honest and inspiring mind-opener!
author: the de.talented ms. ripley
this may be the best oeuvre, meike has given birth so far. fortunately for us, she still is a young one... "live love travel free" comes along with hard-to-forget hooks, intelligent lyrics and a very well balanced instrumentation. this album still is somewhat hand-made (the songs come out nicely, when meike performs them live & alone) but also benefits from the playful use of a xylophone or complex arrangements of sounds.
if you ever have the chance to listen to those "poems(maj)", leave the world wide web and enter the club, 'cause this one here will make your day. promised.
Read more...
author: lyric-fetishist with a bent for superheroine drawers
On “Live Love Travel Free”, the title seems to be program with Meike Koester as she takes her audience on a trip through life with all its confusing cross-roads and blurred lines and love that waits behind the most scaring bends, and to beautiful, distant and magical places where Koester introduces you to “jesters”, “travellers on a mission and free spirits in chains”, giants, still haunting ex-lovers, blind men in train station waiting rooms, The Fox and The Little Prince,…
From time to time you will have to punctuate your trip to euphorically jump and dance around your car crying “Yes! Exactly! That`s what I always meant to say but was missing the right words! I feel exactly the same here!” or to pull off the road just so you can listen closer to what she says.
And what she has to say hits you straight in your deepest core, is easy to relate to and comes in a language that equally touches sense and sensibility, using beautiful and unique images like “I want a straight line I can meander around” (“Tell the Universe”) “I can see my skeleton move like a walking sketch from a medical book” (“Visitor”), “my head feels like some giant`s basketball it sometimes scores but mostly hits the wall” (“Giant`s Basketball”) or “sometimes it`s just a fine line between committing and not preventing a crime so tell me which truth you prefer” (“Westbound Train”). Her words come in an expressive, enchanting voice that sometimes seems to reveal the ability to laugh at herself (and an incomparable groovy rhythm!) on “Tell the Universe”, a powerful, really cool and almost hysteria-like dimension on “World of Illusions” and this beautiful sing-me-to-sleep-like quality on “When Stars Are Falling”.
To avoid rear-end collision it is advisable and absolutely necessary that you pull off the road before the first notes of that drop dead beautiful guitar on “Stop Haunting Me” enchant you and Koester takes you to that magical place where you meet The Fox and The Little Prince, for you will be way too spell-bound to take heed of the traffic then…
The only thing missing on this album is one of Koester`s really rocking “I play the drums on my guitar” interludes, but then I guess you have to check her out live for that! (And it gets plain after the first two bars that she has an amazing and grooving command of both instruments, anyway).
And I am sure you will find yourself singing these songs as daily affirmations in front of your mirror (Meike, please feel free to charge me for that ;-)), while waiting in long lines in supermarkets, the next time you are caught in the struggle against your own inner barriers or your talkative reason that does not allow your feelings to get a word in edgeways or in really any whatsoever joyful and moving moment on your own journey through life :)
When Koester drops you home safely after that one hour “Live Love Travel Free” trip, the only thing left to wish for is that she will reach her destination just as safe and sound…
Read more...
A Thumb's eye view of the universe
author: Edo Castro Bassist and Composer
If a musician could be a Physicist Meike Koester would be Einstein. Depending on where you are in the universe, your view would be quite different from someone else's prospective. Meike insists on telling the rest of the world that her part of the universe is just as magical and somehow much more interesting despite the human dilemma of existence. Eloquently she remains connected to the everyday conundrum of Life, Love and the pursuit of happiness. Live Love Travel Free is a wonderful thumb's eye view of Meike's world. Oh by the way she rocks too. Whahoo!
Read more...