Pop Viennese Electr.pdf

Popular Viennese Electronic Music, 1990–2015

Mazierska presents a cultural history of popular Viennese electronic music from 1990 to 2015, from the perspectives of production, scene and national and international reception. To illustrate this history in depth, a number of case studies of the most successful and distinguished musicians are explored, such as Kruder and Dorfmeister, Patrick Pulsinger, Tosca, Electric Indigo and Sofa Surfers. The author draws on research about electronic music, the relationship between music and the urban environment, the history of Austria and Vienna, music scenes and fandom, the digital shift and stardom in popular music (especially electronic music), as well as theories of postmodernism. Ewa Mazierska is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Central Lancashire, and has published widely on European cinema, cinema and tourism, postcolonialism and popular music. Two of her publications most relevant to this project are a monograph on Falco, Falco: Neo Nothing Post of All (2014), and an edited collection, Relocating Popular Music (co-edited with Georgina Gregory, 2015). Her collection about popular music in the north of England, Sounds Northern was published in 2018 by Equinox.

Popular Viennese Electronic Music, 1990–2015 A Cultural History

Ewa Mazierska

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Ewa Mazierska The right of Ewa Mazierska to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Mazierska, Ewa, author. Title: Popular Viennese electronic music, 1990–2015 : a cultural history / Ewa Mazierska. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018013027 | ISBN 9781138713918 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315230627 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Electronica (Music)—Austria—Vienna—History and criticism. | Popular music—Social aspects—Austria—Vienna. Classification: LCC ML3499.A98 V52 2019 | DDC 781.64809436/13—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018013027 ISBN: 978-1-138-71391-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-23062-7 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of figures Acknowledgements Introduction: putting Viennese electronic music on the map

vii viii 1

PART I

1

Vienna, the city of music: from Mozart to Conchita Wurst

17

PART II

2

Vienna Electronica as scene and industry: between cultivated provincialism and cosmopolitanism

49

PART III

3

Between rock and electronic music, or the pleasures of sin(ging)

83

4

Kruder and Dorfmeister: the studio(us) remixers

98

5

The cool ambience of Tosca

116

6

Sofa Surfers: surfing and post-rocking

133

7

Patrick Pulsinger: the happy techno kid

150

8

Peter Rehberg, Christian Fennesz and the Label Mego: between Glitch and Bécs

168

vi

Contents

9

Women in a mixed world: Electric Indigo and Sweet Susie

195

Conclusions

215

Bibliography Index

219 234

Figures

1.1 1.2 1.3 2.1 2.2 2.3 3.1 3.2 4.1 4.2 4.3 5.1 5.2 6.1 6.2 6.3 7.1 7.2 8.1 8.2 8.3 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5

The monument of Joseph Haydn in Vienna Exterior of the House of Music Exhibits displayed in the House of Music Billboard advertising ‘Ganz Wien’ exhibition, featuring a poster of Kruder and Dorfmeister Music shop Market on Zielgergasse Music shop Market on Zielgergasse Cover of Insinuation Cover of Absinth Peter Kruder Peter Kruder and Richard Dorfmeister in Vienna in 2011 Covers of Kruder and Dorfmeister’s records, used at ‘Ganz Wien’ exhibition, in Wien Museum Richard Dorfmeister and Rupert Huber in 2014 Richard Dorfmeister and Rupert Huber in 2014 Sofa Surfers in 2005 Sofa Surfers in 2009 Sofa Surfers in 2012 Patrick Pulsinger in 2013 Patrick Pulsinger in 2017 Peter Rehberg Peter Rehberg’s studio Christian Fennesz Electric Indigo and Angelina Yershova in Rome in 2014 Electric Indigo Electric Indigo at Heroines of Sound Festival 2017 Sweet Susie in 2009 Sweet Susie and Manni Montana

20 43 44 59 60 60 89 95 100 101 111 118 119 135 136 136 158 159 173 174 184 200 200 207 209 210

Acknowledgements

Many people inspired and helped me to write this book. First and foremost, these were musicians: Mona Moore and Andy Orel, Richard Dorfmeister, Peter Kruder, Rupert Huber, Patrick Pulsinger, Christian Fennesz, Peter Rehberg, Electric Indigo, Sweet Susie and Manni Montana and the members of Sofa Surfers, as well as Sugar B and Gümix. I am grateful to them for meeting me, giving me their photographs and records and reading parts of this book. I am also indebted to other members of the music scene in Vienna and fellow academics who provided me with precious information and insights. They include Tina Frank, Katherina Weingarten, Franz Hergovich, Heinrich Deisl and Michael Huber. I am also grateful to Tsvetina Vachkova for collecting for me some information in Vienna, which I had difficulty to access myself. I am also grateful to my employer, University of Central Lancashire, for financially supporting several of my trips to Vienna and to my family, Gifford, Kamila and Daniel for enduring for many years my indulgence in music which was not particularly to their taste and helping me with proofreading the manuscript.

Introduction Putting Viennese electronic music on the map

When I spoke to friends about my plan to do a study on popular Viennese electronic music, many observed that it is an idiosyncratic topic. Indeed, this is an unusual subject for a number of reasons, of which the most important has to do with the fact that Vienna’s and Austria’s place on the map of (contemporary) popular music is rarely acknowledged, in contrast to its place in the history of classical and serious music. This is, in large part, a consequence of the dominant position of Anglo-American music after the Second World War and specific factors pertaining to Austria, such as a tacit assumption that its culture must reflect the fate of the country, which became small and peripheral after it lost its empire following the First World War. However, this assumption is wrong, as demonstrated, for example, by the success of contemporary Austrian cinema, which is the subject of numerous popular and academic studies. My argument here is that its popular music also deserves scholarly attention. Second, although literature about electronic music is large and fast growing, the bulk of existing studies focus on what can be described as the academic end of the spectrum (a concept to which I return in due course) and rarely discuss it from the perspective of the relationship among music, place and its culture. Even those studies which do not exclude popular electronic music, focus on technology, paying little attention to social and cultural factors affecting this music and the way it is consumed. For example, in one of the most comprehensive studies of electronic music, Thom Holmes’s Electronic and Experimental Music (currently in its fifth edition), its author states at the beginning, The new edition remains an account of the history of technology, musical styles, and figures associated with electronic music, paying particular attention to: the invention of the key technologies of electronic music; the people who first explored new musical ideas using electronics; key work of electronic music, their genesis, and influence; the cultural impact of electronic music over the years. (Holmes 2016: xiv)

2

Introduction

The rule that technology is most important in this type of music is reflected in the way its histories are written. Most historians see its beginning in the early twentieth century when Telharmonium was invented by Thaddeus Cahill. The inventions of new, more advanced instruments, such as tape recorders, analogue synthesisers and computers, are seen as its milestones, and their development and uses receives the most attention (for example Chadabe 1997; Prendergast 2003; Manning 2004; Pinch and Trocco 2002; Dean 2009; Holmes 2016). Electronic music seems to be nation-less and borderless; its producers and consumers, cosmopolitan, global travellers, unburdened by the constraints of their national or local identity.1 As a result, musicians originating and working in different countries are often considered together on account of using the same instruments and belonging to the same subgenre, and their national identity is ignored. My book does not argue that this is the wrong approach but tries to complement it by looking at electronic music from the perspective of place, this place being Vienna, and asking if and how much Viennese artists and the work they produce have in common. By the same token, it invites a debate whether it is a fruitful way to consider electronic music in this way. However, before I start my investigation, it is worth explaining in more detail what is explored and how.

Popular electronic music Despite a large literature concerning electronic music, it is not easy to find a definition of this type of music, as reflected in the variety of names used to describe the same or similar phenomena, such as ‘electronic music’, ‘electric music’, ‘electroacoustic music’ and ‘electronica’. Nick Collins, Margaret Schedel and Scott Wilson in their Electronic Music write, The term electronic formally denotes applications of the transistor, a specific electrical component popularized from the mid-twentieth century onward that enables the substantial miniaturization of circuits. Joel Chadabe titles his book on the history of electronic music Electric Music2 and the best terminology is sometimes contentious. You may see reference to electroacoustic music as an overall term. In the broadest sense, it simply means sound reproduced using electronic means, such as loudspeakers, but can be employed in a more constrained sense of highly designed electronic art music for close listening with an emphasis on space and timbre. The connection of electronic music to computer music is also strong, since computers are the most general purpose and powerful electronic devices we come into contact with; however, computers themselves as everyday objects arose much later than many other electrical devices of note and aren’t required in many forms of electronic music making. (Collins, Schedel and Wilson 2013: 10) It is difficult not to notice that this definition explains as much as it obscures. If electronic music means electroacoustic music and this means ‘sound reproduced

Introduction 3 using electronic means, such as loudspeakers’, then very little music produced today can be classified as non-electronic. Indeed, this point was made by a number of musicians whom I interviewed for this project. However, the bulk of practitioners and authors researching this topic believe that electronic music is distinctive and omit from their investigation music whose only claims to its ‘electronicity’ is using loudspeakers or amplifiers. The best way to establish what constitutes electronic music is through identifying certain attitudes of their creators, as well as formal and textual characteristics, which pertain to only part of the music created with electronic instruments. The most important of them is foregrounding electronic instruments in the production and performance of music, as opposed to merely using them. A significant part of electronic music and indeed the part which attracts most academic attention is the one whose purpose is investigating musical possibilities of tapes, synthesisers, turntables and computers and the changing concept of music in the light of using this equipment, chiefly expanding the field of music by incorporating sounds which were previously regarded as existing outside of the realm of music. Rob Young wrote in The Wire in 1999, Crackles, pops, pocks, combustions, gurgles, buzzes, amplitude tautening, power spikes, voltage differentials, colliding pressure fronts, patterings, jumpslices, fax connections, silent interjections, hums, murmurs, switchbacks, clunks, granulations, fragmentations, splinterings, roars and rushes have overwhelmed the soundscape. (quoted in Kelly 2009: 8) Electronic music is thus marked by technophilia, a belief in progress and in the crucial influence of technology on aesthetics (Evens 2005). This is particularly the case of ‘white’ electronic music, which is, as Sarah Thornton puts it, about the ‘romance of technology’ (Thornton 1995: 73). This is signaled by type of names adopted by electronic musicians, such as Plastikman or Scanner.3 Moreover, it has the most important marker of modern and postmodern art – self-reflexivity. Composers such as Luigi Russolo, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Steve Reich, John Cage and Brian Eno are feted not because their music is regarded as particularly beautiful and pleasing (the question whether it is pleasing is hardly broached in the discussions of its value) but because they pushed the boundaries of the concept of music. Paul Théberge observes that in electronic music there is a shift of musician’s attention from more familiar levels of musical form, such as melody, rhythm and harmony towards, engaging with the micro-phenomena of musical sound itself (Théberge 1997: 186). This opinion is confirmed by many protagonists of this book. For example, Electric Indigo confessed, ‘We [the electronic musicians] love to indulge in the search of sounds . . . I love to change one parameter after the other and listen to the results holding down one key for an hour’ (Electric Indigo 2017). Unlike in pop and rock, and in a large part of classical music, where the singer occupies centre stage and receives the status of a star, in electronic music the composer is most important, with the singer being absent or disposable. There

4

Introduction

is a certain bias against showmanship and stardom among electronic musicians, which can be linked to the intellectual aura of this music, which is at odds with celebrity culture. This is reflected in the low number of music videos for this type of music (Cameron 2013: 756), as well a tendency to adopt multiple identities by composers (Hofer 2006). Moreover, electronic musicians, as Brian Eno observes, are ‘studio musicians’; for them the studio, rather than a guitar or piano, is their principal instrument (Eno 2004a). This makes them more akin to scientists or engineers who labour in their labs in solitude, rather than to ordinary musicians who jam. Paradoxically, as much as being concerned with the future, electronic musicians are preoccupied with the past. They give the old compositions new life by sampling, remixing and reworking them and placing them in a new context. As Jeremy Barham argues in relation to remixes and which also pertains to other forms of electronic music, they ‘deal in the folding, recasting and even obliterating of historical time’ (Barham 2014: 136). A large proportion of them also give new life to old instruments, by recombining them with new instruments and tapping into their unrealised potential, which was hidden from their previous users.4 It is indeed the invention of new instruments, most importantly digital ones, which allows rediscovering the old ones, as the work of the studio musician frequently includes tapping into the unrealised potential of classical instruments. Théberge argues that electronic musicians frequently see themselves as kind of ‘creative collectors’. He quotes one of them saying, ‘When I buy a sampler, I think in terms of libraries, rather than capabilities. I rely heavily on available sounds, and get variety by layering timbres, EQing them, and finally adding effects during mixdown’ (Théberge 1997: 187). He concludes that ‘digital instruments have become the means for both the production of new sounds and the reproduction of old ones – the perfect vehicle for a music industry based simultaneously in fashion and nostalgia’ (ibid.: 213). Other authors pick up on this concept, arguing that electronic music is full of ghosts or is ‘haunted’ (Reynolds 1995; Fisher 2013) – one of its goals is resurrecting figures from the past yet with an awareness that at best it can achieve partial success. The role of archivists, custodians and researchers also renders electronic musicians somewhat academic, geeky and withdrawn, unlike the stereotyped image of guitar-sporting rock stars, focused on ‘here and now’. Because of the importance of sampling and remixing, the question of authorship in electronic music tends to be complicated, with many pieces of new music having many ancestors. An example of such a problem in finding the ‘true’ author was given by Andrew Goodwin in an article published in 1988: [B]efore a note is committed to tape, a producer or engineer will use a sampling computer to digitally record each sound used by the group. At this point, it is sometimes possible for everyone but the producer to go home, leaving the computerized manipulation of these sounds to do the work of performance and recording. Indeed, the recent court case involving Frankie Goes to Hollywood, producer Trevor Horn, and his record company ZTT

Introduction 5 centered on this problem – what exactly did Frankie and their lead singer Holly Johnson actually do? (Goodwin 1988: 263) In due course questions of the sort posed by Goodwin were asked less often because it became accepted that finding a right sample and manipulation of existing material is as difficult and time-consuming as composing guitar riffs or writing song lyrics (McIntyre 2012; Moy 2015: 89–112). Pop-rock musicians also draw on previous music, but typically they do not acknowledge the intertextual character of their work. When the problem of borrowing from earlier work arises, they tend to fight tooth and nail to prove that their work was entirely original.5 With electronic musicians sometimes the opposite happens; they want to make a point that they borrowed from the past. For example, Christian Fennesz’s cover of the Beach Boys’ ‘Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)’ was so different from the original version that during Fennesz’s talk at the Red Bull Academy we can hear him saying, When it was out in, like, ’98 people couldn’t see any connection between my Don’t Talk and the real one. I always had a version with Brian Wilson singing on top it, which I have here if you want to hear it.6 There is a close connection between electronic music and postmodernism, understood as a specific period and style, in which issues of authorship and authenticity are thrown into crisis (Scott 2005: 122). In this context it is worth evoking Susan Sontag’s essay, ‘One Culture and the New Sensibility’. Published in 1965, it offers an early conceptualisation of postmodernism and well captures the changes in many fields of art which occurred in the 1970s and later. Sontag identifies the arrival of a new art which is more like science than art in the oldfashioned sense (which was like the opposite of science), because of being impersonal or transpersonal, and involving research and solving problems rather than acting on inspiration (Sontag 1994a: 296–7). She also points to what we today describe as ‘hapticity’ of the new art: its appeal to senses and eschewing any political ideology. Sontag describes the new art as post-romantic, and many electronic musicians, including the majority considered in this study, fit this label well. Electronic musicians also tend to be more ‘promiscuous’ than their rock and pop counterparts. Their work is usually organised around discrete units, ‘projects’, which have a specific time span. This involves employing workers on short contracts and paying them on the basis of accomplishing specific tasks, unlike the band, which is a long-term project, to which members dedicate all their energy and share costs and profit evenly. Production of electronic music thus fits well the type of work known as post-Fordist and neoliberal. It can be described as part of the ‘gig economy’. Because the most important factor in the definition of electronic music is the invention and popularisation of new instruments, the history of electronic music largely follows the history of electronic instruments. From the perspective of this

6

Introduction

study, the most important period is the 1970s and 1980s, when these instruments evolved from ‘large, expensive, institutional systems to small, relatively inexpensive, personal systems’ (Chadabe 1197: x; see also Emmerson 2007: xiv–xv). ‘Eventually, in 1986, Casio brought out samplers which cost less than a hundred pounds’ (Goodwin 1988: 262). By the 1980s any sound, including the sounds of clarinets and other acoustic instruments, could be produced electronically (Chadabe 1197: xi). Sampling computers could also be used as music sequencers: Like some of their analogue predecessors, digital samplers can be programmed to play sounds and rhythms independently of a keyboard and/or human performer. This facilitated the development of a technology that is of paramount importance in recent pop history – the drum machine. Drum machines enable a musician to program rhythmic patterns without actually hitting any drums . . . . Sampling enabled manufacturers to create machines that digitally recreated a recording that exactly resembles a ‘real’ drum recorded in the studio. (Goodwin 1988: 262) As Goodwin further argues, such development eroded the ‘division between human and machine-performed music’ (ibid.: 262). Of course, one has to be technophilic to welcome such development. It also forced the musicians and theoreticians to reconsider the problem of ‘live performance’ (Emmerson 2007: xv–xvi). In this respect we can identify two opposing views. According to one, electronic music falls short of the standards of ‘live’ because at supposedly live events listeners are offered recorded music. The contrasting approach is that this music is live because it includes manipulation of instruments (electronic and other) on stage, as well as the presence of a ‘live’ musician. While at the beginning of its existence electronic music was a preserve of serious, experimental or academic musicians, for whom gaining popularity was of little importance and which required much work by the listener to appreciate it, from the 1970s’ electronic instruments are also widely used by popular musicians and especially pop-rockers. This brings me to the questions of what is popular music, pop-rock, and what is the relation of electronic music to these categories. In the simplest terms, popular music is music with wide appeal, distributed through the music industry and which can be performed and enjoyed by people with little or no musical training (Middleton 1990: 3–7).7 Popular musicians favour such pleasurable devices as tonality, melody and simpler rhythms, which serious musicians tend to shun (Goodwin 2000: 223) and use the verse, chorus and bridge structure. Popular music is a wider term than what Motti Regev labels ‘pop-rock’. As Regev himself admits, the term pop-rock is problematic on two counts. One is the relationship between ‘pop’ and ‘rock’, and the other is the place of rock in popular music history. The author refers to several distinctions between ‘rock’ and ‘pop’, of which the most widely accepted is that between rock as a more authentic and artistic sector of popular music and ‘pop’ as its more commercial, ‘inauthentic’ and watered-down version (Regev 2002: 251; on the division between pop and rock

Introduction 7 see also Frith 2001: 94–5; Keightley 2001: 109). However, while not rejecting it altogether, Regev argues that what connects pop and rock is more important than what divides these categories; hence the use of the meta-category ‘pop-rock’. He defines ‘pop-rock’ by three characteristics: a typical set of creative practices, a body of canonised albums and two logics of cultural dynamics, namely commercialism and avant-gardism (Regev 2002: 252–7). The creative processes pertaining to ‘poprock’ include ‘extensive use of electric and electronic instruments, sophisticated studio techniques of sound manipulation, and certain techniques of vocal delivery, mostly those signifying immediacy of expression and spontaneity’ (ibid.: 253). As this description suggests, popular electronic music belongs to pop-rock. This definition also suggests that the division between pop-rock and art or academic music is not sharp. Some pop-rock music, in common with art or serious music, requires a certain training of the listener, even if only informal. Moreover, some pop-rock musicians might operate in art, academic or non-commercial environment and ‘sell themselves as [high] artists’ (Frith and Savage 1998: 8). On the other hand, some art-house musicians achieve commercial success and market themselves similar to pop-rock stars (Scott 2005: 124). In some national contexts, such as the UK, the line also becomes blurred because of the changing policies of funding, with new policies emphasising promotion of minority causes and cultures, as opposed to supporting high art (ibid.: 8). The line between popular and art music is particularly fluid in the case of electronic music, with composers such as Brian Eno, Laurie Anderson and even Aphex Twin being frequently cited as belonging to both camps: serious and art (McClary 1989; Demers 2010: 4–9). However, their double status does not mean that the split between serious and popular music is obsolete. In this respect I identify with the position taken by Andrew Goodwin, who insists on retaining it on account of the differences between textual characteristics of the bulk of high/experimental and popular art and, even more so, on different modes of consuming them (Goodwin 2000). This split also plays a crucial role in my selection of case studies.

