik
The Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media

On Thursday, March 12, guitarist Philipp Wisser will present his new contemporary jazz album, “5th Dimension,” at the Musikbar im Bunker. He will be accompanied at this release concert by Christoph Klenner on tenor saxophone, Conrad Noll on bass, and Daniel Guerrero on drums.

The Philipp Wisser Quartet developed the material over two years and now brings it to the stage with structural clarity and risk-taking interplay. Modern grooves, lyrical lines, and open improvisations characterize a focused, independent band sound. A wide variety of musical roots, themes, and moods are interwoven with a clear, reduced aesthetic and a curious playfulness.

“Philipp Wisser is not only a great guitarist, but also a composer and architect of atmospheric sound collages. He and his magnificent trio create a self-contained work that is sure to be exciting and entertaining, and not just for guitarists. Highly recommended.”
Tobias Hoffmann (Echo Jazz 2015, WDR Jazz Prize 2016)

“I consider Philipp to be one of the most creative young voices in Germany, both as a player and as a composer.” 
Philipp van Endert
 

Supported by:
Initiative Musik
The Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media

On Thursday, March 26, Asmus Tietchens, pioneer of electronic music, will take us on a journey into reductionist compositions at Schleuse Zwei. DJ Zipo will play a DJ set before and after the concert.

Tietchens, born in Hamburg in 1947, was introduced to musique concrète and electronic composition at the age of ten through the night program of Norddeutscher Rundfunk. He has been a freelance musician since 1975; his first solo album was released in 1980. He is also part of Radio Gagarin, a program on Freier Sender Kombinat Hamburg, and gives seminars on environmental recordings at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences.

Tietchens began experimenting with a tape recorder in 1965, recording tape loops and condensing them into collages. Synthesizers were added in 1971. After a brief rhythmic-harmonic interlude in the early 1980s, a regular industrial album was released in 1984 on United Dairies with Formen letzter Hausmusik (Forms of Last Home Music), which for the first time validly formulated Tietchens' primary musical interests: noises are processed, sometimes distorted beyond recognition, and placed in new contexts appropriate to them. The finished composition results not least from the nature of the source material. Tietchens has explored a wide variety of sources for his process, including water, human voices, and audio tapes pulled manually past the tape head.

Since the turn of the millennium, he has been working more intensively with the synthesizer again, which Tietchens uses purely as a sound source for his reductionist, minimalist compositions.

To date, Tietchens has twice been awarded the Karl Sczuka Prize sponsored by Südwestrundfunk (SWR): in 2003 for Heidelberger Studien 1-6 and in 2006 for Trois Dryades.

DJ Zipo's (Till Kniola) sets consist of ambient/field recording/noise collages. Kniola runs the aufabwegen label and the mail order business of the same name for noise music. He is active as an author and curator in the field of experimental electronics and noise music and heads the Geraeuschwelten Festival in Münster, which is produced in collaboration with WDR 3 Kulturradio.

Kniola has always worked closely with electronic music pioneer Asmus Tietchens and is the publisher of the first comprehensive monograph of his work. In 2016, at the invitation of the German Music Council, the label's 50th release was published in the form of a personal anthology of noise music in Germany as a book/double CD to mark its 20th anniversary.

Kniola oversees the EDITION DEGEM label of the German Society for Electroacoustic Music (DEGEM) and heads the Ministry of Detours in the Kingdom of Elgaland-Vargaland (KREV), a project by Swedish artists Leif Elggren and Carl Michael von Hausswolff.  

Taroug is the solo project of German-Tunisian producer, drummer, and composer Tarek Zarroug. Rooted in the suburbs of the Tunisian desert and raised in Germany, Taroug's music blends contrasting worlds into a unique soundscape.
Pulsating organic drums meet rare, exotic instruments from around the world, interwoven with field recordings, analog synthesizers, and hypnotic vocals.
Following the release of “Perpetual” (EP, 2020) and acclaimed remixes for artists such as Archive (UK), Taroug released his debut album “Darts & Kites” on Denovali Records. This was followed by appearances at international festivals such as Tallinn Music Week in 2025.

