A spotlight interview with Ella of Hamburg band Die Stöerung, ahead of their appearance at LOUD WOMEN Fest Hamburg on 28 February.
Who’s in the band, and what do you all play?
Annika (Drums), Ella (Lead-Vocals, Guitar), Malena (Bass, Backing-Vocals), Mara (Lead-Guitar)
Describe your sound in three words.
cool, driven, dreamy
Tell us about your music
Our next single ‘Mess With Me’ releases alongside our debut-EP on March 27th. It’s our homage to the pop-punk bands we listened to as teens. It’s a badass tune and really fun to performe live. We’re super excited to release our first consecutive body of work for everyone to hear but also to work on new songs. It’s that song in our set, that gets the crowd moving. It’s fun and feels light-hearted but actually comes from quite a contrary place. Mara wrote the guitar hook on her own a couple of years ago without having anything specific in mind. She showed me the recording a while back, before I joined the band and I loved it. The lyrics for the song were initially a ballad I had written before I joined the band. When we finally got together to work on our set, those two parts just clicked and made a lot of sense. We were really euphoric when that happened.
What’s your local scene like — and how do you fit in, or stir it up?
Even though there’s a lot going on in Hamburg, music wise, there are sadly not that many FLINTA* bands – which was one of our main motivations to band together. On the other hand: it doesn’t feel like a political act of protest to be together. Since we’ve all been friends for years, it feels very natural to share a stage and collaborate on music.
If you could rip up the rulebook of the music industry, what’s the first thing you’d rewrite?
I wished that people in the mainstream cared more for live music and would show up for gigs more often. But for that to happen, shows would have to be more accessible – financially and otherwise.
Dream lineup: you + three other acts (alive, dead, or imaginary). Who’s on the bill?
Hole, Paramore and Die Spitz.