For members of German techno marching band Meute, their raucous Friday afternoon in the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival’s Mojave tent was the cornerstone of a 20-city North American tour that took them from New York to Canada, then cities like Chicago, Detroit, Salt Lake City, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
“We saw about 16 states,” said trumpeter Thomas Burhorn, relaxing in the media tent with trombonist Johnny Johnson after their weekend 2 performance in Indio. “It was great.”
But the group does not let up after this five-week tour. They return to Europe on Saturday. On Wednesday they will release a new single and a live video of a recent performance in Paris, before a summer of performances at European festivals and then the release of their next album in November, Burhorn said.
“We’ve also shot some videos here on tour, and those will be out next month,” he added.
Neither Burhorn nor Johnson played in a school marching band. “In Germany, it’s not so usual for us to have marching bands at school,” Johnson said. “You can do a Spielmannszug, as it’s called in Germany, in your private life, but it’s not really a marching band, there are more flutes and other stuff.”
“Yeah, it’s more traditional,” Burhorn added, “not the weird stuff you have here.”
Their uniforms, however, come from a Spielmannszug. Each member’s jacket is slightly different and adorned with a personal collection of buttons and pins.
Despite the group’s 1 p.m. time slot on Friday, Meute filled the entire Mojave tent, performing to a crowd of at least 2,500 – far larger than either of their weekend sets. 1 (which were always well attended).
“The tent was full,” Burhorn said. “The stage manager told us he had never seen the Mojave stage crowded at 1 p.m. in the last six years.”
The group, originally from Hamburg, arranges techno, house and deep house works by well-known DJs and embellishes them with electronic beats created by traditional marching band instruments.
While most of his performances are just instrumentals, bass saxophonist Philip Morton Andernach took the mic for a rendition of Dennis Ferrer’s “Hey Hey” about 45 minutes into an hour-long set.
At the end of the set, all band members except drummer Markus “Onkel” Lingner – who walks on crutches – entered the crowd to play one last number, interacting with fans and continuing to perform outside. stage. Amid thunderous applause, he gave the crowd a victorious salute from the stage after the final notes of the performance.
St. Louis fans Abbey and Steve Hoard said they discovered the band via YouTube in 2020 when they had a “Corona-chella” at home during the lockdown.
“Now our family have been listening to Meute for two years. Our children know them and dance with them,” said Abbey Hoard.
Between them, the couple – who lived in Southern California and only moved to the Midwest two years ago – have attended at least 15 Coachella festivals. This day 1, they said, was something special.
“Oh my god, that was amazing – the best start to Coachella!” says the Abbey.