Divisions within popular electronic music As important to my discussion of what divides popular electronic music from other types of music, are divisions within it. Kembrew McLeod argues that popular electronic music is more divided than other types of music: Metagenres like rock and roll may have spawned rock, folk rock, acid rock, garage rock, punk rock, and more recently grunge, alternative rock, post-rock, and other semantic combinations yet to be coined, but electronic/dance music generates that many names in a fraction of the time. To illustrate, a careful scan of electronic/dance-oriented magazines and electronic/dance compilation CDs published or released in 1998 and 1999 yielded a list of more than 300 names. (McLeod 2001: 60) Many of the names listed by McLeod verge on the ridiculous, for example, ‘progressive trance’, ‘progressive low-frequency’, ‘hard chill ambient’, ‘minimal

8

Introduction

trance’, ‘mutant techno’ or ‘futuristic hardstep’ (ibid.: 60), and in this way undermine the very idea of breaking down this music into genres. Nevertheless, McLeod concedes that ‘genre-calling’ is a necessity, as it is a ‘merchandising strategy’ (ibid.: 67) and a ‘response to genuine stylistic evolution’ (ibid.: 67). In relation to the latter, he quotes Simon Reynolds, who maintains that subgenre categories are useful because ‘they are also a way of talking about the music, of arguing about what it’s for and where it should go’ (quoted in McLeod 2001: 66). This is also a reason why subgenre categories will play a major role in my study. Among them one which is most pervasive, yet also most problematic, is between electronic music for dancing and electronic music for listening. The first, typically described as Electronic Dance Music (EDM; although McLeod uses the term electronic/dance music) is a ‘meta sub-genre’, which encompasses many types of music played in clubs. Such labelling is problematic because it points to the use of music rather than its textual characteristics. Of course, there is a connection between them; most important, rhythm encourages dancing, while it is difficult to appreciate poetic lyrics while dancing in a noisy club. Nevertheless, even the most danceable music can be enjoyed in an armchair. My interviewees were keen to point to the dual use of their music, while emphasising their ‘listeneability’. My contact with this music was during (mostly solitary) listening to the records and in most cases I had to judge its danceability from this position. As for other genre labels, they are very useful in presenting the style of musicians, considered as my case studies and locating their work in a wider, international context. For this purpose, on some occasions, I present briefly a history of a given genre to which the musicians considered in this book contributed in a major way. One additional label which deserves special attention in this context is ‘electronica’, as ‘Vienna Electronica’ is the term most often used in discussion about the phenomenon at hand (Harauer 2001; Huber 2002; Deisl 2009; Reitsamer 2013: 83). The problem with this term is that its connotations are not only unclear but that its meanings are contradictory. Nick Collins writes, Electronica as a term appeared in the later 1990s as a descriptor for divergent EDMs and their abstractions. Used in North America less broadly than Europe, it has been charged by some as a deliberate marketing term for popular electronic music, a catchall label that could keep up with the broadly diffusing styles that followed the rave era of EDM. Confusedly, in the United States it might simply denote EDM and in Europe electronic music outside the core EDM category. (Collins 2009: 335) Other authors notice that ‘electronica’ can signify the popular/commercial part of electronic music, hence being synonymous with ‘popular electronic music’, or refer to the more ambitious sector of the popular electronic music (Reynolds 1998: 181; Cascone 2000: 15; Cameron 2013: 752–3) or to the influence of electronic music on popular musics which are not normally considered as electronic

Introduction 9 (Collins, Schedel and Wilson 2013: 136). Because of the ambiguity concerning the meaning of this word I prefer to use the term popular electronic music, but out of respect for the existing terminology, I also write ‘Vienna Electronica’, treating these terms as synonymous.

Subject, methodology and sources The very term Viennese popular electronic music or Vienna Electronica has a narrower and wider meaning. It can refer to music produced by Viennese artists, such as Kruder and Dorfmeister, Fennesz and Electric Indigo, or also include record companies which released these records (some of which were based in Vienna and some abroad), places where this music was presented and appreciated, such as clubs and festivals, and a web of relations connecting musicians, institutions and individuals working for their success, such as managers of record companies and clubs, as well as their fans. It can encompass art and artists, as well as music scenes. In this study I try to account for all these aspects, as indicated by the title of this book, which includes the words cultural history. In line with my previous definition of ‘electronic music’, I focus on the type of music in which electronic manipulation is foregrounded and privilege musicians who fit the idea of a ‘studio producer’ rather than composer or performer, for whom the voice is the principal instrument. An important aspect of their approach is working on some preexisting material, by sampling it in their own work, remixing somebody else’s song or creating a DJ set. Consequently, I treat them as electronic musicians both on account of the actual textual characteristics of their work and postmodern, ‘found footage’ approach to their music. However, although I regard hip-hop as a form of electronic music and many of the electronic musicians from Vienna covered in this book started their careers as fans and practitioners of hip-hop, I leave it out of my investigation on account that during the period of special interest to me Austrian hip-hop or even rap did not have any international or even national successes (except from Falco whom I leave out), and because in hip-hop voice and lyrics play a major role. I also exclude what can be termed hardcore experimental or serious modern music, for example music produced by artists such as Karlheinz Essl and Bernhard Lang. The period covered is from 1990 to 2015. The 1990s are of particular importance as this decade coincides with the beginnings and the greatest successes of my protagonists. However, the majority of them started to dabble in music in the mid- to late 1980s and continued working after 2000, and whenever possible, I account for their earlier and later history. I also discuss post-1990s developments, focusing on the changes brought to Austria by ‘convergent digitisation’ (Strachan 2017: 6) in terms of restructuring music industries and scenes and career opportunities of the upcoming musicians. My book draws on several methodological strands. One of them is the history and theory of electronic music and its subgenres. These genres will be considered when drafting a history of the Viennese scene but, more important, when presenting the careers and work of specific musicians. I focus on dub, ambient, techno

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Introduction

and noise, as well as remix as a specific practice of producing electronic music. The second strand is research about the relation between music and place. I present the position of electronic music within the longer history of music in Vienna, going as far back as the period of the First Viennese School, as well as accounting for the role of the city in the shaping of the scene, careers of musicians, their attitude to their physical and cultural environment and textual characteristics of their productions. This means drawing on the social history of Vienna itself, accounting for such factors as the city’s policies regarding housing and tourism, and its culture, including film and music. Third, I use research about the ‘future of music’, considering the effect of digital shift on the transformation of the music industry. The shift led to new ways of producing and presenting music which do not require elaborate equipment and studio space and allows presenting the work to the public practically instantaneously, without help of record companies and the media, such as radio and television. Another aspect is the possibility of the audience to download or stream high-quality music without a need to pay for it. I write how musicians, and others on the electronic scene, fare in the new climate for music and assess the new situation. This strand of research can be regarded as a subfield of the study of neoliberalism/neoliberalisation and post-Fordisation of the workforce because my subjects fit the label ‘post-Fordist worker’ well. Fourth, I utilise various aspects of popular music studies, including concepts of music industry, scene and genre, especially the relationship between the artists and what Keith Negus describes as ‘corporate cultures’ and which includes recording industry and the media (Negus 1999). Finally, I devote some attention to the interface between music and gender, because in one chapter I consider female participants in the scene, Electric Indigo and Sweet Susie, who are very self-conscious about their own position as ‘gendered subjects’. My book is based on written and oral sources but with the latter playing a larger part because of the scarcity of written material about Austrian popular music, as well as my desire to present, as much as possible, the stories of insiders, in parts making up for my own, outsider’s perspective. These include interviews with people active on the scene: musicians, heads of record labels, music promoters, managers of record shops, employees of institutions promoting Austrian music, academics and music fans. In total, more than fifty people were interviewed over three years, mostly face to face, and on occasion via e-mail. Sometimes the same person was approached more than once. I asked them about their careers, their music, as well as their perception of ‘Viennese sound’ as a distinct phenomenon. The intention was to establish whether one can find certain common characteristics of the artists, in terms of their social class, career paths, as well as their attitude to their work and their views on the social and cultural function of electronic music. I also attended several performances of the musicians covered in this book and tried to watch everything relevant to their work on YouTube. When talking about written material, for specific mention deserves Wien Pop (Grőbchen et al. 2013), a book of interviews, a part of which is devoted to the golden years of Vienna electronica. Not only did it help me to locate the phenomenon against the wider phenomenon of Viennese pop-rock but also to find insights of many important

Introduction 11 people on the scene whom I was unable to reach. Other important sources are studies of Viennese music produced by authors based in Vienna, Robert Harauer (2001), Michael Huber (2002), Heinrich Deisl (2009) and Rosa Reitsamer (2013). While conducting a study such as this one realises that ‘theories’ are usually produced in the centre and applied to the periphery. This is also the case here, as in its theoretical dimension I rely almost exclusively on what was published in English, most important by authors from Anglophone countries. However, one idea which strongly informs my research is that of aesthetic cosmopolitanism, which is borrowed from Israeli author Motti Regev. According to Regev, poprock created outside Anglo-American centre is not a product of musical imperialism and self-colonisation but of participating in a global, cosmopolitan culture (Regev 2013). Like Regey, I regard pop-rock as pertaining to the late modernity and consisting of a process of intensified aesthetic proximity, overlap, and connectivity between nations and ethnicities or, at the very least, between prominent large sectors within them. It is a process in which the expressive forms of cultural practices used by nations at large, and by groupings within them, to signify and perform their sense of uniqueness, growingly comes to share large proportions of aesthetic common ground, to a point where the cultural uniqueness of each nation or ethnicity cannot but be understood as a unit within one complex entity, one variant in a set of quite similar – although never identical cases. (ibid.: 3) Aesthetic cosmopolitanisation refers to world culture as one interconnected entity, in which ‘social groupings share a broad common ground in their aesthetic perceptions, expressive forms, and cultural practices’. However, in this book I also try (to the annoyance of some of its protagonists) to see it as a local, Viennese and Austrian phenomenon, resulting from a combination of local factors, such as living in Vienna, being relatively close to Berlin and working in the shadow of Viennese musical giants, such as Haydn and Mozart.

Structure and chapter description My interest in the relation between the work of Viennese musicians and the place, as well as their commonalities and differences, is reflected in the structure of this book. Its first part is devoted to presenting the history of music in Vienna from the First Viennese School to contemporary times, which should allow the reader to locate electronic music from Vienna against the background of the history of music in the city, as well as the history of the city itself. The second part examines the electronic music scene in Vienna from the early 1980s till the present day, with the focus on the 1990s. This includes sketching a chronology of its development, presenting its main protagonists, record labels, shops, clubs and festivals where they performed, and their presence in the media. This part is meant to assess what its protagonists had in common and compare the Viennese scene with similar

12

Introduction

developments in other parts of Europe and the world. The third and largest part presents several case studies of the most important musicians constituting this phenomenon. These seven chapters present their careers and textual characteristics of their work. I focused on their records and, most important, LPs, partly because they themselves regard it as the most important aspect of their work and partly because of the scarcity of traces of their other works, such as recordings of their performances and music videos. Some chapters are devoted to one artist or band; others have more than one protagonist to highlight what they have in common. The order of this section is partly chronological. It begins with Sin, one of the first bands which entered the Viennese electronic scene and one which released its last record in 2007. Its next-to-last chapter concerns two artists, Peter Rehberg and Christian Fennesz and Rehberg’s record company, Editions Mego, which is probably the longest-existing label, releasing records of electronic musicians from Vienna (as well as from all over the world). Another reason to begin the book with Sin and (almost) finish with Rehberg and Fennesz is that the productions of Sin are closest to (non-electronic) pop-rock, because of foregrounding the voice of the singer and the lyrics of the songs. There is no problem with classifying Fennesz and Rehberg’s productions as ‘electronic’, but they do not quite fit the idea of ‘popular musicians’, and in most publications they are considered alongside the experimental/academic composers.8 However, while I see reasons to treat Fennesz and Rehberg in this way, I equally see reasons to include them along Kruder and Dorfmeister and Sofa Surfers. Indeed, the fact that popular music and serious music on occasions overlap should not be a reason to abandon making and exploring this distinction, as previously argued. The last chapter in the book is devoted to the leading female musicians, Electric Indigo and Sweet Susie. I decided to treat them separately to highlight issues specific to their role as women in the world perceived as masculine and sexist. However, this decision was preceded by hesitation as I believe that it will make much sense to consider these two artists separately and place them elsewhere – Electric Indigo next to Patrick Pulsinger and Sweet Susie in the proximity of Sofa Surfers. The criteria of quality and importance are partly subjective, and my own taste and knowledge played a major role in choosing these musicians, rather than others. More importantly, however, I focused on them because they are best known nationally and internationally and most respected by their peers. The last was assured by asking my interviewees whom they would choose to single out for ‘special treatment’ and the same names appeared over and over again. Of special interest for me were those whose career spanned more than twenty years. I tried to establish the reasons why they managed to survive so long, given that taste in popular music changes rapidly and long careers are the exception in the music business rather than the rule. This question was particularly interesting in the light of the fact that the quarter of a century I am covering includes some dramatic changes in the way people access music, communicate with fellow human beings and work. This part is also meant to demonstrate the wealth of styles and genres the electronic Viennese electronic musicians explored. No doubt that some readers familiar with the phenomenon described here will be surprised and unhappy

Introduction 13 with omissions, simplifications and mistakes made in this book. My defence is that no study is ever comprehensive and flawless, and this is particularly the case of works which cover a largely unexplored territory. I hope that my work will encourage somebody to fill the gaps, correct my mistakes and use my approach to study electronic music elsewhere, especially in other ‘peripheral’ places, as well as rethink certain assumptions and concepts pertaining to popular electronic music, in particular those concerning its subgenres and its relation to serious electronic music.

Notes 1 There are exceptions to this rule, largely concerning electronic dance music, which is understandable, given that dance music is linked to and often born in specific cities and clubs (see, for example, Rietveld 1998a, 1998b; Che 2009). Another example concerns the music of Kraftwerk, seen as a response to the problem of searching for a new German identity after the Second World War (Albiez and Tromm Lindvig 2011). The studies of electronic music in a specific country are particularly rare. One of the exceptions which I discovered during this project was an article about computer music in Chile (Albornoz 2015), with which my project has much in common. 2 In reality the title of Chadabe’s book is Electric Sound: The Past and Promise of Electronic Music (Chadabe 1997), which suggests that electric sounds make up electronic music. 3 One of the chapters in Cox and Warner’s anthology, Audio Culture, is aptly titled ‘Stockhausen vs. the “Technocrats” ’ (Stockhausen et al. 2004). 4 There is a video available on YouTube, on which Patrick Pulsinger discusses the uses of old instruments: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iedbe3_49qY&t=108s 5 Consider, for example, a well-publicised dispute between Led Zeppelin and the estate of late guitarist Randy Wolfe, who played with the group Spirit, about the authorship of Led Zeppelin’s most famous song, Stairway to Heaven (Grow 2016). 6 The clip is available on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ev4O-cS-4w. 7 Middeton draws attention to the difficulty of defining popular music, noticing that ‘ “Popular music” . . . can only be properly viewed within the context of the whole musical field, within which it is an active tendency; and this field, together with its internal relationships, is never still – it is always in movement’ (Middleton 1990: 7). 8 Of all work discussed in this book the music of Fennesz and Rehberg is most extensively covered in academic publications, which can be attributed to its ‘serious’ or ‘academic’ character (see, for example, Young 2002; Toop 2004: 228–31; Hegarty 2007: 185–6; Kelly 2009: 315–17; Demers 2010: 63–4, 107–8).

Part I

1

Vienna, the city of music From Mozart to Conchita Wurst

Heaven, Vienna mine I’m in the spell of your charms divine Dressed like a queen, with life so gay You are the love You are the love of my heart today. Heaven, Vienna mine Laughter and music and stars that shine Wonderful city where I belong Of her I sing my song – See more – ‘Vienna, City of My Dreams’, song popularised by Austrian tenor Richard Tauber in the 1930s

There are labels attached to large cities. Paris is described as a city of fashion and love, London is known as the capital of money, while Vienna is celebrated as the world capital of music (Nußbaumer 2007: 9). This chapter is devoted to describing how Vienna earned this ‘tag’ and whether it still deserves it. I also ask the question whether there is only music in Vienna or also Vienna in its music and, if so, what kind of city was projected by its artists. Before doing so, however, let’s briefly discuss the relationship between music and the city.

Music in the city, city in music: methodological problems Adam Krims, in an essay titled ‘Music, Space, and Place’, after asserting that in the industrial era, and in some cases preindustrial, cities became the centres of musical development and consumption, asks rhetorically, ‘[A]nd yet, where are the studies of the cities historically crucial to mainstream musical history (Vienna, Paris, Berlin, Naples, Rome, and so on)?’ (Krims 2012: 148). Part of the answer is that such studies exist (on Vienna see Hanson 1985; McColl 1996; Weber 2004a; Nußbaumer 2007; Brodbeck 2014), but they might not fulfil Krims’s stringent criteria of a successful study of music of/in a city, because of covering only a small portion of the material. This, however, points to the first problem of writing about music and the city. Both concepts are multidimensional and ambiguous.

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Music includes many types of sounds ordered in a specific way and the human relationship to these sounds. Some of them might be classified as music in one culture but viewed as non-music in another. Moreover, ‘music’ includes not only its textual characteristics but also its production, dissemination and consumption and, apart from musicology, can be an object of such disciplines as economy, ethnography, physics, sociology and psychology. What individual is able to combine knowledge of all these disciplines? The city is no less complex an identity. It not only is a built environment, but also contains its inhabitants, as individuals and an imagined community and, as James Donald argues, the ‘space produced by the interaction of historically and geographically specific institutions, social relations of production and reproduction, practices of government, forms and media of communication, and so forth’ (Donald 1992: 422). Again, this quotation suggests that to write a history of the city one has to master many disciplines, such as politics, geography and economics, which is impossible. Furthermore, music is not created in isolation from other types of art, such as literature, plastic arts and architecture. The flourishing of one discipline is a factor in the blooming of others, as demonstrated by German Romanticism, which was strong in literature and music, or fin-de-siècle Vienna, where music, theatre and plastic arts fed on each other, but the details of these connections typically elude cultural historians. Even if we settle on a more modest task, by putting restrictions on ‘music’ and ‘city’, the task of writing the history of ‘musical cities’ remains difficult. One reason is given by Trevor Herbert, who observes that ’historians, particularly those for whom social and cultural history have been subsidiary to political and constitutional history, have typically used music as the fodder of footnotes, merely illustrating background social and cultural patterns’ (Herbert 2012: 49). But equally, histories of musical phenomena and biographies of famous musicians tend to neglect the influence of their geographical and cultural environment on their artistic output and careers. On one hand, this is surprising, given that music and other sounds are important for cities’ self-definition. Perhaps the best example is equating Londoners with Cockneys, born within earshot of the bells of St Mary-le-Bow Church. On the other hand, the scarcity of musical histories of cities, especially in the period before the Second World War is understandable, given that social histories, cultural histories and the histories of ‘ordinary people’ and the everyday are relatively new branches of history. Equally, the studies of music, particularly Western music, till recently, focused on ‘music as music’ rather than its production and consumption. This was in line with the conviction that music is the most universal, content-free and spiritual of arts, and looking for its external influences will undermine its elevated status. The current situation is different, with scholarship on music and space and place constituting one of the most dynamic areas of study of popular music, conducted in English (Lipsitz 1994; Mitchell 1996; Bennett 2000; Hesmondhalgh and Negus 2002: 205–64; Connell and Gibson 2003; Whiteley, Bennett and Hawkins 2004; Gibson and Connell 2005; Johansson and Bell 2009; Kun

Vienna, the city of music 19 2005; Holt and Wergin 2013; Wissmann 2014; Mazierska and Gregory 2015). This research leads to developing scholarly terminology, able to capture this relationship, such as soundscape, voicescape and textscape (Thompson 2004; Smith 2009; Long and Collins 2012). This opinion, however, refers predominantly to research on new music, rather than that produced and consumed in the past. For example, we know that walking through the city with a ghetto blaster (whose very name points to the intimate link between listening to music and experiencing the city) helps to build an intimate connection between the walker and his or her surroundings (Beer 2014; Black 2014). But will we ever learn what effect church bells had on their listeners in previous epochs? Do we ever discover how living in a poorer neighbourhood affected the productivity and character of work produced by a specific musician? Having in mind these problems and questions, I tried to glean as much as possible from existing histories of Vienna and its music, as well as from personal experience of visiting this city and talking to its inhabitants.

