Four Bands

Four bands, none yet famous, competing for a phone company jingle in 2014. Kuult had just formed and was somehow already playing packed rooms. Ocean Stereo from Hamburg mixed piano-pop with something heavier. Getting Private in Public—four childhood friends from Munich doing indie folk. Pari San was the strange one, a dreampop duo from Freiburg where the singer’s voice went through samplers and loops until it became something else.

Twelve hours to take someone else’s template and make it yours. The contest is just machinery at this point—voting and sponsorship and whatever. But the bands showed up anyway.

I don’t know what happened to any of them. The post is from 2014 and that’s far enough that the trail goes cold. Maybe they broke up. Maybe one of them made it. Maybe they’re still playing small clubs in their cities. This is just the moment I happened to find them.