On his new album “Chott,” which the musician will present exclusively at the Schleuse Zwei music bar, he explores his Tunisian roots. 
Named after Chott El Djerid, a huge salt lake in southern Tunisia, the ten-track album revolves around personal history and the search for identity. It is about heritage and memory.
“Chott” is a conceptual, contrasting work, characterized by minimalist melancholy to raw, bass-heavy intensity. It combines traditional instruments with contemporary electronic textures, drawing connections between the past and the present. 
Cultural depth and intimacy arise primarily through personal influences, such as vocal samples from family members or an original Arabic poem recited by Taroug's father.
Beyond these intimate dimensions, the musician works with associative, sensual, repetitive soundscapes.

Supported by:
Initiative Musik
The Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media

The Frankfurt sound activist enjoys visiting cemeteries. In these peaceful and idyllic places, he finds the distance he needs to reflect on transience and contemplate the afterlife as a concrete place. His debut album RUINENKAMPF stems from the same way of thinking—distancing oneself just enough to get straight to the point.

Released on the Hamburg-based quality label Bureau B, Das Kinn embarks on a musical tour de force through the ruins of our time on his album. Using kickbox phonetics and an electronic armada, he guides us through haunting soundscapes somewhere between DAF, the Kosmische Kuriere, and Frankfurt's Bahnhofsviertel.
Beats at full throttle, bones rattling, the organ droning. Warm synth lines played by cold hands. A saxophone ponders the aftermath. Hymns for demolition; music for a solemn demise.

For almost two decades now, Toben Piel has been sending out knocking signals and warning sounds from the catacombs around Frankfurt's bank towers in various constellations: as part of the music performance duo Les Trucs, as co-operator of the tape label MMODEMM, with works for theater and radio.
His solo project Das Kinn now allows him to explore the interface between New Age and post-punk, hiccups and singing. Don't miss it!

If you would describe the soundtrack of your life as wistful, nostalgic indie electronica, then Schleuse Zwei is the place to be on Thursday, May 28. That's when RIP Swirl will take us back to the indie days of yesteryear in the finest shoegaze style.

In his sound palette, the up-and-coming multi-instrumentalist and producer RIP Swirl, aka Luka Seifert, combines his work as a producer and DJ in the Berlin club scene with his lifelong relationship with the guitar and his analog approach to recording. The result is a canvas of atmospheric soundscapes created from fragments of shoegaze, trip-hop, and nostalgic atmospheres, evoking images of teenage angst and nighttime car rides in the suburbs.

Luka Seifert mostly works solo, with all instruments, production, and mixing originating from his home studio in Berlin. However, he outsourced the mastering of his album Perfectly Blue to Beau Thomas (Aphex Twin, Burial) and features a number of guest vocalists, including Tanukichan, aka error of a.s.o., Maria Somerville, and Winter.

RIP Swirl's music has found fans among everyone from Gen Z alt-kids to techno purists. Since then, he has become a close collaborator and producer for several up-and-coming female singers, including Ydegirl from Copenhagen and Ariana Manmoon from untitled (halo).

Luka continues to work entirely in his home studio in Berlin, where he loses himself in his playground of musical instruments and is endlessly creative without a fixed plan.

Supported by:
Initiative Musik
The Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media

Oddisee (Amir Mohamed el Khalifa)is a Washington, D.C.–based rapper, producer, and bandleader acclaimed for his thoughtful lyricism, rich musicality, and genre-blending approach to hip-hop. Born to a Sudanese father and an African-American mother, and raised between the D.C./Maryland areaand summers inSudan, Oddisee brings a distinctly
global perspective to his work—one that explores identity, belonging, social consciousness, and personal growth with clarity and emotional depth.
Musically, Oddisee operates at the intersection ofhip-hop, jazz, soul, funk, and go-go, combining live instrumentation with sample-based production and incisive storytelling. His Sudanese heritage plays a subtle but vital role in shaping his worldview, informing a body of work that resonates across cultures while remaining grounded in livedexperience. This cross-cultural sensibility has helped establish Oddisee as a singular voice within contemporary independent hip-hop.