Viennese Classicism Vienna is associated with music chiefly thanks to composers belonging to the Viennese Classical period, known also as the First Viennese School: Joseph Haydn (1732–1809), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791), Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) and Franz Schubert (1797–1828). These artists, who worked in Vienna roughly from 1760 to 1825, are amongst the most famous composers of all time. Their names are familiar even to people who have no special interest in music. The question arises as to how these geniuses all ended up in Vienna. What political, economic and social circumstances coincided to render this city such a hotbed of musical creativity at this time? This question is particularly interesting in the light of the fact that out of the four, only one, Schubert, was a native of Vienna. The three remaining ones arrived in the capital of the Habsburg Empire from other corners of the German-speaking world. Part of the answer to this question lies in the relative affluence of Vienna from 1683 when the city was delivered from the attacks of the Ottoman Empire to the end of the nineteenth century and the unusual fondness of music revealed by Habsburg rulers. Since the time of Ferdinand III (1608–1657), who was a good musician himself, Habsburg emperors encouraged music in every way: by founding the Musical Academy, paying court musicians handsomely and attracting the best singers and performers to Vienna. Charles VI (German Karl VI; 1685–1740) had 140 court musicians on his payroll, many of whom accompanied him from city to city when he went on official visits (Woodford 1977: 21). This was the peak of this type of patronage in Vienna and Europe at large. With the coming of Charles’s daughter, Maria Theresa (German Maria Theresia; 1717–1780), to the throne of Austria, music at the Viennese court began to wane (ibid.). However, this loss was made up for by the patronage of the nobility, who in this period experienced a golden age. Music patronage and consumption became democratised,

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Vienna, the city of music

Figure 1.1 The monument of Joseph Haydn in Vienna Photo: Ewa Mazierska

with aristocrats, government officials and wealthy commoners all supporting artists. With the passage of time, this process would gain speed. One such example was the forming in 1786 of a Consortium of Associated Gentlemen (Gesellschaft der Associierted Cavaliere), on the instigation of Gottfried van Swieten, an Austrian diplomat of Dutch origin (responsible, among other things, for censorship policies in the monarchy). This society sponsored numerous concerts, including an oratorio performed each winter by members of the court’s orchestra and chorus (Ingrao 1994: 216). A widening and differentiating of audience would not be possible if there were no venues where musicians could perform. In 1741, the Burgtheater was erected, which until now is one of the most imposing buildings in Vienna and the entire German-speaking world. Here three of Mozart’s operas had their premieres: Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782), Le nozze di Figaro (1786) and Così fan tutte (1790), as well as Beethoven’s First Symphony, in 1800. Concerts were also given

Vienna, the city of music 21 in gardens and in the homes of wealthy patrons, as well as in churches. A widening of the circle of potential audiences affected musicians’ approach to their work and their sense of identity. Rather than seeing themselves as servants of monarchs or nobility, they started to perceive themselves as freelance workers, without allegiance to anyone patron but willing to take commissions from as many sources as possible. A factor in this new attitude was also the ideals of the French Revolution, especially the conviction that a man should be judged on his merit, not his birth. According to Alfred Einstein, such a new approach to music, more than the kind of music he makes, is the marker of a Romantic musician (Einstein 1947: 10–19). Mozart is the first Viennese composer who tried to become a Romantic musician according to this definition (ibid.: 12). This is reflected in his extensive travels, to places such as Prague, London, Verona, Bologna, Milan and Rome, and trying his hand in many genres, including writing music for masonic ceremonials and lodge meetings (Sadie 1982: 108). However, in the material sense, Mozart failed. He was not able to create an audience large enough to sustain him, or to put it differently, Vienna of his times was not ready to host an autonomous, Romantic artist. Alice Hanson explains that [o]nly meager incomes could be made from the sale of compositions; private subscriptions concerts were both costly and time-consuming for the performer; and private engagements in the homes of even wealthy patrons were often poorly rewarded. Even as a member of a noble household, a musician had difficulties, because, like a servant, he had few rights. A musician was required to compose or perform upon command and he often relinquished all publishing rights of his music to his employer. In addition, he had to gain permission not only to perform outside of the household, but also in order to marry or change residence. (Hanson 1985: 7–8) However, as Einstein argues, ‘[w]here Mozart failed, Beethoven – in the same locale and only a few years later – succeeded. He no longer placed himself in the service of the aristocracy; instead, he placed the aristocracy in his own service . . . Here for the first time appears a musician without any ties to bind him. He took up the position of an individual facing the world, and often even opposing the world. (Einstein 1947: 10–19; see also Blanning 2008: 98–101) The gossip says that the genius halted his piano if the audience members chatted amongst themselves or afforded him less than their full attention. Beethoven’s success as an autonomous Romantic artist was facilitated by having a manager, his own brother Carl, who helped him sell his compositions to be published and performed by other artists. During the composer’s life the price of his works

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increased several times (Cooper 2000: 123). He also made arrangements and transcriptions of his more popular works for different combinations of instruments (ibid.: 123–4). He can be thus regarded as a pioneer of remixing. Furthermore, at the peak of his career he was able to sell his early work (what will be described today as his back catalogue) for a considerable price (ibid.: 124). Thus, at a time when there was no copyright, Beethoven did well to protect his rights as a composer. The super-prolific Franz Schubert fits even better the idea of a secular, freelance, autonomous artist who owes his successes to a circle of friends, rather than the court, and favourite press reviews. Schubert, like Mozart and Beethoven before him, struggled financially all his life, being of humble background: the son of a teacher. Nevertheless, he managed to devote practically his entire (even if very short) life to music, and he barely left Vienna, where he composed and performed (Brown 1980: 13). The presence of a large and receptive audience, attractive venues and the fame of artists working there attracted to Vienna a new crop of artists, eager to learn from their predecessors and tap into the existing market. Although it is not certain that Beethoven ever met Mozart, it is accepted that Mozart’s fame was a factor in his decision to relocate to Vienna. There he also met and studied under Mozart’s chief enemy (as legend has it), Antonio Salieri and Joseph Haydn. Subsequently Schubert relocated to Vienna in order to learn from Beethoven. During the period of Viennese Classicism and following decades, the Viennese had many of the advantages currently enjoyed by the Anglo-American world. The immense size of the Habsburg Empire and its porous borders added to these advantages. By the end of the eighteenth century, with 26 million people and an area of 247,000 square miles, the Habsburg Empire was nearly as populous as France and larger than any other country except Russia. Vienna itself housed more than 200,000 people and nearly 300,000 in the suburbs (Taylor 1981: 283–91). The case of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Vienna testifies to the centrality of cities to musical creativity (Krims 2012: 147). The four leading composers of Viennese Classicism are associated with particular sites. One of them is Lichtental Church, known as Schubertkirche, where Schubert was baptised and presented several of his compositions, such as Mass in F major which was performed as part of the church’s centenary celebrations (Brown 1980: 9). In due course tourists came to Vienna to visit such sites. It was in Vienna, together with Salzburg (Mozart’s birthplace) and Bayreuth in Germany, associated with Richard Wagner, that specialised, music-oriented tourism originated in the late nineteenth century. Initially tourism of this type appealed only to the European elite, but after the Second World War it became a mass phenomenon (Gibson and Connell 2005: 6–7). Many of the tourists visited these places in the hope of discovering something of the spirit of the music lingering in the old buildings or in the air. But was there a fit between Vienna as a physical and cultural space and the music created in Vienna? To some extent it was. Its immense versatility, long and loud compositions, to be performed by orchestras in public places and chamber

Vienna, the city of music 23 music for private occasions, testified to the diversity of its audience, and this pointed to the growing influence of the Austrian bourgeoisie. Equally, the shift from Classicism to Romanticism, which is attributed to Beethoven and Schubert and which consists of affording greater importance to emotion and to the human voice as its best transmitter, can be linked with the rise of the bourgeoisie, which facilitated the secularisation of music. It is also widely reported that solitary walks in the Viennese forest inspired many of Beethoven’s compositions. But apart from that, Viennese music reflected Vienna as a cosmopolitan city, where language, ethnic group and even class matter less than in other places, where universal values triumph over any particular ones or at least some people had such universalist aspiration. The piece of music which best reflects such a spirit of Vienna is Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor, op. 125, known widely as the Ninth, which premiered in Vienna in 1824. The symphony’s finale includes excerpts from a poem by Friedrich von Schiller, An die Freude (To Joy): ‘Alle Menschen werden Brüder’ (All men become brothers) and ‘Seid umschlungen, Millionnen’ (Be embraced, ye millions). As Harvey Sachs notes, in due course Beethoven’s composition became the work most often used ‘to solemnize an important event – the opening of the United Nations, the signing of a peace treaty at the end of the war, the fall of the Berlin Wall, or the consecration of a new concert hall: It is perceived as the vessel for a message that confers a quasi-religious yet nondenominational blessing on all “good” and “just” people, institutions, and enterprises – in short, on “our side”, whatever that may be. (Sachs 2010: 3) The ‘Ode to Joy’ theme has also been the European anthem since 1972 when the Council of Ministers in Strasbourg officially adopted it as such. The fact that such an ‘anthem of humankind’ was composed and performed in Vienna suggests that this city did not need to assert its identity by differentiating itself from any ‘other’; being Viennese meant being a citizen of the world. The universal character of (some) Viennese music coincided with its international recognition, beginning with Haydn, whose two concert tours of London were big cultural events. Charles Ingrao concludes: Haydn’s performances underscore a major evolutionary step in the monarchy’s history: whereas it had traditionally adopted the religious, political, mercantile, and philosophical systems of other societies, it had now emerged as a major contributor to European cultural heritage . . . The music of Gluck, Salieri, Haydn, and Mozart was being performed all over Europe. (Ingrao 1994: 216–17) Of course, not every composer working in Vienna was of Haydn’s or Beethoven’s standard. According to Harvey Sachs, such high-art music was in a minority:

24

Vienna, the city of music Most Viennese music lovers in the post-Napoleonic period clamored to hear the forebears of today’s firebrand virtuosi, schlock-mongers, and half-pop, half-serious opera singers. In 1822, for instance, large crowds turned out to hear . . . a whole slew of juvenile ivory ticklers engaged in a free-for-all to see who could play more notes per second than any others. Not to mention the excitement created, during Beethoven’s Viennese years, by Carl Czerny’s monster arrangement for sixteen (count’ em!) pianists of Rossini’s Semiramide Overture, and the Basilius Bohdanowicz who sang a single aria over and over, each time in a different language, and then squeezed together before a piano keyboard to play a piece in synch. (Sachs 2010: 28–9)

Notwithstanding Sachs’s condescending attitude to everything ‘popular’ (especially problematic in the light of the fact that we do not have any records of these free-for-all-to-see performances) and the lack of recognition for the linguistic dexterity of the singing children (somewhat foreshadowing multilingualism of Falco, discussed later in this chapter), this fragment points to an important factor why music in Vienna was so outstanding – there was a lot of it. This is because quality is a function of quantity, of critical mass. The more music is produced in a given place, the more chance that high-quality music will appear there and the artists will invade some as yet unconquered territory. The characteristics of Viennese Classicism provided the blueprint for the definition of Western classical music as universal, self-justifying and ostensibly placeless, in contrast to popular music, marked down as a merely local form (Leyshon, Matless and Revill 1998: 5). Perhaps the Habsburg Empire needed such universal, placeless music for self-identification because of its vastness, fragmentation and heterogeneity, including linguistically, with German-speaking people constituting less than 30 per cent of the total population. Such a country, which one historian described as a ‘geographic nonsense, explicable only by dynastic graspings and the accidents of centuries of history’ (Taylor 1981: 284) needed a social adhesive, uniting people of different languages, histories and classes. Music played this role. The attitude of contemporary Viennese musicians to the legacy of the giants of Classicism is mixed. Some claim that in Vienna, the past glory of Haydn or Mozart is used to undermine the new music produced in the city, as demonstrated by the fact that funds are used mostly to protect and promote the city’s musical heritage rather than nurture new generations of artists. This bias towards the past is also reflected in Austrian academia, where studies of Austrian classical music overshadow those about contemporary and popular Austrian music. But there are others who point to the positive influence of the heritage of Viennese Classicism. On a most basic level, living in the ‘city of music’ means that almost everybody in Vienna wants to have something to do with music. While in places such as Paris or Liverpool, possessing a piano at home might be seen as a marker of conservative mind-set, in Vienna it means being a true Viennese. The ease with which

Vienna, the city of music 25 Viennese musicians oscillate between serious and popular music, and the different range of styles they adopt, also reflects on the educational policy in Austria. An Austrian pupil at all levels of his or her education is repeatedly informed about the famous Austrian composers and their works. Classical music and its meaning as a cultural heritage of a nation are more important in school curricula in Austria than elsewhere in Europe (Huber and Leitich 2012). Austrian classical music is also an important source of inspiration for musicians considered in this volume. Many of them at some point in their careers engaged in adopting the work of classical composers to contemporary taste, as I show in the subsequent chapters. In some cases their projects of mixing the old with the new were subsided by institutions which normally support serious music and were linked to specific celebrations of classical music. It is plausible to assume that a proportion of listeners of contemporary musicians got in contact with their work thanks to their tapping into the neverending fashion for Mozart and Haydn.

Romanticism and the early modern music For the rest of the nineteenth century, Vienna was still the centre of European music. This was due, in part, to the quality of the work by its leading composers and because music was seen as the city’s way of life. Following the Congress of Vienna in 1815, marking the end of the Napoleonic wars, known as the Vormärz (pre-March), the city had a reputation of having a relaxed atmosphere, which allowed its inhabitants to enjoy the pleasures of culture. As C. M. Macartney observes, [t]here was little great wealth, but a sufficiently widespread modest wellbeing to permit the return of the traditional atmosphere of Viennese life. It was no age of giants . . . The popular musicians of the day, Strauss and Lanner, were turners of waltz tunes. (Macartney 1978: 67) The word which summarised the modest, yet quite widespread comfort was Biedermeier, the producer of popular manufacture. This relaxed atmosphere was owed to the fact that, paradoxically, the Habsburg Empire lagged behind according to the main markers of modernity: urbanisation and industrialisation. The Industrial Revolution came to the house of Austria later than to England, and its centres were in Bohemia rather than in the proximity of Vienna. Although, as Harvey Sachs argues, the division of music into light/popular and serious/elitist started in the early nineteenth century, it consolidated in its second part. In 1854, Robert Schumann published the book On Music and Musicians, in which he not only argued for making such a division but also ‘singled out for special condemnation two pianists born in Austria but working in Paris, Henri Herz and Franz Hunter, for what he saw as the highly commercial nature of their sheet music for amateurs’ (Weber 2004b: 16). However, for a contemporary listener

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the epitome of popular music of this period were the waltzes composed by the Strauss dynasty: Johann Strauss I (1804–1849) and his sons, Johann Strauss II, Josef and Eduard Strauss. With their specific stylistic features, particularly rhythm being more important than melody, they constitute a genre known as the Viennese Waltz (Scott 2008: 123). Viennese waltz stands for a certain taste; the one who waltzes knows how to enjoy life, is able to let oneself go but gently, with poise and grace. Although Strauss Sr.’s music has much in common with Romanticism, he does not fit the idea of a Romantic musician as an autonomous artist, who composes out of internal necessity. Instead, he was a commercial musician by design. His music was popular not only because it happened to attract many people, but because it was intentionally made to be popular. Derek Scott observes that his music was of a type which related little to that which might previously have been considered ‘of the people’. It was not music to accompany work, whether milking the cow or making the hay, nor did it function as part of traditional religious or secular rituals . . . It was for the urban social dance, not the festive village dance. Unlike rural types of music, it was produced for urban leisure-hour consumption. That being said, it had the advantage of being more readily available for audiences elsewhere, since cities were beginning to share much in common in the nineteenth century . . . The music of the Strauss family was, recognizably, of a certain place, Vienna, but its primary purpose was to satisfy expectations in a particular urban space, that of the dance hall. The music also had an urban subject position. When folk idioms were evoked, they were being served up for an urban audience . . . They are what an urban middle-class audience would recognize as rural and not what Upper Austrian farmer would recognize as such.1 (Scott 2008: 122) To widen his audience, Strauss incorporated popular foreign melodies into his composition, such as the French national anthem La Marseillaise into his ParisWaltzer. Hence, he can be regarded as a pioneer of sampling. Moreover, not unlike Herz and Hunter, derided by Schumann, he recognised the importance of the sale of sheet music as a source of income for musicians. For this purpose, he gave his pieces individual titles. In addition, he pioneered the most obvious practice of commercial music, namely collecting a fixed entrance fee from patrons of the ballroom or performances in parks and gardens, instead of the old practice of passing around a collection plate where income was reliant on the goodwill of the audience (ibid.: 122). Strauss also set his sights on making money and fame by touring, and he knew how to gain celebrity by ‘developing a charismatic stage persona and involving himself in open-air spectacles, with sensational effects of scenery, lighting, and fireworks, designed and arranged by his friend Carl Hirsch’ (ibid.: 132). It is thus in Vienna where music made the transition from medieval to capitalist times, and Strauss Sr. can be regarded as the first musician of the capitalist era and successful at that. At the end of his life he became the world’s most

Vienna, the city of music 27 popular musician, whose waltzes enraptured Americans, Chinese and Africans (ibid.: 131). Other famous musicians of this period who made Vienna their home were Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) and Gustav Mahler (1860–1911). Brahms, although perceived as a continuator of traditions rather than an innovator, made history not only thanks to the works he created but also because of being the first major composer participating in recording. This happened in 1889 when a representative of Thomas Edison, Theo Vangemann, visited the composer in Vienna and recorded his performance on piano of his Hungarian dance, with a short, spoken introduction. This recording is also historical as it foreshadows the future of music, in which America will become the world hegemon, not so much because of being a talent pool but because of its technological and economic advantages. The second half of the nineteenth century saw a significant modernisation of Vienna’s urban design, labelled Gründerzeit: the constructors’ period. The city walls were razed to the ground in 1857 (relatively late in comparison with other European capitals) in order to merge the old town and the new quarters (Suitner 2015: 113). Between 1850 and 1910 the surface area of Vienna grew from 55.4 to 275.9 square kilometres as a result of incorporating the suburbs (Payer 2007: 775). Roughly in the same period the population of Vienna grew from 520,000 to 2.2 million people, becoming the fourth-largest city in Europe, after London, Paris and Berlin. During this period demand for housing, mostly for workers pouring into Vienna from all corners of the empire, became the greatest challenge for the city planners (Hatz 2008: 2). The Ringstrasse (Ring Road), built during this period, became a major construction site for an impressive number of major buildings, including theatres, museums, a university and large private constructions. Among them was Wiener Hofoper (the Vienna Court Opera, later the Vienna State Opera), built between 1861 and 1869, whose director from 1897 was Mahler. Largely destroyed by an American bombardment near the end of the Second World War, it was rebuilt and up till now is one of the most imposing buildings in the city. However, these imposing buildings did not mark or even foretell any new cultural trends; they rather harked back to the past; they were in the style of neosomething (Baroque, Renaissance, Gothic). The spirit of imitating the past was also reflected in the interior design, with its affinity for adding ornaments, coming from different periods, rather than creating new art. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, this eclecticism and indulgence in ornament produced a backlash among the leading Viennese artists. During this period, fin de siècle, Vienna also offered the world new ideas about music, art, sexuality and the human mind. Sigmund Freud, Gustav Klimt, Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos, Otto Weininger, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and Arnold Schoenberg are the most famous names associated with this period. The fin-de-siècle atmosphere also affected the future work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, probably the most influential philosopher of the twentieth century, with significant achievements also in areas such as architecture and engineering. Until World War I, Vienna was a hotbed of artistic creativity, even the intellectual centre of the world, ‘the little world in which the big one holds its

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tryouts’ (Schorske 1979: xxvii). Carl Schorske attributes this upsurge in intellectual and artistic activity to the specificity of Vienna’s elites. In London, Paris or Berlin the intellectuals in the various branches of high culture, whether academic or aesthetic, journalistic or literary, political and intellectual, scarcely knew each other. They lived in relatively segregated professional communities. In Vienna, by contrast, until about 1900, the cohesiveness of the whole elite was strong. The salon and the café retained their vitality as institutions where intellectuals of different kinds shared ideas and values with each other and still mingled with a business and professional elite proud of its general education and artistic culture. (Schorske 1979: xxvii) The productive transfer of ideas between the various literary, musical and artistic figures at a coffehouse ensured a specific character of Viennese culture, art and philosophy, culminating in the movements of the Secession or Jugendstil. It was democratic, with decorative art granted the same place in the pantheon of arts as painting, as well as interdisciplinary, with many artists pursuing the ideal of the Gesamtkunstwerk (the total work of art), by merging different types of art into one form, as in opera, or striving to create a piece reflecting on properties of a different discipline of art, for example designing a building or a book which would possess musical form. In this context a song was invested with particular importance as a musical form which combines music with visual imagery through the mediation of a poetic text and which can be developed and cultivated in the privacy of one’s home (Silverthorne 2011: 33–4). Although the question of the relationship between high/serious and popular/low art was rarely directly tackled by artists and philosophers of this period, they acted in the spirit of reconciling the popular and the elitist. As far as plastic arts are concerned, they succeeded. The works created by Klimt and Otto Wagner belong to the most reproduced artworks till the present day and are instantly recognised even by people with little knowledge of art. Of the musicians working in this period the most renowned was Arnold Schoenberg, the leader of the Second Viennese School, which comprised also Alban Berg and Anton Webern. These composers expanded tonality and moved to atonality. In many ways, Schoenberg was a typical Viennese fin-de-siècle artist who shunned a narrow specialism. He composed music, painted and theorised on music, writing, among other things, ‘Treatise on Harmony’. And yet, even in this period when Vienna was at the forefront of new ideas, there was a sense that it was losing its privileged place on the cultural map of Europe. The many avant-garde movements, the sprouting of numerous societies supporting art can be seen as a reaction against the prevailing philistinism and conservatism of this period. This view was presented in a circular announcing the establishment of the Society of Creative Musicians, set up by Schoenberg and his brother-in-law, Alexander Zemlinsky, and most likely written by Schoenberg himself: In Vienna’s musical life, very little attention is given to the works of contemporary composers, especially Viennese ones. As a rule, new works are heard

