With instrumental soundscapes that stretch beyond the 10-minute mark, Berlin’s Attention Span Crisis have no trouble holding your attention.

Attention Span Crisis is a Berlin four-piece fronted by Yair Karelic. Now, the last time I wrote about Yair was in 2017. Back then, he was part of Shambhu Leroux and the True Love Hearts, and I described his playing as “a guitar porn dream”. Well, some things never change.

They blew the roof off Kreuzberg during a Fête de la Musique performance. I’d seen them play at both Morphine Records and Oblomov. Now, I was invited down to their rehearsal room to learn a little more about this Crisis, and to find out if we should all be worried.

So there I am, in an industrial building next door to Sisyphos, plastic cup of instant coffee and filterless Pueblo Yellow cigarette – thanks again, Keko – in hand. I meet the band.

The student becomes the… bass player.

Their story starts in 2024 when Yair put his guitar lesson prices up. Unacceptably, really. And it was too much for guitar porn padawan, Thomas Ford. Instead of giving up on the relationship entirely, Tom had a wicked plan. He dropped the idea to Yair that he was planning on starting something. A band, maybe? An experimental musical project? He was fishing. Fishing harder than Ahab. Looking to land a prized haul: Yair.

They got talking. Throwing ideas around and, eventually, “We got him”, Tom winks. The pupil becomes the equal. The compromise: Tom would take on the bass – something which could be construed as a relegation (not to me, I love the bass), but turned out to be a blessing. Tom embraced the bass and found his inner groove.

Guitar, bass… bongos?

In the same year, Yair met Keko Toni in a bar. Keko was playing ukulele. Randomly. In a bar. Yair smelled an eccentric kindred spirit. They got talking.

Like Yair, Keko is classically trained. Yair studied at the conservatory in Milan, and Keko has played in symphony orchestras all over the world. He’s a percussionist, with an open mind for experimentation and an avid belief that it’s “Time to bring the bongos back”. He joined the band.

The band agree that having a percussionist gives access to more colours, more layers, different grooves, sensations and cultural touchpoints. “Drums get your head nodding”, Tom quips, “but percussion gets your body moving”.

Out of the mines and into the sewers

Speaking of drums… Now they just needed a drummer. Don’t worry, Tom knows a guy. The problem: he is in Australia.

Finn Mumford is Tom’s childhood friend and long-time musical collaborator. At this point in the story: Finn 1) cannot play the drums and 2) is working deep in a mine, somewhere in the Australian outback.

Once Tom called Finn – probably on some kind of satellite phone – and told him about the band, it didn’t take long before Finn was out of the mines and on a plane back to civilisation. Namely: Berlin. “We brought him out of the mines and into the sewers”.

Once here, he got the cheapest drum kit he could find – “But boy, can she power” – and embarked on learning the art of hitting things with sticks in time… an undertaking he has taken to with the wonder of a child discovering their hands for the first time, matched with a tenderness, precision, power and creativity that belie their years.

You know the band now. What about the music? We’re in a rehearsal room, so let’s get rehearsing.

Song 1: Queen of Brains

The band get to their respective stations. The relaxed, jovial atmosphere is washed out of the room, replaced by an intricate patchwork of bass, drums, bongos.

The guitar enters. Dark, meandering guitar. It’s questioning. Probing. Looking for an entry point. A weak point. It finds it. It hits. Suddenly, the room’s all kinetic energy, everyone moving as one.

Yair tells me this track is based on a panic attack, and you can feel it building and attacking and bringing you back from the brink before attacking again.

Keko’s xylophone breaks the dark with much-needed levity, providing high relief from the growing intensity. Yair’s guitar flashes Eastern – a snaking Levantine progression with forked-tongue licks. Sometimes it’s whimsical. Sometimes it’s dreadful.

This instrumental panic attack stretches to 10 minutes, ending on a high, blissful note. It’s all over. You can breathe again.

Song 2: Hay Cosas (‘There are things’ in Spanish).

The song opens dreamily, rippling with pleasant vibes. There’s space to breathe, to feel the size of the room. A life-affirming bass line starts. It’s warm, holding you gently in its groove. The percussion is shimmering, the drumming safe and reassuring. Your shoes are off and you feel the sand between your toes, the light dancing on the surface of this calm sea.

Then the guitar starts. It’s speaking a different language. Rasping, anxious, a half-released scream that tears you out of this idyllic false sense of security. The shoes are back on… at least temporarily… as these two very different emotions fight it out. It’s dissonant, irrational, frustrating, until the chaos abates and we’re back on the beach.

This battle continues to rage for the remainder of the song, shifting from shrill to soothing, from frenzy to respite. False starts. False ends. Growing uncertainty, never knowing when it will take off or land again.

Song 3: Sure You Can Tell

Practice ends on Sure You Can Tell. Their most conventional rock song (it actually features singing) is based around a duet between Tom and Yair.

The addition of this new instrument – the voice – adds a level of sensitivity and human fallibility. Both singing as one, they ground the soaring guitar, drums and percussion in a very terrestrial gravity. It’s folky. Almost hokey.

Tom’s throwback walking bassline plods and lumbers on, an old man who had always been kind. You feel the warmth like a memory. The guitar is tempered and breezy, but still prone to the occasional psychotic outbreak.

And this is how their music is. You never know what’s around the corner. Yair’s guitar stalks the sonic wilderness like a rabid dog with a taste for destruction and tendency to bite. You never know when it will slip the leash.

But Yair does warn you. The occasional yelp – the occasional howl – “Yeah!” is the harbinger of some unhinged solo, some wild change in musical direction to come. You look forward to them. You’re also scared of them.

And when he is in full flow, he is pre-orgasmic, post-orgasmic, mid-prolapse and desperately priapic. It takes it all out of him. He’s left exhausted, spent, and then another yelp comes and it’s time to do it again.

Around him, the others give the chaos its shape. Keko is the wizard-professor searching for the next sonic spell to cast. Tom’s sensitive swagger lures you into traps of comfort. Finn’s drumming is constantly on the move, strident above it all, never succumbing to the petty dramas beneath it. In this band, frenetic is fundamental, but so is the warmth that keeps drawing you back in.

Attention Span Crisis will be releasing their first album on Morphine Records in 2027. Follow them on Instagram.