Family feelings abound at the first annual Christmas Bash, the new mini-festival by concert organizer Neukölln Un&Plugged: apart from their own music, the four performing acts will also cover songs by their respective colleagues – like one big group hug among separate acts that melt into one musical community. Two musicians from the LGBTI community, Wallis Bird (pictured) and Sam Vance-Law, will be on board at the event’s premiere at SchwuZ, alongside indie singer-songwriter David Lemaitre and Hamburg electro-pop duo Hundreds. Wallis posed on the cover of her 2016 album Home, which furiously expanded on the Irish-born Berliner’s brand of folksy electro-pop, in an intimate embrace with her girlfriend and has become one of the most popular lesbian voices this side of the mainstream. Canadian Sam Vance-Law released his debut album earlier this year just as bluntly with Homotopia, an intricately arranged indie-pop songbook which – as its title suggests – deals exclusively with the topic of being gay. “I had the feeling that the gay or queer music I heard didn’t always speak to me,“ he said in his SIEGESSÄULE interview about his motivations. “It’s mostly about topics I’ve heard too often: coming of age, being a victim, coming out, pride and so on. That’s not the whole story.“ With Homotopia, he’s created a record full of unconventional and surprising gay life and love stories.