Vienna, the city of music 29 in Vienna only after doing the rounds of Germany’s many musically active towns, great and small- and even then they usually meet with little interest, indeed with hostility. There is a crass contrast between this state of affairs and Vienna’s musical past, when she set the tone; the usual explanation is that the public seem to feel an insuperable distaste for everything new. Vienna is not the place for novelties – that is the story, and the people who say so seem, at first glance, to be in the right if disregards the operetta, a field in which our city does set the tone, beyond the doubt. (quoted in Reich 1971: 16–7) Significantly, Schoenberg’s words would be echoed by many musicians working in Vienna after the Second World War, including those whom I interviewed for this project, although there are additional reasons why ‘post-Schoenberg’ Vienna did not trust its own musical taste. Unlike his musical ancestors, who relied on a receptive audience, Schoenberg argued that it had to be prepared to understand contemporary music. ‘The listener’s powers of musical thought and feeling must be able to rise to the demands imposed by the works, just as the work must meet all one’s own demands’ (ibid.: 17). Importantly, such an opinion would influence one of the most important twentieth-century authors interested in music, Theodor Adorno, especially his concept of expert listening (Adorno 2002: 213–317). When discussing music in the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, one cannot ignore its obverse: noise. Its level increased immensely during this period, due to factors such as the population growth. The surface area given over to traffic between 1870 and 1913 expanded from 2.7 to 15.7 million square metres (Payer 2007: 775). The sheer number of people living in close proximity to each other, the noise produced by horse-drawn carts (4,686 in 1900) rushing on the cobbled streets and then steam-powered streetcars and later electrified streetcars and motor vehicles, rendered Vienna an acoustic prison from which one could not escape, even at night (ibid.: 776–8). In this predicament Vienna was not alone. Heavy noise also polluted other large cities, such as London, Manchester and Paris, because everywhere it was a by-product of economic and technological progress. Was there, however, something specific about Viennese noise? Some authors argued that Vienna circa 1900 was the loudest city in Europe and therefore the most nervous city on the continent. This was to do with the streets in Venna being cobbled, lacking underground trains and large parts of the city were employed for mixed purposes to a greater extent than in other cities (ibid.: 787). Was this level and character of noise affecting music created by Viennese composers? Most likely it did, according to the rule that city produces the music as much as being produced by it (Bottà 2008). However, how exactly it happened is difficult to say.

Music in Vienna between the World Wars World War I led to the disappearance of the Habsburg Empire and the establishment of a number of new nation states in Europe, including Austria, which

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became a republic. Vienna thus ceased to be the centre of an empire and became the capital of a small state, humiliated by losing the war. It also lost its unique cosmopolitan character because of a reshuffling of large numbers of people, with many moving to the newly established nation states, such as Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia. Subsequently it was hit badly by the crisis of the 1930s. The worsening economic situation, a low birth rate and later its co-option into the Nazi state led to a further loss of population. Between 1919 and 1937 alone, more than 80,000 Austrians left for overseas destinations (emigration to other destinations was not recorded). Meanwhile, a fair number of people immigrated to Palestine (Jews), the Soviet Union (social democrats and communists) and Germany (mostly Nazi supporters) (Jandl and Kraler 2003; Hatz 2008: 2). Just before the Second World War the population of Vienna declined to 1.7 million people. These multiple blows led not only to a worsening of the country’s economic position but also to its loss of self-confidence. Throughout the twenty years between the wars, as Tony Judt puts it, Austria ‘slid steadily from grace finishing up as the provincial outpost of a Nazi empire to which most of its citizens swore enthusiastic fealty’ (Judt 2007: 2). Nevertheless, the first decade after the First World War still saw music in Vienna blossoming. The members of the Second Viennese School were developing twelve-tone technique, which in due course affected serious music all over the world. Viennese music from earlier periods became the staple repertoire of musical theatres all over Europe and Vienna tried to brand itself as the ‘city of music’ (Nußbaumer 2007: 11) with significant success. Writing at the beginning of the 1930s British author J. D. Newth remarked, Music is still the most important thing in life for true Viennese, as you may see and hear for yourself at any time and anywhere, from the Opera to the Heurigen. The Staatsoper is open all year round; its company is the most famous in the world. Equally renowned is the Viennese Philharmonic Orchestra, which plays always to crowded audiences in the two big halls, the Musikverein and the Konzerthaus. And on any summer evening you may sit under the trees of the Burggarten and listen to the Symphony Orchestra playing in the most perfect setting. Church music you will hear in the Cathedral and the larger churches. The lighter music for which Vienna is hardly less well-known persists in her characteristic light opera, which is sought more than ever today by London, New York and the other capitals of the world. And Viennese dance music, which for years we thought we could do without, has swept back with an even greater charm. Here in Vienna, of course, its reign has been unbroken since Lanner and Strauss created it a hundred years ago; and, though the foxtrot and tango are far from unknown, it is the Viennese waltz that always fills the floor, danced with the same sweeping, swirling grace as in its imperial heyday. (Newth 1931: 167–8) The twenty years dividing the two world wars also saw remarkable changes in the way music was consumed, thanks to radio and cinema, which in this period became mass media. They popularised, visualised and linked music to certain

Vienna, the city of music 31 locations, narratives and images. Music no longer needed to be loud to reach the masses. Arnold Schoenberg drew attention to the suitability of modern music to the radio because of being ‘thinly scored’ and usually made up of short pieces (Reich 1971: 243). Schoenberg also suggested that radio should broadcast serious art music but not at a time when the public listens to it: An hour should be given over to modern music, at a time when its opponents will not greatly begrudge it; for example, an hour late at night, once or twice a week, perhaps after eleven. That could be handed over to modern music with no envious reactions. (ibid.: 244) Cinematic Vienna of the interwar period was predominantly the Vienna of the mythical past, suspended between the Congress in Vienna and the beginning of the First World War. This was an elegant and jovial city, in contrast to the screen images of Berlin of this period, which tended to be represented as impoverished and dangerous. How important music was in films set in Vienna we can gather by just looking at these films’ titles, for example Leise flehen meine Lieder (Gently My Songs Entreat, 1933) by Willi Forst and Hoheit tanzt Walzer (Eternal Waltz, 1935) by Max Neufeld. Touristy Vienna of the benevolent monarchy and waltzing couples was also immortalised by foreign directors, such as Alfred Hitchcock in Waltzes from Vienna (Moser 2012: 9). Such a gentle image of Vienna was strengthened after Austria’s annexation by Germany in 1938. Then it served as propaganda for a ‘Greater Germany’. The best-known example is Willi Forst’s musical trilogy on Old Vienna, consisting of Operette (Operatta, 1940), Wiener Blut (Viennese Blood, 1942) and Wiener Mädeln (Young Girls of Vienna, 1945). Overall, the Nazi period affected Viennese music negatively. By branding as degenerate the music of Schoenberg and his pupils, as well as Mahler, because of his Jewishness, the Nazis thwarted the development of avant-garde music and promoted philistinism in Austria’s capital. By placing classical music at the service of Hitler’s politics, they tainted it with his aura. Since then Viennese waltzes and operettas, not to mention marches, for a section of the audience, would sound somewhat Nazi. The same is also true of German and Austrian folk music, which was used in Nazi propaganda. Moreover, during this period Vienna witnessed the death or exodus of its best musicians, including the three pillars of the Second Viennese School. In 1935 Alban Berg died; followed by Anton Webern in 1945. In 1934 Schoenberg left Vienna for the US. Theodor Adorno, a German whose work was greatly influenced by Berg, also left Germany, first for Britain and then to the US, helping the domination of American music and music theory, at the expense of German and Austrian music and thought.

Popular music in Vienna after the Second World War Austria after the Second World War, not unlike after the First World War, was a defeated country, under occupation by four victorious powers, including the

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Soviet Union. However, the realities of the Cold War ensured that, unlike Germany, it avoided division into the socialist East and the capitalist West and instead became, as Eric Hobsbawm put it, a ‘sort of second Switzerland – a small country committed to neutrality, envied for its persistent prosperity and therefore described (correctly) as “boring” ’ (Hobsbawm 1995: 227). Throughout most of its postwar history, Austria was one of the most stable European democracies, with the two leading parties, the Christian-conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) and the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) remaining in a coalition led by the ÖVP until 1966. Both parties adhered to the principles of embedded liberalism, namely capitalism embedded in state institutions and working for the ‘people’, rather than merely for capitalists. Vienna had the unofficial status of the first ‘western’, free city, albeit surrounded by ‘eastern’, Soviet-controlled Europe, and for citizens of countries such as Poland and Czechoslovakia a gate to Europe or the ‘further west’, rather than its heart. Such an image of Vienna was first put forward in the celebrated film The Third Man (1949) by Carol Reed, one of the darkest portrayals of Vienna ever created. It is probably the most famous cinematic portrayal of Vienna to this date, bearing similarity to another European film of this period, Germania anno zero (Germany year zero, 1948) by Roberto Rossellini. Both films present the cities, respectively, Vienna and Berlin, as being not only physically destroyed, but also corrupted and beyond repair. In The Third Man this is conveyed by setting the most important scenes in underground passages, which act as a metaphor for living in the darkness and hiding from the law and the scrutiny of history. They offer a viewer an outsider’s perspective (meaningfully Reed and Rossellini were both foreigners) at a time when Austria and Germany wanted to move beyond ‘year zero’. The paradoxical character of The Third Man as a great film about reality with which the inhabitants of Vienna did not want to identify is reflected in the history of its soundtrack, known as ‘The Third Man Theme’ or ‘The Harry Lime Theme’, composed and performed on zither by Anton Karas. The theme became a chart success in many countries. However, the legend has it that Karas (who at the time when he was approached by Reed was playing in Viennese cafés for tips) subsequently was not playing this theme to the audience. Carol Reed quoted him as saying, Because when you play in a café, nobody stops to listen; music is just background for talk and drinking and shouting. This tune takes out a lot of your fingers. I prefer playing Wien, Wien, the sort of thing one can play all night while eating sausages at the same time. (quoted in Samuels 1972: 171)2 During the first decades after the war the priority of the authorities was to rebuild the country and ensure a certain comfort for its citizens. ‘Productivity’ and ‘standard of living’ became the watchwords of this period (Luger 1991: 504). The questions related to Austria’s role within the Nazi project were not tackled because of being seen as esoteric in the light of more pressing material problems

Vienna, the city of music 33 and uncomfortable, given that the majority of the population was implicated in Nazi politics. This explains a certain cultural conservatism prevailing in this period, leading to the opinion that Vienna ossified into a museum commemorating its imperial splendour, as testified by the fact that a typical topic of Austrian films of the 1950s and 1960s was the glorious past of the Habsburg Empire with its musical tradition. Take, for example, the three very popular Sissi films with Romy Schneider and Wien, du Stadt meiner Traume (Vienna, the City of My Dreams, 1957) by Willi Forst, the chief representative of the ‘Viennese film’ of the interwar period, in which the king of a fictional country, Alania, and his daughter visit Vienna, where the king spent his student days: During his trip the king argues with his newfound love interest, a modern sculptress, about the values of the old versus the new in Viennese life. Images depicting the camaraderie of guests sitting at tables in a traditional wine restaurant under a full moon and the charm of an elderly gentleman singing in Viennese dialect to the accompaniment of traditional musicians firmly decide the debate in favour of tradition. While in Vienna the king learns he has been deposed, but his country cannot seem to exist without links to their past either and he is ultimately asked to return as president. (Wauchope 2012: 52) Vienna’s past seemed more impressive in the light of the simple fact that after World War II, its population declined. By 1951, it was merely 1.62 million inhabitants, almost half a million fewer than forty years before (Hatz 2008: 2–3). Not surprisingly, the city heavily invested in restoring Vienna’s classical heritage. A major project was rebuilding the Vienna State Opera, which was destroyed by American bombarding in March 1945. There was also significant state investment in creating ensembles performing classical music in Vienna and abroad. At some point the centre of the city was awash with men in wigs posing as Mozart, exploiting the touristic potential of Viennese music. The focus on preserving the past suggests that the conditions for the development of popular music in Vienna in the first decades after the end of the Second World War were not conducive. To that we should add a number of factors. One was the hegemony of AngloSaxon popular music in the world, attributed to the US’s position as a superpower achieved after the Second World War (Bennett 2000: 53) and England being the privileged test market and talent pool (Frith 1991). The US and Britain became the main exporter of popular music; the rest of the world imported music from there in the form of actual records and the dominant style, which was adapted to local markets. This colonising influence was particularly strong in Germanspeaking countries, where the flooding of local markets with the products of American culture was meant to fulfil two objectives at once: to teach the local population a lesson in democracy and to increase the profit of American companies. In Austria, the Americans revamped radio programmes, partly with the goal of countering the Soviet-controlled stations. This situation was exacerbated by the emigration of many leading German artists from the interwar period, such as

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film director Fritz Lang and the previously mentioned Arnold Schoenberg, both of whom had settled in the US. With the defeat of the Nazis also came a widespread prejudice against German culture and language, which was seen as tainted by the Nazi influence. This led to a loss of self-confidence by local artists, be it writers, filmmakers or musicians, and added to obstacles experienced by German and Austrian musicians to achieve success abroad. This prejudice is still not entirely eradicated, particularly in the UK, where the German language continues to be associated with Hitler’s oratory speech. Although at the end of World War II, some 1.4 million foreigners, including foreign workers, slave labourers, prisoners of war, war refugees, and ethnic Germans from all over Eastern Europe found themselves on Austrian territory, soon it became an ethnically homogenous country, and Vienna’s cosmopolitan character was weakened. Given that popular music feeds on cultural exchange, this was an unwelcome situation. In the light of the multiple losses Austrian population and culture experienced since the end of the Habsburg monarchy and especially the Second World War, some researchers construe Austria as a country lacking in identity and permanently searching for one. For example, Edward Larkey, in the only monograph in English devoted to Austrian postwar popular music, Pungent Sounds, argues, One way of clarification [what postwar Austria was] has been to see it in terms of a negation of something else: not German, not Prussian, not Eastern, not Socialist, not Capitalist, but also not de-Nazified. Another way is to consider Austria(ns) something ‘not yet’: not just German, not just Vienna/ Viennese, not just Catholic, Western, alpine, etc . . . . One attempt to cope with the imprecision is to exceptionalize: Austro-Marxism, Austro-Fascism, and yes, Austropop. (Larkey 1993: xxi) Larkey’s assumption here is that countries and individuals need a stable identity. However, while this might be true of the past, this is less the case currently. A stable national identity is even seen as a sign of backwardness, as demonstrated by the fact that researchers recently developed new concepts such as a ‘betweenhome-ness’, to account for a new paradigm of home for the cosmopolitan where home is the practice of mobility itself (Di Stefano 2002: 41). Indeed, the most successful Austrian artists in the postwar period favoured identities which were unstable. Such a play with identities started in the 1960s. The most extreme example were the works of the Viennese Actionism, a loose group of artists such as Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Otto Mühl and Hermann Nitsch. For example, Schwarzkogler’s performances involved experience of pain and mutilation, as when a patient’s head swathed in bandages was pierced by a sharp object, producing a bloodstain under the bandages. There are multiple links between popular music in Vienna and this phenomenon. In the 1960s and 1970s Viennese musicians and performance artists hung out in the same coffeehouses (Grőbchen et al. 2013: 58). One of the first Viennese DJs and music managers, Edek Bartz, worked with Nitsch during the 1970s, producing acoustic recordings of his ‘Actions’. Bands

Vienna, the city of music 35 such as Drahdiwaberl and Hallucination Company were performance troupes rather than traditional pop-rock bands and dissecting identity was at the core of their performance. In the 1950s, generation of young Austrians, faced with the choice of the culture of the American colonisers or that of Imperial Vienna, usually chose the former, as it felt younger and offered a better possibility of adaptation and transformation. This was reflected in the successes of the American records of Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and American films with Marlon Brando and James Dean, but also producing local versions of these acts, as exemplified by the humorous song by Helmut Qualtinger and Gerhard Bonner, ‘Der Halbwilde or Der Marlon Brando mit seiner Maschin’ (‘Marlon Brando with his Motorcycle’, 1956), referring to the movie The Wild One (1953) by Laslo Benedek, in which Brando starred and the career of Peter Kraus, who was marketed as a German-singing version of Elvis Presley (Luger 1991: 502). At the end of the 1960s, this period of simple imitation was coming to a close. Austrian musicians started to create their own idiom of expression. Its epitome became Austropop. Following Motti Regev, Rosa Reitsamer classifies Austropop as an example of ‘ethno-national rock’ (Reitsamer 2012: 334). ‘Austropop’ points, on one hand, to being a localised phenomenon and, on the other, to belonging to pop, not in the sense of being a diluted, second-class rock but rather not being popular or folk in the tradition of Schlager or Wienerlied. In the course of time, this term gained negative connotations, signifying parochialism, but in the 1970s it stood for something genuinely new. The beginning of Austropop is in a sense also its peak. It is marked by the recording in 1971 of the song “Da Hofa” in Viennese dialect by the then merely 19-year-old Wolfgang Ambros, with lyrics by Joesie Prokopetz, who would write many more songs for Ambros. While the use of the local dialect might have suggested folk roots, the content of the song and the accompanying video accentuated its modernity, by underscoring cultural divisions between the young and older generation of Austrians. The song is about the body of a man found in the street. The neighbours of the deceased pretend to know who the killer is: Da Hofa (‘Der Hofer’ in high German). They rush to his home to lynch him, only to be told by a young man (Ambros) that the body on the street belongs to ‘Da Hofa’. In the video we see older men and women in old-fashioned clothes, in the mood for revenge. They move up the circular staircase, bringing to mind German expressionism and film noir and a certain discourse about Nazi times when ‘good neighbours’ turned out to be suspicious and bloodthirsty. At the same time, Ambros’s song defines what would become the main internal enemy of Austria, according to a certain discourse, perpetuated by Austrian writers and filmmakers: the petit-bourgeoisie. In subsequent decades, Austrian popular artists, especially filmmakers, would render representatives of this social strata as monsters (Dassanowsky and Speck 2011: 1–2). In this context it is also worth mentioning another song and video from the 1970s, Georg Danzer’s ‘Jö schau’ (1975). The song concerns the entrance of a naked man into the famous Café Hawelka. As in Da Hofa, we see petit-bourgeois types, taken aback by this entrance, but the man is not attacked or even thrown out, and the song

