WINTER 2 was founded in Hamburg in 2020 by Maximilian Wittwer and Christoph Romahn; for gigs, they are reinforced by guests. The album under the same name on Italic is their debut. The drums shuffle fluidly, the bass twang!t, pushes itself forward as a melody-leading instrument and ensnares the vocals, the guitar, which sees itself as a rhythmic companion, breaks out now and then into a golden-curled jubilant, the synthesizer intersperses melancholic Juno pads and paints anthemic counter-figures to its fellow players with preset sounds. No streaking, no droning, the production is clear and transparent. WINTER 2 are elegiac, contemplative reflections on driving, laconic pop music. The instrumentation is bass, keyboard, guitar and drums, and the music traces movements from the mid-1980s, the moment when pop finally left the rehearsal room. Everything got better. You could programme the drum computer at the kitchen table in daylight, write lyrics in the sun in front of the ice cream parlour, rehearse the music aloud in the Toyota Starlet and learn how to play together on stage in front of an audience. Out of the mustiness of the unventilated cellar, the standing damp mixture of fallen beer bottles, overflowing ashtrays and pelvic stones from next door. Instead, a promise! In the mid-1980s, this was called "Hochschul-Pop" in Düsseldorf, Bielefeld or Offenburg, and for some reason it pushed its way to Hamburg. The attempt to invent a different, a new pop music from the three chords and the unwieldy High German. Nourished by the songwriting that had previously spilled over the Channel from Manchester and Glasgow, a bit of London too; in other words post-post-punk, newpop, its quiet thoughtfulness too, in doubt in a minor key, the moment shortly before pop music began to swing more and more towards the end of the 1980s. Music and lyrics unite in an impressionistic endeavour, a warming light dances on the surface in love, making WINTER 2 our favourite record.