Kalistani Major History

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Republican Pictures Releases "Postamt at Luxon"
Concert film covers tour with Banjax culminating in GMHoF show
Kaliburg, Ananto
January 18, 5335


Postamt closes tour with sell out performance at the Global Music Hall of Fame

The concert movie "Postamt at Luxon" opened last week to excellent reviews and high attendance. Postamt completed their tour of the Republic last July, with the sellout performance at Luxon's Global Music Hall of Fame. "Postamt at Luxon" covers the entire tour, and includes four full performances of tourmates Banjax, who played not only three songs from their new Album "4900" but also covered a Seizure Song "Lucid Dreams" for the packed crowds (Banjax brought along a rhythm guitarist, Colleen Donnelly, who has subsequently joined the band full time). The movie highlights both the stresses of touring and preparing for a series of shows back to back to back, but also the strains it can place on the relationship between band mates as they attempt to give an excellent performance of the same music each night.

"We went into the tour thinking 'Hey, this will be great. We can take what we did in the studio and put it on the stage," said Henry Gottlieb of Postamt. "Wrong. About three shows in we were like 'My god, and we got to play these songs how many more times this month?' It was a real marathon, and the drugs definitely helped."

"Touring with Postamt was a real experience," said Banjax' Martin Coyle. "I mean they are such good musicians, and yet, I think they would just much prefer staying in the studio and making their creations. Especially toward the end, you could tell it was beating them."

[Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHCzvyz9kFw]
Banjax covering Seizure's Deeptrack "Lucid Dreams" at the third Vrassa City show during the tour depicted in "Postamt at Luxon[/align]

The movie covers the steadily declining morale of the members of Postamt, most of which the fans were blissfully unaware of. It focuses primarily on footage of the band on the road, and is narrated by vocalist April Khyber, who kept a tour journal that outlined the early exhilaration, the rigor of the grind, and the exhaustion as they went from town to town and played several shows in each place. By the end of the movie, the band is for the most part not speaking to one another, as nerves get frayed. Finally, keyboardist and sequencer technician Daryl Thomas calls a sit down and the group talks about the things that are stressing them out, most of which has to do with proximity to so many people on the tour, (April Khyber has already stated a number of times that she is "..seriously introverted" and it seems that her anxiety is also taking a toll on Gottlieb and Thomas) and it is decided that this will be likely the last major tour for Postamt. "But," Thomas says in film, "We have just this one more show to do, this one chance to really shine. Let's try to make it our best."

And indeed, they did. The movie ends with them beginning the final concert, clips from which have been playing throughout the movie, along with Banjax performances filmed at different stops during the tour, and over the closing credits plays their grand finale, the extremely hi-tempo, almost dubstep RF tune "A Republican Anthem", which at points dissolves into noise, and is the closest the band gets to the sounds of their Noise Alternative Openers. Fans know what happened as a result of the tour: in July, the band went on indefinite hiatus, and Gottlieb and Khyber began a semi-public relationship, while Thomas is currently working with his side band called Friendship Ark. Meanwhile, Banjax has released their debut album, 4900, which has since peaked at Number 6 on the hot album chart, vindicating the band and the fans for sticking with them this entire time. This movie then serves as a prologue to the present, and presents a very personal picture of the pressures of a touring band, as they try to keep the energy that went into the making of their record, and the love that fans have shown them this whole time.

At the end of the day, we see a band as individual people, with their own insecurities and anxieties, as well as individual personalities, all of which they put aside each night to play a 90 minute set. We can see how a tour can weld a group and sharpen their sound to the point of virtuosity, in the case of perpetually touring fan-favorites Banjax, and how it can tear a band apart, like it does to the creatively minded and progressive electronic band Postamt. Khyber's narration provides many poignant insights, some sweet moments, and plenty of behind the scenes context for the story, and keeps it light and on track, though the imagery often pushes back against that. The cinematography and sound are top notch, and several moviegoers who attended the GMHoF show say it was like they were back at that concert again while watching it in the theater. All in all, it is a solid concert film from the inventers of the genre.

Check out one of the clips from "Postamt at Luxon," their single "Tell me Am I Right?", live, and then go check out the film from Republican Pictures, in association with Postamt, Banjax and KMI Records.

[Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B8D6BRCVrQ]
Postamt performs "Tell me Am I Right?" at the Global Music Hall of Fame in early July, recorded for "Postamt at Luxon"[/align]