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suggests that Café Hawelka is an inclusive place, where people of different ages and classes mingle. Ambros started his career singing in English the hits of Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones (Grőbchen et al. 2013: 57) and throughout his career, which has lasted till now, covered many songs of Anglo-American stars. He epitomises two trends in Austrian popular music: borrowing from the Anglo-American centre and immortalising local places, customs and people, as exemplified by his song ‘Es lebe der Zentralfriedhof’. It is a hymn to the Viennese graveyard, where almost all famous Austrian musicians are buried and to the city’s glorious past, and an ironic take on Vienna as a mausoleum, where the dead (people and traditions) triumph over those who are young: It’s cold out there and it’s warm below, just sometimes a bit moist But if you are lying six feet under, you really enjoy it if your grave light is burning Long live the Vienna Central Cemetery, the scene seems macabre The priests are dancing with the whores and Jews with Arabs Today everybody is in a good mood, everything is revived In the mausoleum there a band playing, they really have the groove Austropop had a more international outlook than it is normally credited with. An example is the career of Georg Danzer, who travelled widely in Europe and Africa, lived for several years in Spain and even translated books from Spanish to German. One of his greatest hits, ‘Weiße Pferde’ (White horses), recorded in 1984, is influenced by Latino music and mixes German and Spanish lyrics. Nevertheless, Austropop and other forms of Austrian popular music in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s were produced largely for internal consumption. It was a different story with Austrian jazz, as demonstrated by the careers of Joe Zawinul and Franz Koglmann. The first left Vienna as early as 1959 when he received a scholarship from Boston and never properly returned to his homeland. In the US, he collaborated with Miles Davis and became one of the creators of jazz fusion. Koglmann stayed in Vienna, but his music has a distinctly cosmopolitan character, as among his musical inspirations were the works of Vladimir Nabokov and Emil Cioran. The late 1960s and early 1970s is also a period when Vienna as a physical space starts to be friendlier towards popular music. The first venues where people like Ambros could perform were small, but this afforded them the cozy atmosphere required for building connections between artists and their audience. Many of them were cafés, which in time became legendary, such as Café Hawelka, Café Savoy and Theseustempel, a small building in the park and a meeting place for those who wanted to smoke weed undisturbed, which, according to the musicians remembering this period, constituted the epicentre of Viennese musical life (Grőbchen et al. 2013: 57). Soon Vienna acquired its first club with a DJ, Atrium (ibid.: 57–8). What was characteristic about the early music scene was its inclusiveness. Edek Bartz, one of the first Viennese DJs, claims that the early clubs

Vienna, the city of music 37 were visited by the working-class youth, leading Viennese artists, and the motorracing champion Niki Lauda (ibid.). This egalitarian character reflected the way Vienna was governed after the Second World War, with the authorities trying to lift class barriers by ensuring all citizens a decent standard of living, including subsided social housing (Hatz, Kohlbacher and Reeger 2016: 80–1) and regarding access to culture as a basic human right. In the 1960s foreign stars, such as the Rolling Stones, started to give concerts in Vienna. A sign of the ambition to overcome Viennese parochialism, as well as to capitalise on a new fashion of merging classical with popular music, was the plan in 1976 to organise Frank Zappa concert with the Viennese Symphonic Orchestra, to be supported by the city of Vienna and Austrian television and radio. The plan was enthusiastically embraced by Zappa, who was enchanted by the city’s rich musical tradition when he played in the Konzerthaus in 1970 (Miles 2004: 143). However, according to Zappa, the concert fell through because of a shortfall of funds from television, making him lose more than 100,000 USD (Zappa 1999: 146–7). Nevertheless, the idea of bringing pop and classical music together did not disappear in Austria, as demonstrated by a concert by one of the city’s greatest stars, Falco, in Wiener Neustadt in 1994. Relative prosperity and equality were important factors why Vienna avoided large-scale protests, strikes and terrorist attacks which marred the history of many European cities in the late 1960s and 1970s, especially in Germany and Italy. Even the famous year of 1968 had little resonance in Vienna. And yet, from the 1970s the city and the country experienced a large demographic and cultural change. Austria’s economic boom led to a growing demand for labour and an important shift in immigration policy. As Germany and Switzerland had already done in the 1950s, Austria began to forge bilateral agreements with Turkey (1964) and Yugoslavia (1966), which led to the settlement of significant numbers of workers from these countries and their families in Austria. In 1969, the number of foreign workers from Turkey and Yugoslavia stood at 76,500. By 1973, numbers had almost tripled to 227,000–178,000 of whom came from Yugoslavia and 27,000 from Turkey (Jandl and Kraler 2003). In 1979 a United Nations headquarters was opened in Vienna, bringing to the city a new influx of foreigners and a new social tone. Vienna was still attracting foreign filmmakers, who continued to latch on its rich musical heritage. By the 1970s, however, the fashion for simply showing the beauty of old Vienna was over, and its heritage started to be used in new ways. A seminal example is Il portiere di notte (The night porter, 1974) by Liliana Cavani, focusing on a sadomasochistic relationship between Max, an ex-SS officer who worked in the Nazi concentration camp, and Lucia, a camp survivor, who after the war married a famous opera conductor. The two meet in a Vienna hotel named Zu der Oper, where Max works as a night porter. Time and again we see in the hotel an advert for Die Zauberflöte, performed in Volksoper and conducted by Lucia’s husband. One such spectacle is attended by Max and Lucia, who both reminiscence on their time in the camp while simultaneously watching Mozart’s opera. Needless to add, at the time of its premiere Cavani’s film was regarded as controversial, not only because of suggesting that the time spent in the Nazi camp

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might be a golden time for its victims but also by associating Viennese classical music with Nazi (anti)culture. The 1970s was also a period when English music started to lose its position as the main testing ground and career pool, giving way to Scandinavia and Germany (Frith 1991). This is not an accident, given that from the late 1960s Germany, after two or so decades of American cultural hegemony in their own country gathered enough strength to resist it. The leading figures in this renewal were these artists who were too young to be tainted by collaboration with the Nazis. A case in point is the New German cinema, created by Alexander Kluge, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders and Werner Herzog. These filmmakers, while distancing themselves from the Nazi legacy, also rejected the domination of German culture by American influences. Consequently, the common topic of their films was a cultural void and search for identity, often in faraway places with little human presence, such as a desert or jungle, which became the favourite locations of Werner Herzog. Although working in popular culture, creators of New German Cinema had an ambition to create a lasting, high-quality art rather than pure entertainment, as demonstrated by drawing on high culture influences. A similar approach can be identified in a certain strand of German popular music of the late 1960s and 1970s, developing in Düsseldorf and Berlin, as represented by Can, Faust, Kraftwerk and Neu!3 As a result, these artists looked for their inspiration in the ‘music’, created by machines, city noise, people living outside the Western world (Can is seen as pioneers of ‘world music’) and cosmos (hence the label ‘cosmic rock’) (Adelt 2012). Another important source of their inspiration was experimental music, especially that of Karlheinz Stockhausen. In the 1970s and the 1980s Austrian popular music did not have its equivalent. However, this period saw some attempts to find a ‘third way’: neither American nor Austro-nostalgic. This is reflected, on one hand, in the ‘performance troupes’, the previously mentioned Hallucination Company and Drahdiwaberl and, on the other, in Austrian disco, such as Supermax, Ganymed and DÖF (DeutschÖsterreichisches Feingefühl, German-Austrian Sensibility). Provocation rather that creating hits was the main objective of the Hallucination Company and Drahdiwaberl, as demonstrated by the fact that destroying their attire and instruments was a necessary part of their gigs. Ganymed, on the other hand, offered its audience a ‘space disco’, as conveyed by the titles of their records and songs, such as ‘Saturn’, “Dimension No. 3” and the title of their greatest hit, ‘It Takes Me Higher’, which could as well refer to the emotion experienced in a spaceship as in a discotheque. The ‘cosmic’ character of the band was enhanced by the shiny and clingy clothes; the half-alien, half-animal masks they wore on stage; and the band’s name, borrowed from a poem by Goethe, where it refers to a mythical figure seduced by Zeus. The greatest hit of DÖF, a band set up by Joesi Prokopetz, who was also Ambros’s chief lyricist, was ‘Codo’, a song about an alien bringing love and joy to the impoverished lives of Earthlings. In common with the most successful European disco act of the 1970s, originating from Germany, Boney M and Ganymed sang in English or more exactly, the type of simple English, pertaining to Europop, while DÖF mixed English with German. Any references

Vienna, the city of music 39 to local culture in these productions were erased, in recognition of the fact that on the dance floor it does not matter whether one is from Vienna, London or Buenos Aires. Finally, in the 1980s Vienna had a pop star who achieved global reach, Falco (1957–1998). Falco started his career as an imitator of Anglo-Saxon performers, playing with his band in Austrian and Yugoslav resorts and had in his repertoire a fair amount of cover songs of artists such as the Beatles, Bob Dylan and Steely Dan. He also collaborated with Drahdiwaberl and the Hallucination Company and played bass guitar on Ganymed’s last concert. He was thus in a position to absorb many influences and observe many career paths, before choosing his own. Falco acknowledged his (and by the same token) Austrian pop music’s debt to the Anglo-American centre not only by borrowing from the existing styles but also by paying homage to its masters, as in his ‘The Sound of Musik’, where the singer mentions Otis Redding ‘sitting on the Dock of the Bay’ and pronounces ‘Sei es Rock, Punk, Heavy Metal, Politics or Classical, it’s all Musik to me’. At the same time, Falco’s music has a strong Viennese feel, indeed stronger than that of Austropop, perhaps because, unlike Ambros and Danzer, he was born and raised in Vienna. He sang in Viennese dialect, yet mixing this language with standard German (Hochdeutsch), English and elements of many other languages, becoming a unique music-linguistic phenomenon (Hintze 2010; Mazierska 2014). In one of his first songs, ‘Ganz Wien’, Falco offered a modern image of Vienna, mentioning U4 Club, which by this point was the most fashionable club in the city (not unlike Café Hawelka in Danzer’s ‘Jö schau’) and declaring the whole city as of being on drugs. He also made reference to one of the most enduring cultural institutions in Vienna, the ‘ball season’. The balls do not prevent drug consumption; on the contrary, it is during the ball season when drug taking goes up. In this way, Falco, not unlike Liliana Cavani in The Night Porter, managed to de-museumise Viennese old traditions, rendering them kinky. In Falco’s greatest hit, ‘Rock Me Amadeus’, the artist presents the most famous Austrian composer as if he was a punk but also presents himself as a ‘new Amadeus’, descendant of a certain musical tradition, which mixes the old with the new, and a man engaging in a reckless lifestyle. The extreme eclecticism of the music style, in which a fragment from Strauss’s waltz is followed by hard rock, as if borrowed from Queen, comes across as kitschy and exploitative (Mazierska 2015b). Yet, thanks to its energy and boldness it became a global musical sensation in 1985, affording Falco the status of the only Germanspeaking artist who reached number one on the Billboard charts and an informal cultural ambassador of Vienna, encouraging tourists to come and see the treasures of this city. The singer also drew on earlier cultural representations of his city, for example his video to “Jeanny” quotes from The Third Man, as well as from M (1931) by Fritz Lang, one of Vienna’s greatest ‘sons’. Falco was not only a singer but also a rapper. Rap, or rather a certain form of it, known as hip-hop, is regarded as a particularly urban style, not only in the sense of being created in large cities and bearing witness to their transformation, most importantly the disappearance of designated centres of community wrought by deindustrialisation, unemployment, drugs and crime (Rose 1994: 22–3), but also

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relating a specific experience of moving through a city and experiencing it with all one’s senses (Beer 2014; Black 2014). One of Falco’s greatest hits, ‘Der Kommissar’, shares with the listener the experience of a young junkie who is running through a city, escaping police and possibly death. In the rather cheap video produced for this song we see Falco singing and running against the background of a busy street at night. One wants to think about Vienna, but what we get is rather an anonymous, generic city with no hallmarks. Falco’s songs are also full of references to distant locations, such as Egypt, Canada, Panama and the Himalayas, and often he connects Vienna with exotic places in one song or video. His approach to music brings to mind the concept of ‘audiotopia’. Josh Kun, who coined this term, drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, defines it as a juxtaposition of several spaces, several sites that are themselves incompatible. Kun regards audiotopia as an enacted, real, livid, utopian space created by hybridising different types of music and musical traditions in opposition to privileging one type of music linked to nation building (Kun 2005: 23–4). Such a programme was also close to Falco’s heart, not least because it reflected Austria of the 1980s, which by this point had started to shed its image as solely a German-speaking and inward-looking little country to return to the multiculturalism and multilingualism of the Habsburg monarchy. Audiotopian character can be also attributed to the productions of the dance duo Edelweiss, created by Matthias Schweger and Walter Werzowa, who in 1988 had an international hit ‘Bring Me Edelweiss’, supposedly by following the instructions from the book The Manual by the KLF. The song is a collage of well-known motifs and tunes, including ‘S.O.S.’ by Abba, yodelling and The Sound of Musik. More than anything Falco ever did, Edelweiss carried its inauthenticity on its sleeve and engaged with the perception of Austrian (and continental) popular music as backward by not trying to live up to the Anglo-Saxon standards but by provocatively intesifying those of its elements, which suggested a low cultural capital. Between 1985 and 2001, more than 254,000 foreigners were naturalised in Austria. Austria’s proportion of foreign-born residents in 2001 was even higher than that of the US, reaching a level of 12.5 per cent (Jandl and Kraler 2003). In Vienna it was even higher: 16.4 per cent in 2002 and 21.2 per cent in 2011 (Hatz, Kohlbacher and Reeger 2016: 84). The change in the country’s demographic composition led to a break in the political consensus, as demonstrated by the rise of the Freedom Party of Austria (the FPÖ) under Jörg Haider, which put antiimmigration law at the core of its political programme. In 1999 the FPÖ achieved the best result in a nationwide election with 26.9% of the vote, defeating the ÖVP by a small margin. The 1980s and the 1990s was also a period of greater visibility of the two categories of ‘others’ in Vienna’s culture: homosexuals and Jews (Bunzl 2004: 213), whose culture in the previous decades were quietly suppressed or incorporated into mainstream Viennese culture. In the following decade the rich gay scene with its musical attractions even became a selling point of Vienna (Gibson and Connell 2005: 64). This, combined with the city’s continuous high investment in culture, largely with an eye on tourists (Suitner 2015; 145–61), brought back to Vienna at the end of the twentieth century some of its old glory. Not surprisingly, Tony Judt begins his history of postwar Europe by ‘zooming’ in

Vienna, the city of music 41 on this city and declaring that ‘Vienna in 1989 was a good place from which to “think” Europe’ (Judt 2007: 2). Vienna, understood in such terms, as a prosperous and cosmopolitan city is a background to the phenomenon, which I investigate in subsequent chapters: popular Viennese electronic music. As with other waves discussed in this chapter, it is an urban phenomenon, which happened thanks to the proximity of many talented people who came into contact with each other because they were living on the same estate, attending the same school or going to the same club. Their ethnic and social background reflects Vienna of 1989, as described by Judt. Some of its creators, such as Andy Orel and Richard Dorfmeister came from families, living in Vienna for many generations. Others were of immigrant background, like Rodney Hunter, the son of an American officer stationed in Wiesbaden, who came to Vienna when Rodney was ten years old, or Erdem Tunakan, who came from a family of Turkish emigrants. Some were children of middle-class professionals, the parents of others were working class, but because of the egalitarian policies of the country and the city authorities, most of them were barely aware either of their own class or that of their friends. Most of them travelled abroad extensively in the early part of their careers before settling in Vienna. There were additional factors which affected its character, of which the most important were the changes in technology which enabled them to produce their own music, rather than waiting to be discovered by talent scouts, unlikely to search for talents in Vienna. Viennese electronic music provides a mirror image of contemporary Vienna by avoiding reference to local customs or personalities or engaging in political battles. In some ways it can be seen as a child of German cosmic rock and perhaps the Austrian wave of disco of the late 1970s and 1980s, by looking at its inspiration outside the social world: in nature, in the sounds of machines or in the ‘otherworld’. It is symbolic that one of the first bands representing this style was named Dr. Moreaus Creatures, after the science-fiction book by H. G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau, about a doctor who creates human-like hybrids. Such a name conspicuously announces an unwillingness of its users to be pinned down and labelled. Identity is fluid and performative, announce Moreaus Creatures. The name of the most successful act, belonging to this phenomenon, Kruder and Dorfmeister, on the other hand, suggests that the only identity that matters and is personal, rather than related to nationality, locality or class. Not surprisingly, in their repertoire we do not find an Austrian equivalent of Pulp’s ‘Common People’ or ‘Wickerman’ or Falco’s ‘Ganz Wien’. If Vienna is evoked in the work of this formation, it is in an oblique way, as by Christian Fennesz giving the title Becs to his last record. Becs means ‘Vienna’ but in Hungarian, which points both to the fact that some Hungarian blood flows in Fennesz’s veins and that he prefers to look at his city from an external perspective or celebrate its cosmopolitan character. The latest Austrian artist who gained recognition beyond the borders of his country is Thomas Neuwirth, better known under his stage name, Conchita Wurst, a winner of the Eurovision Song Contest in 2014 with the song ‘Rise Like a Phoenix’. This victory has a different connotation inside and outside Austria. Abroad, Conchita Wurst, who is a drag queen, is considered as a typical winner of the Eurovision Song Contest – a second-rate performer chosen not so much thanks to

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his or her musical talent as to his ability to produce a spectacle and capitalise on the preferences of a specific type of audience attracted by this event. In this case it is the gay audience, given that the Eurovision Song Contest has a significant gay following. Inside Austria Conchita Wurst’s success is the culmination of a process, consisting of Austria breaking with its socially conservative and mildly homophobic past (Vuletic 2017). At the same time, with his emphasis on style over substance, as conveyed by his ornamental dresses and beard adorning his face, and dramatic title of his most famous song, Neuwirth also gestures towards the country’s imperial past with its over-the-top costumes and traditions. Conchita Wurst can also be compared to the (in)famous ‘Mozart men’, whom one finds in the middle of the city trying to sell over-priced tickets to concerts of ‘authentic’ Viennese Classicism, which, in reality, is more Strauss than Mozart. However, unlike the ‘Mozart men’, who try to conceal their inauthenticity, Neuwirth makes a virtue of it, as conveyed by his stage pseudonym, in which a typical Spanish name stands next to the sausage. Although Neuwirth came from Styria, in the year following his Eurovision success, he adopted the role of a guide to Vienna, and his tips about the value of visiting Austria’s capital were published in many newspapers and websites, both in Austria and abroad. For example, in the one published by the English The Guardian we read, We’re spoilt for drag and burlesque venues here, we live in a fairytale. We’ve got castles here, ballet there and everything is over the top and really romantic. Inside the Volkstheater, in the centre of the city, you’ll find the Rote Bar, which has lots of burlesque shows, where artists really go for it. (Coldwell 2015) Conchita Wurst’s success, as testified by the extensive use of his image in advertising (in 2014 and 2015 he was probably the most widely used face on Vienna’s billboards), can be looked at negatively as either a sign of the poverty of contemporary Austrian popular music or its inability to market what is best in it, which in my opinion is its electronic music. But it also points to certain (postYouTube) trends in popular music, such as the requirement for an artist to have a strong visual image, which is rarely the case with the creators of the Viennese Sound. Conchita Wurst merges or perhaps eludes two contrasting approaches to the local culture: ostentatious identification with it or its wholehearted rejection. The majority of popular musicians in Vienna opt for one or the other approach, and there is a certain logic to it, reflecting genre specificity. Viennese rappers and post-punkers tend to be more local, as reflected by their names, such as Nino aus Wien or Kreisky, and rap in German rather than English. Pop and indie artists try to erase any signs of belonging to a specific place. Martin Cloonan argues that there are three types of nation state–popular music relationships: authoritarian, benign and promotional. Whereas the authoritarian state strongly controls record production, licensing of live music, and music imports, the benign state leaves popular music to free markets, acts as a tax collector and referees competing interests. The promotional state treats popular music as an asset and devises national policies to combat the dominance of

Vienna, the city of music 43 Anglo-American music (Cloonan 1999: 203–4). According to this taxonomy, for most of the postwar period, the Austrian state, as well as the authorities of Vienna, adopted the benign model – they left popular musicians to their own devices, rather than promoting their work in the country and abroad, although the closer we approach the present, the more signs point to moving to a promotional model. For example, the Austrian musicians’ union fought for years to introduce a quota of Austrian music played by the public broadcasting agency ORF, yet with no tangible results. Only in 2009 self-regulation was announced by the ORF, to play 30 per cent Austrian music on its channels, yet the quota was never met. Another sign of moving towards the promotional system is setting in 1994 MICA – Music Austria, ‘as an independent, non-profit association, on the initiative of the Republic of Austria, whose goals are promoting local music at home and abroad and improving the conditions for music productions in Austria’ (MICA’s website). Its current budget is about 300,000 Euros. There are currently more institutions, such as the Austrian Music Fund (der Musikfond), which support local production of popular music. In 2011, Austrian Music Export was set up, as a joint initiative of Music Information Centre Austria (MICA) and the Austrian Music Fund, as a means of promoting Austrian music abroad. However, in comparison with some other western countries, such as Sweden and Finland, Austria still lags behind in its promotional role of popular music.

