Jeans Team

Jeans Team took their name from a blue and white curved neon sign that hung on a street in the Wedding district above a shoe shop that had previously sold jeans. In 1996, Franz Schütte and Reimo Herfort helped to set up Galerie Berlintokyo, a multi-purpose gallery and performing artspace at Hackescher Markt in Berlin.^[3][4][5] Early shows performed in the venue by Schütte and Herfort's consisted of a pre-produced 45-minute video film called Baby, to which they contributed electronic sounds. The performance was recorded on VHS, were subsequently sold in the gallery with each video cassette inserted in a self-sewn bag made of denim.^[3][4][6]

In 1997, Gunther Kreis and Henning Watkinson joined founders Schütte and Herfort.^[7] In 1999, the Jeans Team recorded their debut album Ding Dong and after the release in June 2000 on Kitty-Yo they toured Germany..^[3] Following the release Jeans Team performed a number of concerts at music festivals including the 2000 Benicàssim Festival, 2001 Roskilde Festival and Melt Festival.^[8][9][10]

Jeans Team would split with Kitty-Yo records when long time collaborator Patrick Wagner left the company. They spent 2002 and 2003 without a label working on their second album. During this time, they were featured on John Peel Sessions at Maida Vale, prior to a multi-date tour of Russia organised by the Goethe Institute.^[11][4] In 2005, after joining Wagner's new record label Louisville Records, Jeans Team released Musik von oben. By the end of the year, Jeans Team had recorded and released the album Kopf auf.^[12]

By 2009, Watkinson left the group citing fatigue.^[13] Keine Melodien was featured in a commercial for the new Volkswagen Golf later in the same year.^[14]

Schütte and Herford, who also perform as the DJ duo Tracht & Prügel, began to re-release their back catalogue in 2017, along with previously unreleased recordings.^[15][6]