Figure 1.2 Exterior of the House of Music Photo: Ewa Mazierska

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Figure 1.3 Exhibits displayed in the House of Music Photo: Ewa Mazierska

It also appears that the city’s authorities, consciously or unconsciously, try their best to ensure that Viennese’s classical music is not overshadowed by the successes of popular musicians. For example, unlike the second most important city of the Habsburg Empire, Budapest, Vienna does not have a rock museum. Instead, it boasts the Haus der Musik (the House of Music), which in theory demonstrates the continuity between the old and the new music and the porous border between serious and popular music. In practice, however, it gives the impression that not much music worthy of tourist’s attention was produced in Vienna after Strauss. This is reflected in the way the museum is structured. The part devoted to classical music is all about specific artists: Mozart, Haydn, Strauss. When one moves to the part devoted to contemporary times, one finds oneself among various computer installations and simulations explaining the production of sounds or allowing the visitor to compare the level of noise in different cities. By contrast, one cannot learn there anything about the style and achievements of contemporary musicians, even though ‘noise’ is often a subject of their work. Since 2001 Vienna also has a Hollywood-style ‘Walk of Fame der Klassischer Musik’ (Nußbaumer 2007: 9), with seventy names, each having its own star printed on a one-mile length of road. My hope is that this walk will be extended by some of the names of musicians whose work I discuss in the subsequent part of this book or a special ‘Walk’ will be created for them.

Vienna, the city of music 45

Notes 1 Using folk elements was typical for much of Romantic music, for example Chopin. However, in Chopin’s case this affinity is typically attributed to his love of the Polish landscape and people. 2 This anecdote returned to me when I was studying the music of Peter Rehberg and later interviewing him. First, one can notice certain similarities between the work of both composers, as both can be described as ‘dark’ or ‘foreboding’. Moreover, Rehberg mentioned that he was discouraged to play such music in the clubs, as allegedly people wanted something lighted. However, he was not in a mood to switch to Wien, Wien. 3 Some of the ‘krautrock’ artists collaborated with creators of New German Cinema, such as Werner Herzog and Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Adelt 2012: 362–3).

Part II

2

Vienna Electronica as scene and industry Between cultivated provincialism and cosmopolitanism

In this chapter I look at popular electronic music in Vienna from a bird’s-eye perspective, as a nucleus around which a specific scene emerged. I am interested in its history and its main characteristics. I want to establish whether it makes sense to talk about it as a coherent whole, in which producers of music, other music professionals and fans act together to make it thrive. I focus on the 1990s, which was the heyday of Viennese electronic music and research what happened afterwards; how the main protagonists fared in subsequent decades and who took their place. First, however, let’s explain the crucial concept: ‘scene’.

Place and scene Sara Cohen observes that in music studies the term scene means a group of people who share musical activity or taste. It is also used to refer to music activity within specific geographical areas: for example, the Seattle rock scene, the South London rock scene, the New Zealand scene . . . In place of using terms like “subculture” and “community”, which imply musicrelated groups that are bounded and geographically rooted, some writers have preferred to use “scene”, thereby emphasizing the dynamic, shifting, and globally interconnected nature of musical activity. (Cohen 1999: 239) Holly Kruse defines scene in even simpler terms as ‘both the geographical sites of local music practice and the economic and social networks in which participants are involved’ (Kruse 2010: 625). According to Kruse’s definition, ‘scene’ incorporates ‘industry’, for example record companies and music shops operating in a specific locality, but to avoid ambiguity, I put both terms in the title of this chapter. For my research, scene is more useful than subculture, as subculture implies a convergence between the music and values of a specific group. In the case of Viennese electronic music such a fit between music, values and lifestyle was something I investigated rather than assumed, taking a cue from authors such as Richard Middleton and Roy Shuker, that the ‘degree of homology between subcultures and music had been overstated’ (Middleton 1990: 161; Shuker 2013:

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178), and this is particularly the case of dance music (Thornton 1995; Bennett 2001: 120–30). Scenes can be local, translocal and global (Peterson and Bennett 2004: 4), but typically they have to be local first, to get international and global recognition. People get involved in specific music scenes to produce and consume music which they like, and throughout it expresses a specific individual and group identity. As Cohen observes, the activities of musicians belonging to specific scenes are supported by local audiences and those involved with a broad and diverse range of local music businesses and organizations (many of these people are also musicians) that includes music education, training, and community arts, and local record labels, recording studios, and record shops. (ibid.: 240) This proves a close link between a local music scene and industry; music businesses thrive when there is a market for a specific product and the existence of scene ensures it. And conversely, a successful music business props up a scene. Certain conditions have to be fulfilled to ensure the existence of a scene. It is practically impossible to create a scene somewhere with a small population; music scenes are a feature of large towns and cities. It is difficult to do it where there is no suitable infrastructure, such as music studios, pubs and clubs where musicians can perform their music and forge links with their audience. An important part is played by media outlets, such as radio stations and a local press, which promote their work. The willingness and ability of cultural authorities to help budding artists, financially and logistically, are also significant. Another factor is the cultural traditions; working in a place where having a career in popular music is looked at positively and where many succeed is regarded as a bonus, as breaking the mold requires extra effort. To illustrate this relationship and help to identify some peculiarities of Vienna’s music scenes, let’s look at scenes in two northern British cities – Liverpool and Manchester – and one located in the South – Bristol. The first is still associated with Merseybeat. As Ian Inglis observes, ‘it represented, in 1963, the first time in the history of British popular music when a sound and a city were bracketed together in this way’ (Inglis 2010: 11). In identifying factors contributing to its emergence Inglis mentions the popularity of skiffle music, a reluctance of many leading American performers to visit Britain and their unwillingness to appear outside London if and when they did visit. ‘Faced with this situation, the response of many British teenagers was to move from the consumption of music to its creation’ (ibid.: 15). Another factor mentioned in this context is Liverpool’s ethnic diversity and proximity to the sea, which facilitated cultural exchange, thanks to sailors bringing records from the US (ibid.: 19). When considering the history of Liverpool, authors also mention the importance of music promoters, such as Roger Eagle, who in the second half of the 1970s ran a club called Eric’s, an important place to exchange ideas (Witts 2015: 21).

Vienna Electronica as scene and industry 51 Manchester became a centre of the production and creation of pop-rock music in the late 1970s and the 1980s, known as Madchester. In this case a factor highlighted by most authors was the determination of a group of individuals, among whom Tony Wilson plays a chief role, to nurture local talent and create conditions under which bands wanted to stay where they started their career: in the northwest of England. For this purpose, Wilson set up a record label, Factory Records and a music club, the Hacienda. Wilson also epitomised a certain boldness and independence, attributed to the city. In relation to that Fionn MacKillop claims that ‘Manchester was always about “making it happen” [. . .] displaying a “can do” attitude that goes beyond the usual civic pride that can be witnessed in other cities’ (MacKillop 2012: 247). Furthermore, as in the case of Liverpool, one factor was an international outlook, with Wilson being a self-confessed Europhile, who in European culture was looking for cultural inspiration and a place to showcase Mancunian talent (Mazierska and Rymajdo 2016). Bristol became famous thanks to a clutch of bands which gained worldwide fame in the second half of the 1990s, namely Massive Attack, Portishead, Reprazent and the various groupings and offshoots of these acts, whose style became known as trip-hop or downtempo. Peter Webb traces these successes back to the different influences and styles which emerged in Bristol over the years, such as reggae, jazz, punk, new wave and pop, and ‘mashing them up’ in a Bristol fashion, as demonstrated by the productions of the Pop Group, whose member, Mark Stewart, is regarded as the ‘godfather of the Bristol Sound’ (Webb 2004: 77). Webb also acknowledges the importance of one particular venue, the club Dug Out, and a specific ‘political scene’, made up of squatters’ rights groups, vegan and vegetarian groups, anarchist politics and even housing cooperatives (ibid.: 76). These examples point to certain factors which are conducive to the emergence of scenes, such as the cosmopolitan character of the towns, the existence of subcultures searching for their own music, the availability of places, which serve not only as performance venues but also as meeting points of like-minded people willing to devote their lives to creating and developing these scenes. It is worth mentioning that the existence of a scene cannot be equated with creating a distinctive musical style. For example, Inglis argues that ‘Merseybeat’ (despite its suggestive name) did not entail production of a specific sound. It was more about attitudes and practices shared by a number of musicians and their fans (Inglis 2010: 25). Is the same true of ‘Viennese Sound’? – this is a question I asked my interviewees and myself when conducting this research.

Why Vienna; why the 1990s; why electronic music? As I stated in the previous chapter, there were musicians from Vienna, who gained international popularity, such as Falco and recently Conchita Wurst. However, they are seen as going on their own, rather than being a part of larger waves. Falco’s international successes were relatively short and Conchita Wurst’s meteoric, and in neither case did it lead to creating a sustained industry or drawing

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international attention to music from Vienna. The situation with Viennese electronic music is different, as its significance lies less in the successes of individual artists and more in the impact of the work of a larger group of musicians over a longer period. They include Peter Kruder and Richard Dorfmeister, Christopher Just and Peter Votava, Patrick Pulsinger and Erdem Tunakan, Alois Huber, Rupert Huber, Electric Indigo, Christian Fennesz, Peter Rehberg, Curd Duca, Sofa Surfers and Sweet Susie. Social and musical networks are influenced by time and place; therefore, we need to ask why this phenomenon took place in the 1990s and why electronic music brought the country and its capital such successes? One factor is the groundwork done by previous generations of musicians and fans working and living in Vienna, especially punks. Viennese punks did not achieve international successes but created a distinct scene in Vienna. A proportion of the artists who made their debut in the late 1980s and 1990s have punk roots and revealed an affinity for its do-it-yourself ethos. Their quest was not so much for commercial success as for self-expression. Another factor was the changes in technology. The development of electronic instruments in the 1980s, such as MIDI sequencers, synthesisers, samplers and drum machines enabled producing music much more cheaply and faster because these instruments were easier to obtain and their use did not require renting expensive studios. Electronic music can be produced in small, low-end digital studios or even the famous ‘bedroom studios’ (Théberge 2012: 81–2).1 In this music, to an even larger extent than in punk, the division between consumer/ user, mediator, engineer and composer of music was blurred. A large proportion of the subsequent Viennese stars, such as Richard Dorfmeister and Peter Rehberg, started their careers as DJs or, as in the case of Patrick Pulsinger, got interest in music through repairing electronic equipment. Following a shift in the focus of music production, from recording to processing, the 1990s saw the culmination of the process of transformation of the DJ from a (passive) record player, who just presents records produced by others to a music producer, who creates new records by remixing existing music (Langlois 1992: 229–30), taste-moulder (Thornton 1995: 58–66) and, subsequently, the birth of the DJ-auteur (Reynolds 1998: 274).2 Some DJ-auteurs became global stars, in the same vein rock stars were in the previous periods, as epitomised by Coldcut and Aphex Twin (Haslam 1998: 150–1; Bennett 2001: 122). Kruder, Dorfmeister and Pulsinger joined this exclusive club in the 1990s.3 By the early 1990s, there was already a developed electronic scene in Germany, especially in Berlin. There were clubs, music agencies and shops specialising in this genre, most importantly Tresor, the club and label, founded by Dimitri Hegemenn in 1991 and Hard Wax in Kreuzberg, founded by Mark Ernestus in 1989, where Electric Indigo worked for some years (see Chapter 9). Many of the people subsequently involved in the Viennese scene travelled to Berlin to inform themselves about upcoming trends, as well as to network with their German colleagues. Significantly, the careers of those who forged links with music promoters in Berlin and gained recognition in Germany, such as Patrick Pulsinger and Electric Indigo, proved the most enduring. Moreover, the earlier successes of German

Vienna Electronica as scene and industry 53 krautrock bands and performers, such as Kraftwerk, Neu!, Can, Faust and Klaus Schulze, demonstrated that it was possible for European musicians to compete with Anglo-American music on their own terms rather than imitating them. It is not an accident that almost all my interviewees pointed to some of these artists as a source of inspiration for their own productions. This inspiration extended to their modus operandi and the way these German artists positioned themselves in relation to certain roles within the music industry. For example, Can did not record in conventional music studios, did not use a sound engineer and faced with a difficulty of finding a record label willing to release its record, decided to do it on their own (Adelt 2012: 364). There is also the question why Vienna rather than another large cultural centre in Austria became the hub of electronic music. This question is the more important, if we realise that in the 1980s Linz with its festival Ars Electronica and Graz with Musikprotokoll were seen as more ‘electronic’ than Vienna (Harauer 2001: 38). The decisive factor why Vienna upstaged these towns was its size and more developed (even if rather underdeveloped in comparison with London or Berlin) infrastructure for production and consumption of music. Moreover, as I was told by many of my respondents, Vienna was always a site of experimentation in music and art at large. It was a place where limits were pushed, boundaries between genres dissolved, including that between popular and serious/classical and experimental music. The porous boundary between serious and popular music allowed some artists to broaden their palette and appeal to a wider group of consumers, which would be more difficult if they worked in Linz, Graz or Salzburg. Globally, the 1990s, which can be described as a ‘decade of a CD’, was a very good period for what is regarded as a privileged sector of music industry – the recording industry. In 1999 the trade value of physical recorded music had reached US$36.9 billion. The same year, however, when the file-sharing site Napster was launched, marked the beginning of the end of the golden years of the record industry. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry Report, ‘world sales of recorded music for the year 2000 fell by 1.3% in value and by 1.2% in units compared with 1999’ (IFPI 2000). Since then we have observed a steady decline, which was halted only in 2012 when the value of global recording music revenues grew for the first time since 1999, reaching US$16.5 billion (which was over US$10 billion less than a decade previously; IFPI Digital Music Report 2013). The artists whom I devote this book started their careers in a perfect moment for the newcomers and their careers largely coincided with this golden period. This is especially the case, as the growth of music industry is particularly helpful for outsiders, who are also first victims of the market’s contraction, as observed by Gustavo Azenha: Under conditions of growth there are more opportunities for new actors and those on the margins of the industry to exploit. Without growth it is more difficult for new actors to displace established players, regardless of the availability of potentially decentralising technologies. For example, during the 1950s and 1960s the rapid expansion of a market for sound recordings

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Vienna Electronica as scene and industry combined with the reduction of financial barriers to engaging in recording to decentralise music recording/production. Decentralisation during this period would have been much more unlikely if the development of tape was not accompanied by a monumental expansion of the market. (Azenha 2006)

The mid-1990s also signal the start of a period which Robert Strachan labels ‘convergent digitization’, when ‘a number of different strains stemming from earlier patterns of digitization converge upon the singular site of the personal computer’ (Strachan 2017: 6). It was marked by, among other things, ‘the mounting importance of computer mediated communication within the cultural and economic contexts of popular music’ (ibid.: 6). I argue that these changes also opened a window for talented newcomers, able to exploit them before they started to be applied by everybody. Many of the young musicians from Austria were in this category; for example, they were among the first to use e-mail to communicate with their fans and create webpages for their record labels. The 1990s was also a period of relative prosperity in Austria and Europe at large, when neoliberalism did not mean a permanent crisis and the euro did not divide Europe into those who enjoy a trade surplus and hence have the upper hand in political decisions, most important, Germany, and those like Greece and Italy, who cannot escape the vicious circle of austerity and debt. There were additional factors which facilitated and obstructed the development of the electronic scene in Vienna of the 1990s. Ironically, these were often the same factors. One of them was the small size of the scene; in the 1990s, practically everybody in Vienna engaged in making music knew everybody else. On one hand, this provided a sense of camaraderie and security, but on the other hand, made Viennese musicians aware that they were living in a small place, and their artistic potential was thwarted. As a result, many of them left Vienna at a point in their career, to live in places such as Berlin or New York. Eventually, however, most of them returned, in recognition that Vienna offered many comforts not available elsewhere, such as a relatively low cost of living, especially renting and buying properties, in comparison with other large centres in Europe and the US (Hatz, Kohlbacher and Reeger 2016), and good public transport (Buehler, Pucher and Altshuler 2017). On several occasions I heard that Vienna is actually an expensive place to live, but this or that musician had special arrangements – was able to live in inexpensive accommodation or rent a studio in an excellent location for very little, thanks to their inside knowledge how to find such places, possessing a network of friends or simply specific personal circumstances. One could conjecture that properties in Vienna are not fully monetised but also that there is a certain cultural and social capital attached to being a respected musician in Vienna. Some of these artists’ return to Vienna also happened as a result of their recognition that music scenes are increasingly online/virtual rather than linked to a geographical location (Kruse 2010). Hence, if it made sense for the techno DJ and producer to live in Detroit or New York in 1990 or 1995, this was less the case in 2005 and 2015.

Vienna Electronica as scene and industry 55 The perception of Vienna, especially by tourists, as a city of classical music was also mentioned as a factor affecting their career and standing. Not without reason. Many authors point to the role residents, tourists and political leaders attribute to music in defining the identity of place and its economy. Giacomo Bottà, for example, describes how the presence of music is manifest in city plans, project bids and promotional material and realised in regeneration, renewal and preservation projects (Bottà 2009; see also Holt and Wergin 2013). But they never consider the ‘whole of music’ produced in a given place. There is a tendency to overdetermine the image of the city and its culture by focusing on a narrow set of moments, iconic artists and individuals (Long and Collins 2018), as is the case of Vienna of its classical ‘giants’. Most of my interviewees begrudge such overdetermination and reification of the image of Vienna as a ‘city of (classical) music’. Some hinted that they should be included in this noble heritage or at least treated in the same way as classical musicians, whose work is often supported by government and city grants. This complaint is not unfounded. Financial support of popular culture in Vienna has been low in comparison with that offered to high culture (Reitsamer 2011: 30). That said, during the 1990s municipal policy in Vienna developed a stronger interest in rock, pop and electronic music and embedded the opening of numerous bars and clubs into the Urban Wien Gürtel Plus gentrification project (1995–2000), which was aimed at restructuring a part of the Vienna Gürtel – a wall construction supporting an elevated train which divides the inner city districts from the outer suburban districts (ibid.: 31) Obviously, this was advantageous to artists considered in this study, their audiences and the Viennese popular music industry. Despite a certain grudge towards the image of Vienna as a city of classical music, when the opportunity presented itself, electronic musicians demonstrated their allegiance, affinity to, or at least interest in Vienna’s classical past and classical music at large. One of the first forays into the world of classics was Patrick Pulsinger and Erdem Tunakan ‘electronisation’ of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, presented in Volksoper in Vienna and released in 1999 on a CD titled Schwanensee Remixed (Reitsamer 2013: 85). Many electronic artists also participated in commemorations of the works of the classical masters. The lavish 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth in 2006 resulted in the release of a record Inspired by Mozart by Sweet Susie and Manni Montana (see Chapter 9). Another example of remaking the classics using electronic tools is Re: Haydn, released in 2009 by Universal Music Austria on a CD, to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Joseph Haydn’s death. The record includes twelve remixes, produced by some of the most distinguished representatives of the electronic scene, such as Electric Indigo, Patrick Pulsinger, Clara Moto and Dorian Concept. A short essay, authored by Stefan Niederwisser, himself an electronic musician, included in the booklet added to the CD, performs a double task:

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it argues that Haydn is our contemporary, or at least can be seen this way, if appropriately packaged, and bestows prestige on the electronic musicians, whose work the record showcases, by associating them with one of the greatest composers who lived in Vienna. This is conveyed in the very first sentence of the essay: ‘In the year of the 200th anniversary of Joseph Haydn’s death, “Re: Haydn” with its 12 remixes provides the first contemporary answer [my emphasis] to the music of this major Austrian composer’ (Niederwisser 2009). One cannot imagine a more flattering presentation of the work produced by the local electronic musicians – as different from, yet on par with, ‘the best of Austria’. This is also done by reassuring the reader that ‘many of the assembled remixers are classically trained. Hence they are aware of the enormous legacy of the diatonic function of theory for their – respectively our – era’ (ibid.). To this subgenre of ‘inspired by’ I shall add Switched-on Wagner (1996) by Curd Duca, released by Frankfurt-based label Mille Plateaux. The notes on the cover announce that in it we find ‘minimalistic mood music realized on Moog synthesizers (and other music machines)’ and that these ‘Richard Wagner compositions transformed beyond recognition by Curd Duca’. Although the individual pieces might be transformed beyond recognition, their musicality and the elegant minimalism of the recordings bring to mind classical music, conveying the idea that electronic musicians of Curd Duca’s ilk deserve to be included in this noble lineage. Finally, I shall include here Christian Fennesz, who, as might be expected from a musician acting as a bridge between serious and popular music (see Chapter 7), chose to remix Mahler, rather than Mozart or Haydn, who are more associated with ‘popular music’, releasing a double LP, Mahler Remixed, in 2016. What connects contemporary Viennese musicians to their more famous predecessors are not only the pieces they reworked, but also a certain attitude, which I describe as urban and cosmopolitan. To explain this, it is worth returning to the way the music of Strauss’ family was described: it was, ‘recognizably, of a certain place, Vienna, but its primary purpose was to satisfy expectations in a particular urban space, that of the dance hall.’ Such incursions into the world of classical music attracted different reactions from fans of electronic music. Some regarded them as worthy experiments (I myself belong to this group); others saw them as pretentious and undermining the authenticity of the said artists.

Chronology As with all movements, in Vienna Electronica we can identify its beginning, peak and decline. The beginning was at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s. During this period the artists started to DJ, make contacts with like-minded people and form bands. Michael Huber and Florian Obkircher observe that in terms of genre, a starting point of the leading representatives of electronic music in Vienna was hip-hop (Huber 2002: 269; Obkircher 2013: 286). The first record mentioned in this context is Swound Vibes by the band the Moreaus (previously Dr. Moreau’s Creatures), consisting of Peter Kruder, Rodney Hunter, DJ DSL and Sugar B. In the early 1990s Vienna also saw the setting up of the first record

Vienna Electronica as scene and industry 57 label, specialising in hip-hop music, Duck Squad. However, the Moreaus’ project was short-lived, and today the only visible sign of their existence is their presence (with the exception of Kruder, who was unavailable for the shoot) in a video for Falco’s ‘Wiener Blut’. Its record is not available commercially; neither was it uploaded onto YouTube. This does not mean that the musicians did not make their mark on the electronic scene. On the contrary, they became its important actors, with Kruder, together with Dorfmeister, becoming commercially the most successful electronic musicians coming from Vienna. However, they moved to a different type of music. In due course, Viennese hip-hop remained confined to the Austrian market, while other genres, achieved international renown. The first half of the 1990s saw the development of the scene and industry, with many musicians finding their voice, or rather sound. Among the subgenres which took root in Vienna, the most important were techno, downtempo, drum‘n’bass, and electronic noise/experimental music, with techno consolidating first (Reitsamer 2013: 73–88). This was also a time of setting up labels and opening clubs. In 1991 Franz Pomassl and Alois Huber set up Laton, whose specialism was techno and noise. Both the founders were closer to the experimental end of the electronic spectrum. Alois Huber’s engagement in production of electronic music was in fact even longer, as he started his first electronic label in the late 1980s in the small town of Schiltern. The birth of Abuse Industries headed by Andy Orel and Constantin Peyfuss occurred in 1992. In 1993 two of the commercially most successful recording companies specialising in electronic music were set up: Cheap Record by Patrick Pulsinger and Erdem Tunakan, associated with techno, and G-Stone by future downtempo stars, Peter Kruder and Richard Dorfmeister, as well as the short-lived, but influential, Mainframe. One year later Peter Rehberg set up Mego and Peter Votava Loop Records, both labels standing for the more experimental end of the scene. Born in 1995 wa a more eclectic Sabotage, headed by musician and visual artist Robert Jelinek4 (on record labels see Harauer 2001: 26–30; Grőbchen et al. 2013: 327–35; Reitsamer 2013: 77–83). Setting up labels was accompanied by changing of direction of music clubs, by adding DJ sets to their programme. This was the case with Chelsea and U4, clubs known predominantly for playing rock music, both local and international, with the latter being a favourite club of Falco (whose photographs still adorn its display window). In the late 1980s these clubs started to have some electronic nights, with future luminaries of the scene, such as Werner Geier and Peter Rehberg, presenting their favourite music to usually small crowds of fifty to a hundred people, under the titles such as Dum Dum and Demon Flower nights. Electronic music could also be enjoyed in new places. In total, the decade saw the opening of more than thirty clubs and bars offering its guests electronic music. Among them the best known became Flex (Harauer 2001: 32; Grőbchen et al. 2013: 352), whose significance relied as much on its popularity among the Viennese population as its attraction to tourists.5 Founded in 1990 by Tom Eller, who has remained its manager till this day, its first location was a small shed in the Meidling District. The building had to be demolished, and on 1 October 1995 the club relocated to a disused metro tunnel by the Danube Canal. Since then, it has stood for the best sound

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in the city. Here many stars of the electronic scenes started their careers, teaching each other tricks of the trade and swapping ideas and even bringing records to play on the best sound equipment in the city (Grőbchen et al. 2013: 352). Flex’s programming was eclectic, including such subgenres of electronic music as techno, drum‘n’bass, jungle, dub and downbeat. Another important venue was rhiz (a nod to ‘rhizome’, as theorised by Deleuze and Guattari), opened in 1998. rhiz marketed itself as the place for audiences with more ‘advanced’ taste, who went to a club not only to dance but also to participate in avant-garde improvisations. Here Fennesz, Radian and Peter Rehberg made contact with each other and grew up artistically. To that we should add Meierei, where performed many artists linked to the label klein, such Toxic Lounge and Sofa Surfers (Huber 2002: 270); Fluc, opened in 2002; Babenberger Passage; and Pratersauna. Vienna of the 1990s also bore witness to raves – large, underground and somewhat wild parties, where techno music ruled. The pioneer of this type of entertainment was the previously mentioned Peter Votava (aka DJ Pure), who brought this concept from his trip to Berlin in the early 1990s. Votava, together with DJ Serius, organised the first raves in Vienna in 1991, initially in Fun Club at the Schillerplatz and later in other locations, including in Gasometer and one-off places on the outskirts of the city and even a church (Grőbchen et al. 2013: 332–4; Grasberger 2017). Many of the clubs, where electronic events took place, were set up in ‘recycled spaces’, such as closed-down railway stations, abandoned pedestrian underpasses and lured their visitors with futuristic ambience, adding to the science fiction atmosphere of music, played there. In this sense Vienna’s clubbing scene was similar to Berlin’s, where clubs mushroomed in no-longer-functioning East German factories and warehouses. However, Berlin had plenty of such places and they were usually surrounded by (almost) empty spaces. Vienna did not experience de-industrialisation on the same scale and therefore had fewer suitable venues. Moreover, people living nearby complained about noise; therefore, there were fewer opportunities to organise very noisy parties on a regular basis. Probably also partly for this reason, namely proximity to housing estates, although drugs were consumed on the premises (especially in Flex), this did not lead to gang crime or clashes of clubbers with the police, as was the case in Manchester in the 1990s. This fact somewhat confirms the view, presented to me by several interviewees, that Viennese electronic music was a bourgeoise and displaced phenomenon. This might explain why subsequently it was difficult to create a mythology around it, as music seen as bourgeoise and conformist rather than rebellious (even if of the highest quality) does not easily lend itself to myth creation. That said, one can argue that the commemorative/mythologising phase has just begun, with commemorative techno parties taking place in Vienna in 2017 (Grasberger 2017) and Vienna Electronica dominating the recent ‘Ganz Wien’ exhibition (September 2017–March 2018), dedicated to popular music in Vienna, hosted in the prestigious venue of Wien Museum at Karlsplatz. An important part of music scenes is record shops. For musicians and fans they used to be places to learn about new music and meet like-minded people with

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Figure 2.1 Billboard advertising ‘Ganz Wien’ exhibition, featuring a poster of Kruder and Dorfmeister Photo: Ewa Mazierska

whom one can forge professional connections (on the history of record shops see Straw 1998). For some aspiring musicians, specialist record shops offered job opportunities. This was also the case with record shops in the 1990s’ Vienna. Musicians such as Peter Rehberg, Peter Kruder and Erdem Tunakan worked in and sometimes managed their own record shops. Among them the status of a legend was achieved by Dum Dum. Founded in 1981 by Wolfgang Strobl, a DJ at the U4 and Club Fledermaus in Vienna, it was Vienna’s first DJ shop. Another wellknown shop was Black Market, set up by Alexander Hirschenhauser in the early 1990s. It employed Fritz Plöckinger, who became a well-known figure among fans of electronic music. Situated in a beautiful building on Zieglergasse 40, it was the place which sold the first records of Kruder and Dorfmeister in large numbers. The shop started to struggle around the turn of the century and at the end of 2007 filed for bankruptcy. On this occasion, Hirschenhauser commented, ‘Every year we took new measures [to deal with falling profits], but they were never sufficiently effective in dealing with the shrinking market’ (quoted in Köck 2008). However, Black Market was reborn as ‘Market’ in 2008, with friendly and extra-competent Fritz again behind the counter. I visited it during one of my trips to Vienna, in 2017 and left enriched by a large bag of vinyl records (there were only vinyl records there) and many of Fritz’s insights into the meanders of the record industry in Austria and the future of record shops. At this time, he exuded optimism, claiming that the new generation of music fans in the 2010s rediscovered the pleasure of possessing music in

Figure 2.2 Music shop Market on Zielgergasse Photo: Ewa Mazierska

Figure 2.3 Music shop Market on Zielgergasse Photo: Ewa Mazierska

Vienna Electronica as scene and industry 61 material form. Consequently, although not as good as in the 1990s, the business was not bad. Rave Up Records on Hofmühlgasse did not have such a scenic location as Black Market and was eclectic in its offer, having all sorts of rock records. Although sales went down over the years, it managed to survive and picked up in the 2010s, again largely thanks to vinyl’s revival. That said, unlike Market, it still offers CDs, including a large selection of Austrian music in this format. In the Museum Quarter Erdem Tunakan opened a shop initially selling records produced by Cheap, the record label he set up with Patrick Pulsinger. In due course, the shop increased its offer, but it did not manage to survive the shift of music from physical form to downloads and streaming. Another sign of the scene coming into existence were fanzines. The Chelsea Chronicle, as the very name indicates, was focused on British pop-rock but occasionally published pieces about Viennese electronic music. Der Gürtel, again true to its name, was much more concerned with local music. Here authors such as Franz Hergovich, Peter Rehberg and Werner Geier, wrote about what happened in the Viennese clubs, as well as educating fellow travellers about new trends in electronic music, especially techno and noise. skug (an abbreviation from Subkultur and Underground) was founded in 1990 by the music journalist Rupert Heim. Within a short time it changed from a fanzine to a professionally produced music magazine, published quarterly (Wagner 2014). It became one of the most important platforms to inform about and promote electronic music in Austria, often compared to The Wire. It published one of the very first articles on techno music, in 1993 (Kulisch 1993). Heim was replaced by Alfred Pranzl, who has worked for skug until today, along with Heinrich Deisl, one of the few local specialists in the history of electronic music, and a large team of collaborators. Apart from publishing articles, it organised live events dedicated to new music and a monthly club called Salon skug. skug also participated in various festivals such as SoundBridges in 2005 (whose artistic director was again Deisl) and Into the City (2007, 2013). The journal still exists, but in 2015, twenty-five years after its birth, it ceased to be published in paper format, becoming a solely online publication. Other magazines and fanzines worth mentioning are Resident, which specialised in drum‘n’bass, and Female Sequences, whose focus, as its very name suggests, was on female music production and feminist approach to such music (Reitsamer 2013: 81). One of the editors of Female Sequences was Rosa Reitsamer, subsequently an academic specialising in researching music in Vienna. More fanzines existed in the early to mid-1990s than in the late 1990s and 2000s. This can be partly explained by the fact that their producers in due course became professional musicians or other types of cultural workers, such as educators and music managers. Moreover, fanzines, not only in Austria but also globally, moved from paper form to virtual reality, becoming blogs. However, even if we take into account these changes in technology, one gets the impression that – true to the complaints of my interviewees – Viennese electronic music always lacked a solid fan base in Vienna. To thrive or even merely survive, it had to look beyond the national borders.

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The peak of the scene was between 1995 and 1999, largely coinciding with the golden age of the record industry. In relation to that we shall list several events of real and symbolic significance. One of them was the festival phonoTAKTIK’95. It brought together representatives of this genre from Austria and abroad, featuring artists such as Gerhard Potuznik, Pulsinger and Tunakan, Fennesz and Peter Rehberg, as well as a number of well-known artists from the UK and Japan. The festival was followed by phonoTAKTIK’99. Another sign of the scene’s heyday, pointing to international, mainstream recognition of this music, was publishing in 1997 in the British magazine The Wire the article ‘Vienna Tones: Phono Tactical Manoeuvres’ by Rob Young, in which the author praises the work of such musicians, as Pulsinger and Tunakan, Farmers Manual, Peter Rehberg and Kruder and Dorfmeister (Young 1997). Twelve years later Heinrich Deisl opened his extended study about this genre by referring to this piece (Deisl 2009). The scene can be regarded as healthy till the mid-2000s, although in the first half of the 2000s one could already notice some signs of decline. For example, the last edition of phonoTAKTIK festival was in 2002. After that Vienna had no regular festival of this size devoted to electronic music. The reasons for discontinuing phonoTAKTIK are complex, but the most important was financial – the city authorities did not want to invest in it and, in a wider sense, they were indifferent to the idea of making Vienna a European centre of electronic music. In the second half of 2000s many successful artists of the earlier periods ceased to operate, reflecting the global crisis in the popular music industry. There were other signs of decline. Record labels were closed down or downsized, record shops went bankrupt and there were also fewer people attending specific club nights while, at the same time, more clubs opened, increasing competition between them. A large proportion of musicians, who remained active on the scene, moved from the front to the back seat, so to speak, to production of the work of their younger colleagues, curatorship or working in radio. Gradually, a new crop of artists emerged, favouring different genres and approaches to making and marketing music. The scene has also changed, with physical spaces being supplanted by or acting in tandem with online spaces, as exemplified by Boiler Room, a global online music broadcasting platform, streaming live-music sessions around the world, set up in 2010. I discuss these developments in greater detail in the last part of this chapter.

Main characteristics The majority of the creators of electronic music in Vienna came from middleclass families, with a minority being from the working class. Most were born in Vienna, although some moved there from other parts of Austria, such as Linz (Mona Moore), Styria (Pulsinger) or abroad (Rehberg). The bulk were born between the early 1960s and mid-1970s. They did not suffer from postwar hardship but took advantage of the relative affluence of Austria of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and, with that, easier access to travel. Their formative years were in the late 1970s and 1980s, which was a rather uneventful period in the history of continental Europe and especially the German-speaking world, marked by the

Vienna Electronica as scene and industry 63 continuation of the postwar political consensus and slow neoliberalisation. The time of left-wing terrorism in the vein of Baader-Meinhof was over, and politics started to be seen as a matter of ‘rationalisation’ rather than of making distinct ideological choices. In 1989 state socialism officially collapsed in Europe, and in 1992 Francis Fukuyama published The End of History and the Last Man, which announced not only the death of Marxism but also, more widely, the end of oldstyle (especially nation-oriented) politics, because of the (nearly global) victory of Western-style democracy. Even though the majority of populations of Western European countries were not familiar with this book, its theses slipped into the political discourse, defining what was regarded as a political common sense of this period. Nationalism was at this time seen as reactionary and pathological (the Yugoslav wars were considered in such terms) and multiculturalism as something which enriches national cultures as opposed to leading to tensions between ethnic groups, to riots and to terrorism. Being cosmopolitan and apolitical was seen at the time as being progressive and ‘cool’. Hella Pick claims that as the last decade of the twentieth century began the wind seemed set fair towards a bright, largely untroubled future for Austria. A British journalist in Vienna observed that “Austria is like a contented child gently rocking in a hammock. The movements are rhythmical enough to send any child to sleep. If the child were to wake up, it would find in Austria a world full of reassurance”. (Pick 2000: 182) She later adds that not everything looked as it seemed due to the ascent of Jörg Heider, regarded as far right, but till the later 1990s his Freedom Party was at the fringe of national politics (ibid.: 182–3). The political situation was reflected in the dominant mind-set of electronic musicians from Vienna. With some exceptions, such as Sweet Susie and Manni Montana, who were involved in left-wing causes, those whom I met came across as not particularly interested in politics. By the same token, they were unwilling or even hostile to the idea of making political statements through their music. This also reflects the fact that electronic music plays down its discursive content, as I mentioned earlier in this book. Electronic compositions, unlike metal, reggae or punk-rock songs, do not explicitly call for their audience to destroy political orders, seek reconnection to their mythical past or escape reality through religion or drugs. However, it can be argued that musicians choose electronic music because they are hostile or indifferent to politics or are of opinion that music and politics do not mix, rather than the choice of this type of music forces them to hid or abandon their political views. That said, sound itself can be regarded as a reflection of the social situation and cultural climate. Hence, it is not an accident that techno developed in postindustrial spaces and is regarded as a site of memory of once-functioning factories and protest against their closure (Stoppani de Berrié 2015; Chapter 7). Such meaning can also be attributed to techno tracks produced

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and performed in Berlin in the early 1990s and its techno clubs, such as Ostgut (1998–2003; Garcia 2013: 228). There the music reflected on the shock of deindustrialisation of what was, before the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Berlin and East Germany, at large, and the obliteration of its culture (Bader and Scharenberg 2013: 249). In Vienna techno and the sites where this music was enjoyed could not have such connotations or at least not to such a degree, because, as I already mentioned, de-industrialisation in this city started earlier than in Berlin and at the same time was slower and gentler (Dangschat and Hamedinger 2016), not mentioning the fact that Vienna was never as industrialised as Detroit or East Berlin – it was historically a site of service economy and cultural, rather than material production. Vienna Electronica fits well the idea of independent music, understood as a production practice, as well as an attitude and ethos of artists. ‘Independent’ is defined by its difference from ‘mainstream’. Wendy Fonarow writes that ‘mainstream’ music as a corporate business is characterised by centralised authority and organisational conglomerates, a global reach and distant, impersonal nature that is ‘prefabricated, phony, generic, generalized, and fat. Conversely, indie’ is intimate, personal, and modest, on a small scale and about specificity; it is authentic, lean and local (Fonarow 2006: 66–7). Hugh Brown, drawing on work by Dave Cool, observes that being independent includes control over creative output and business practices, the corresponding freedom from artistic interference; and wide experience of all aspects of the industry, leading to personal development. Disadvantages include a lack of capital; a consequent shortage of labor and other resources; obscurity among the mass of the thousands of other people doing something similar; and limited access to supporting services such as radio airplay and distribution. (Brown 2012: 524) In the case of the artists from Vienna taking an independent route resulted mostly from commercial necessity. As Michael Huber puts it, ‘the major labels were not interested in this new electronic music, so the first small independent labels were founded in order to release their own music’ (Huber 2002: 269–70; see also Rantasa quoted in Harauer 2001: 8–9). In addition, the musicians believed that even if the major labels were interested in their productions, they would not be able to market them successfully. This is confirmed by those who were disappointed by their collaboration with larger, more established labels (even though still small according to the prevailing standards), such as GiG (a label responsible for the national and international successes of Falco), which released some records of Sin. Independence required accepting a multiplication of roles by those who set up labels and were employed by them. In most cases the managers were musicians themselves (Huber 2002: 272), and the labels were set up to release their own work and that of their friends (Grőbchen et al. 2013: 326–31). Hence, G-Stone, set up by Kruder and Dorfmeister, released the records of Rodney Hunter, DJ DSL

Vienna Electronica as scene and industry 65 and Sugar B, Pulsinger and Tunakan’s Cheap Records had on its roster Christopher Just and Gerhard Potuznik, Rehberg’s Mego Christian Fennesz. However, sometimes the heads of labels did not release their own work on their own label. This refers to Kruder and Dorfmeister, and Pulsinger and might, in part, be explained by the fact that these small labels were too small for the most successful artists; they were meant to be springboards to ‘larger things’. Apart from those labels which I mentioned so far, it is worth adding Uptight, set up by the journalist Werner Geier and one of the veterans on the scene, Rodney Hunter, which released music of Potuznik, Leena Conquest and Mama Oliver (Grőbchen et al. 2013: 348–50), and Spray Records, set up by Alexander Spritzendorfer, which released records of Count Basic and Waldeck. The artwork was often a contribution of the musician or somebody who belonged to his or her close circle of friends. Perhaps the most accomplished from this perspective were sleeves for Sin’s records, which were designed by the band’s member, Andy Orel. Orel was also engaged in designing sleeves for records of several other producers, for example those aligned to Cheap Records. His trademark was versatile lettering and quirky mini-stories, included in the booklets added to the CDs. Such artwork sent a signal that what the consumer was buying was handmade, rather than mass produced, and it was addressed to a devoted follower, interested in a story behind the music. This spirit of independence is reflected in the names of the labels, which pronounce their modesty or quirkiness, such as Cheap, Uptight, klein and Abuse Industries. Some labels became synonymous with a specific sound (Huber 2002: 272; Harauer 2001: 26–31). On such occasions the label was more important than the performer. Electronic jazz and techno were produced mainly in Cheap, noise in Mego and downtempo in G-Stone. These labels and the artists collaborating with them were album rather than single-oriented. The idea was not to produce a hit (although this was seen as a bonus), but to give shape to a larger project. Consequently, many records consist of longer compositions, rather than distinct tracks, and on occasions a specific artistic concept was realised on more than one record, as was the case with Curd Duca, who recorded three albums with elevator in the title (Elevator, Elevator 2 and Elevator 3) and used the same cover concept, the letters Curd Duca against different backgrounds (red, blue and black). It has been difficult to establish which labels and which records were most successful. A typical answer to my question, ‘How many copies did this record sell?’ addressed to the musicians was ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I don’t remember’. It might be that they forgot, accounting in the small record companies was a bit lax or the managers did not care much about the sales of individual records. What mattered more was the pleasure of making music on their own terms, and as long as this allowed them to pay their bills, they were happy. That said, ultimately the small labels operated in a very similar way to that favoured by large record companies, which Keith Negus compares to ‘throwing mud against a wall’ in the hope that some of it will stick (Negus 1999: 34); namely some records will bring enough profit to cover the losses made by the remaining ones. Also, if we are to believe Negus that only one in eight of the artists acquired by a record company will sell

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enough recordings to recoup their initial recordings and be considered a financial success (ibid.: 32), then G-Stone, Cheap and klein were not below the ‘corporate average’. ‘Independence’ also concerns a posture adopted by artists themselves. Even commercially the most successful representatives of Vienna Electronica, Kruder and Dorfmeister, perceived themselves as independent and treated their commercial success with ambivalence. In a recent interview Peter Kruder said, We never signed to a major label during our most successful period, despite numerous offers. We hardly gave any interviews back then either . . . Many of our underground peers were seduced by the industry – and they soon discovered that compromising would only bring them short-term success. We always had an aversion to how the whole industry worked. (quoted in Obkircher 2017) Moreover, when faced with the choice of doing more of the same for the sake of maintaining a high income as world-leading remixers or doing more original work at the risk of losing the status, they chose the latter. Fonarow draws attention to the eschewing of guitar solos in independent music, seeing it as ‘self-indulgent, pretentious, narcissistic displays often likened to masturbation’ (ibid.: 67). The protagonists of this book did not display such overt contempt for guitar solos. Christian Fennesz is a virtuoso of this instrument and uses it in his recordings and live performances. Nevertheless, musicians with whom I talked, expressed their distance from or disappointment with rock. Even Fennesz admitted that he was frustrated by the limitations of the production techniques of rock. ‘It was so awful to go to a really bad eight-track studio, pay a lot of money and get a shit recording. The upcoming techno scene was a liberation, I could afford a sampler and produce my own music’ (quoted in Warren 2008). Richard Dorfmeister confessed to me that he and Kruder did not see themselves as ‘guys with guitars’, seeing rock posturing as old-fashioned and kitschy. While in some ways Viennese electronic musicians epitomised the ideal of a romantic artist concerned only with his or her freedom of expression, in other ways their work encapsulated the spirit of neoliberalism and post-Fordism, marked by dominance of short-term ‘projects’ over bands, what Peter Webb, when discussing the Bristol dance scene, labels ‘Producer Led Outfit’ (PLO): The development of PLOs meant that the creative core of a group was much more explicitly identified. One, two or three individuals would be at the centre of a group’s writing and production. They would use the available technology (computers, samplers, sound models, decks, and so on) to craft and orchestrate their set of songs and pieces. Some PLOs would have a singer as a core member, while others worked with a variety of guest vocalists. Then would they think about bringing in other musicians if they wanted to develop a live show, so that their songs could be given a live airing . . . This approach

Vienna Electronica as scene and industry 67 gave individual musicians greater control over writing and greater freedom to experiment with different projects than they could guest with. (Webb 2004: 77–8) Inevitably, the PLO-approach favoured more entrepreneurial individuals at the expense of those who were happy to stay in the shadow. It also discouraged longtern loyalties and creation of larger and more cohesive communities of musicians. Not surprisingly, the ethos of a typical Viennese electronic musician is individualistic. He or she is reluctant to talk on behalf of such a community. Independent and individualistic spirit was coupled with a cosmopolitan outlook, which was reflected in the career strategies and textual characteristics of the productions. This was facilitated by a number of external and internal factors. One was a sense that Vienna and Austria were too small to provide a viable market for the production of this type of music. This was not only a question of the size of the city and the country as such, more of its potential audience. In the opinion of my interviewees it was dominated by two types of fans: those interested in mainstream rock, produced in the Anglo-American centre, and those interested in songs about local issues and drawing on a vernacular tradition. Both types of music were looked at with a certain disdain by my interlocutors, as either lacking in originality or parochial. Hence, one could detect a certain irritation when I used terms such as a ‘Viennese/Austrian band’ or ‘Viennese/Austrian artist’ or ‘Viennes/Austrian phenomenon’ to describe their music.6 This might be explained by their conviction that in Vienna one becomes famous only when his or her value is recognised abroad. It is worth repeating Schoenberg’s words that in Vienna’s musical life, very little attention is given to the works of contemporary composers, especially Viennese ones. As a rule, new works are heard in Vienna only after doing the rounds of Germany’s many musically active towns, great and small- and even then they usually meet with little interest, indeed with hostility. (quoted in Reich 1971: 16–17) But even those artists who were not averse to the idea of being seen as ‘Viennese’, acknowledged that their connection with the city was weak. For example, in 2015 Peter Rehberg, discussing the celebrations of the twentieth anniversary of Mego, said, ‘The first round starts in a couple of weeks in Tokyo, and then we go to Barcelona, and, of course, Vienna. Which is rare, because we never do anything in Vienna’ (quoted in Doe 2015). One can also observe among the majority of musicians a deeper, more personal reason why they did not want to be seen as Austrian or Viennese, which is to do with their identity construction. Here it is worth referring to three frameworks for thinking about ethnicity and nationality in Austria today: as pan-Germanic ethnicism, re-imagining of Austria’s national community post-1945 and post-national self. As Christian Karner observes, the first, associated with Hitler’s project of ‘great Germany’ was disgraced, and the second was somewhat problematic

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following Austria’s joining the European Union in 1995 (Karner 2005) and the discourse of multiculturalism, prevailing in Europe from the 1980s. Consequently, the last type of identity, which enticed rejection of nationalism, appeared to be most modern, as well as most fitting the professional and personal situation of the said musicians, which included, in some cases, not being ethnic Austrians (Pulsinger, Tunakan, Rehberg and Hunter) or having foreign spouses (Rupert Huber and Rehberg). At the same time, their affinity for close connections to German music confirms the idea that Austrians see ‘Germany as the country most similar to their own’ (Karner 2005: 418). By stating that ‘in Vienna we don’t do Vienna’, the musicians had to look outside, searching for foreign markets, in part through forging links with foreign artists. If we look at the production notes on many of the records of Viennese artists, they testify to their extensive travels and collaboration with a plethora of foreigners. For example, among Fennesz’s collaborators we find musicians from the US, Australia and Japan, and Radian’s records were produced in Chicago, Berlin and Vienna. An even more cosmopolitan outlook can be detected from the maps of their travels, which cover the whole of Europe, the US and many Asian countries, such as China, Japan and Vietnam. In terms of travel, this formation is by a large margin the best-travelled group of musicians in Vienna.7 Ironically, on some occasions travelling abroad or collaborating with a foreign partner led to the musicians’ return to Vienna, as in the case of Fennesz, who says, Funnily enough, I was sending a demo to Swim Records, which was a London label run by Colin Newman from the band Wire, and he introduced me to Peter Rehberg in Vienna. So that was the connection. Peter, who was doing the Mego label with Ramon Bauer, released my first 12” in 1995. (quoted in Warren 2008) The refusal to acknowledge or at least play up their Viennese and Austrian identity can also be deduced from their attitude toward the German language on their records. We can identify three approaches to language. One is a lack of it. Some artists limited themselves to instrumental music, like Pulsinger, Fennesz, Rehberg and Electric Indigo. Others used human voice like another instrument, limiting discursive content to the minimum. Such an approach was applied by Tosca. Finally, we find proper songs on the records by Sin and Sofa Surfers, but these never tackle life in Vienna but, to use Leonard Cohen’s phrase, ‘popular problems’, such as love and solitude or issues pertaining to other times and places. This unwillingness to be seen as Viennese is also reflected in the title of records, which are almost never in German and frequently point to foreign places and cultures, such as Suzuki, Venice, or Becs, or profess interest in abstractions and preoccupation with technology, such as Seven Tons for Free, Dogmatic Sequences, Elevator or Juxtaposition. The unwillingness to see oneself as Viennese and Austrian is also a reason that there is a distinct split between Viennese hip-hop, which is more place-specific, and (the rest of) electronic music from Vienna, as reflected by occupying different

Vienna Electronica as scene and industry 69 spaces and a relative lack of contact between Viennese rappers and, for example, producers of techno in this city. It shall be added that a similar situation pertains to electronic artists in other European countries. For example, the most famous Hungarian electronic musician, Yonderboi, like Kruder and Dorfmeister, gained international renown thanks to remixing popular songs, and the electronic scene in Budapest owes its health to participation in international festivals and collaborating with foreign producers, principally in Berlin. By positioning themselves as cosmopolitan and indifferent towards Austrian issues, the electronic musicians distanced themselves from the most distinct poprock phenomenon existing in Austria by this point – Austropop. As mentioned in the previous chapter, representatives of Austropop often used Viennese dialect and, in their songs, referred to local places, issues and traditions. Rosa Reitsamer classifies this genre as an example of ‘ethno-national rock’ (Reitsamer 2012: 334). In my conversations with the artists it was easy to discover a whiff of derision towards this phenomenon. They regarded it as unsophisticated and provincial, as proved by the fact that the names of even the most successful of the representatives of Austropop, such as Wolfgang Ambros and Georg Danzer, are unknown outside Austria’s borders. They had a more positive attitude towards Falco. Practically all admitted to being his fans at some point in their lives and praised Falco’s first two records, admittedly most sophisticated and least commercial, as well as most ‘Austrian’. Those who met Falco in person remembered the circumstances and related anecdotes related to such encounters. Some of them, such as Sugar B, even appeared in a video for ‘Wiener Blut’. In 2017 Kruder, Pulsinger, as well as representatives of a younger generation of musicians, such as Clara Moto, took part in celebrations of the sixtieth anniversary of FaIco’s birth, ‘Junge Roemer: Eine Woche fur Falco’. And yet, despite the overt respect, there was a sense that they belonged to different worlds and that Falco’s career served more often as a negative than a positive model for the upcoming artists in the 1990s. Notwithstanding the fact that he was ten years older than the median age of the representatives of Viennese electronica, he was not an electronic musician, and the format he used was of a standard four-minute song. Falco was also more oriented towards commercial success, arguably to the detriment of the quality of his later (post–Junge Roemer) work. He was prepared to sell out, unlike the protagonists of this book, who privileged their artistic independence. Moreover, his international career was rather short, and his untimely death on foreign soil acted as a warning against indulging in a rock lifestyle. Not only was there a disconnection between Viennese electronic musicians and representatives of other genres, but it is also fair to say that electronic musicians in Vienna lacked a strong sense of community. If anything, there were several micro-communities, gathered around specific labels and subgenres, such as techno, drum‘n’bass (Reitsamer 2011), downtempo and noise. When I conducted my interviews, I discovered that most of the musicians were no longer in touch with each other, losing contact ten or more years previously. There was nobody who had an overview of the entire scene or cared about it being regarded as a distinctive phenomenon. The very terms Vienna Electronica or Vienna Sound were

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treated with scepticism, barely reflecting what they themselves saw as a heterogeneous and fragmented scene. The heterogeneity and fragmentation also concern the sound. The Viennese musicians admitted that they usually had more in common with work produced in other countries and at different times than with what their colleagues did in another corner of the city. Yet, in my opinion it is worth grouping them together to underline the shared music-centred rather than staror image-centred ethos, its cosmopolitan outlook and the richness of the music produced in this period, as measured by numerous genres in which they engaged, and to emphasise their shared international success and the role they played in overcoming a somewhat strait-laced image of Vienna. Although some representatives of the Vienna Sound showed interest in the visual side of music, creating quirky covers of their records, as in the case of Sin, and using lavish light effects for their performances, as in the case of Kruder and Dorfmeister, on the whole this group of musicians played down the image of their productions. This is reflected in the scarcity of videos for their work. Admittedly, as Allan Cameron argues, ‘electronica is conspicuous for the relative scarcity of music videos, despite the fact that live performances are often accompanied by projected visuals’ (Cameron 2013: 756). Moreover, the 1990s was not the best period for the music video. By then MTV was in decline, and music video did not get its second, YouTube life yet; hence, musicians did not have any incentive to invest, financially and artistically, in videos. This was particularly understandable in light of the fact that many record companies which released the work of electronic musicians were performing on a shoestring budget; hence, producing video might have felt like a financial extravagance. Second, adding visuals to one’s music, not unlike adding words to one’s instrumental composition, would undermine the ‘pure’ character of the works, adding a message to what should be understood and appreciated without any message. However, there were long-term negative consequences of this approach. The lack of videos obstructed projecting the artists as stars and ‘brands’, which in these days is regarded as the most important path to and measure of success in popular music industry (Klein, Meier and Powers 2017: 228–30). Third, it hindered researching and ‘memorising’ this phenomenon. Successful musical waves are not only products of individual musicians and bands but also of concerted efforts of the artists and other people to instil in them a sense of shared ideas and values, market them as a distinct phenomenon, and create their histories, ideally mythologising the music and the musicians. As previously mentioned, the successes of the music scene of Manchester of the late 1970s and the 1980s owed more to the work of Tony Wilson as a discoverer of several bands from the north of England than individual achievements of these bands. Moreover, tragic stories of some of the protagonists of this scene, including Wilson himself, whose financial misdemeanours made him loved and hated in his home Manchester in equal measure, ensured that Madchester is seen not only as a musical but also as a cultural phenomenon in a wider sense. If Viennese electronic music had its ‘Tony Wilson’, namely somebody dedicated to developing and promoting the scene, this honour should be attributed to

Vienna Electronica as scene and industry 71 Werner Geier (1962–2007). Geier was first a DJ and media personality, although, unlike Wilson, favouring radio over television because of, apparently, being camera-shy (Anwander 2013). Geier worked the decks as DJ Demon Flowers and produced remixes for international stars. From the early 1980s, first by himself and later together with Fritz Ostermayer, a fellow media producer and journalist, he produced a popular radio show Der Musicbox on radio station Ö3 and wrote perceptive reviews of the works of upcoming artists specialising in electronic music. This earned him the title the ‘Viennese John Peel’ in an article about the Viennese music scene, published in NME (Willmott 1997). Der Musicbox was eventually shut down, and Geier tried to transform it into a progressive music channel, but a commercial youth channel, FM4, was installed instead. This development left him very disappointed and ended his lifelong mission as a radio producer. Together with Rodney Hunter, Geier also ran the record label Uptight, as previously mentioned. He was also an unofficial archivist of Vienna electronica, collecting records and other artefacts documenting the development of the scene. In common with Wilson, Geier also died at an early age, although of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, rather than of cancer. In due course, Geier’s contribution to the preserving of Viennese electronic music and Austrian popular music at large was recognised by the cultural establishment of the city. This happened in 2012 when the Wien Museum acquired Geier’s collection, which contained record covers and flyers from all major Viennese labels and music venues, photographs and videos, as well as personal documents dating back as far as the early 1980s. The collection was on display in the Wien Museum from December 2013 to March 2014 under the title ‘Uptight – Die Sammlung Werner Geier’ (Anwander 2013). This exhibition can be regarded as the first sign that Vienna electronica gained a status of local and national heritage. Another name mentioned in the context of Austrian electronic music is Katharina Weingartner (b. 1964), currently best known for her work as a documentary filmmaker. Weingartner moved to New York in the late 1980s, where she discovered hip-hop and from there sent her reports about this music back to Vienna. They were broadcast on Austrian radio from 1990 under the title ‘Tribe Vibes & Dope Beats’, this being part of Der Musicbox. Weingartner also wrote about music for the magazine Spex. Her reports were avidly consumed by many of the future fans and producers of electronic music in Vienna, not only those with an affinity to hip-hop (Braula 2011). Weingartner also covered Tony Wilson’s activities and Madchester scene for Der Musicbox. However, unlike in the UK, where the phenomenon of Madchester attracted a wide interest of serious journalists, in Austria their internationally celebrated music wave has been barely regarded as an object worthy of investigation. The artists themselves, perhaps in a spirit of keeping their activities pure and avoid shameless self-promotion and mythologising or because they are still too young and active as musicians, did not publish any accounts of this period, in the contrast to numerous books about Madchester, written by insiders of this scene. There also has been limited interest in it on the part of academic community. Apart from article-long studies by Michael Huber (in German and English), Robert Harauer

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(in German), Heinrich Deisl (in German) and Rosa Reitsamer (in English), I could not find any studies devoted to this phenomenon or to individual artists contributing to it. This can be, in part, explained by a small interest in Austrian music of researchers of popular music studies. However, even in the context of the relative unpopularity of Austrian popular music among the academic community, Vienna electronica comes across as under-researched, given that there are probably ten times as many studies about Austropop, including a book-long study in English.8 Although serious journalistic and academic interest has at best a limited influence on the immediate popularity of specific artists and genres, in the longer term it ensures their prestige and longevity. It will not be an exaggeration to say that Madchester exists today thanks to the commemorative practices of its chroniclers rather than because of the intrinsic character of the music (Nevarez 2013). Of course, the situation in Vienna can be reversed and is already reversing, as demonstrated by the exhibition of Geier’s collection, followed in 2017 by an exhibition ‘Ganz Wien’ in the Wien Museum. Another sign of perceiving Austrian electronic music from the 1990s as history is the television documentary Out of Vienna (2016), produced by ORF (the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation), focusing on the ‘golden age’ of the 1990s, as well as organising nostalgic techno-parties, commemorating parties from the beginning of the 1990s (Grasberger 2017). This, in part, reflects the fact that 1990s’ music, even such an admittedly unserious genre, as dance music, started to be seen as history, worthy of nostalgia and critical examination (van der Hoeven 2014).

Fandom Scenes are the products not only of the musicians and other music professionals but also of their fans. There is also, of course, an overlap between fans and musicians. Musicians tend to be fans of similar music to that which they create while fans often aspire to be professional musicians. This part of the chapter is devoted to fans of Viennese electronic music and their views about this phenomenon. It is based on interviews with fans of different generations, identified through Facebook and personal connections. In total, twenty-four people were interviewed in 2017, the majority by my research assistant based in Vienna. The vast majority of them have a graduate education and middle-class jobs. All identified themselves as very interested in music, and some worked on the fringes of the music industry. Among them there were several Germans, one Polish, one Hungarian and two British nationals. The rest were Austrians. They were asked the same set of questions, which would allow me to compare the situation of electronic music in 1990s’ Austria with other countries, as well as with that in subsequent decades. To write this part, I also studied comments on clips presenting work of some of the protagonists, published on YouTube. I was particularly interested to discover whether fans of music examined in this book believe in its uniqueness and where do they see it. For those fans who discovered electronic music in the early 1990s, as for musicians themselves, the difference between the new sound of electronic instruments

Vienna Electronica as scene and industry 73 and the old sound of traditional guitar bands was dramatic. A sense of superiority of electronic music over traditional pop-rock was their main common dominator. Enthusiasts of this music felt that they belonged to a community, largely because of congregating in specific locations, such as Flex, U4 or Gasometer, and attending specific nights such as Dub Club in Flex. At the time there were not many places to go, so those fans who were regulars knew each other. However, they saw Viennese music as part of an international movement and themselves as belonging to a ‘global crowd’. One reason was that the music lacked obvious national characteristics – it rarely included lyrics and if one could hear any words, they were more likely sung in English than in German. Moreover, in the 1990s Vienna hosted many well-known electronic musicians from other centres of electronic music, such as Detroit, New York, London, Amsterdam, Cologne and Berlin. Famous DJs were followed by their fans; suddenly Vienna was full of tourists who came not to listen to Mozart but to appreciate a new sound. This international dimension made Vienna electronica different and, in the eyes of most respondents, superior to other genres of popular music flourishing in Austria, such as Austropop. Although the fans of electronic music belonged to a community, they conceded that the community lacked clear subcultural characteristics. At rave parties one can meet people representing different ages and social classes – workers, students and managers – and they all enjoyed music and each other’s company. There was also no pressure to wear specific clothes or hairstyle; the electronic culture in Vienna was very inclusive. The lack of strong political anchoring of this fandom reflects the nature of dance and electronic music, especially ‘white’ EDM. It was noted on many occasions that dance scenes tend to have a lower ‘subcultural currency’ than traditional rock scenes (Melechi 1993; Redhead 1993a, 1993b; Thornton 1995: 1–25; Bennett 2001: 123–32; Garcia 2013). As Sarah Thornton puts it: ‘club cultures are taste cultures’ (Thornton 1995: 3). Their participants do not share common values apart from love of dance and a desire to have a good time. Luis-Manuel Garcia talks in this context about ‘liquidarity: a slippery togetherness that manages to hold a heterogeneous and unconnected crowd – albeit tenuously’ (Garcia 2013: 228). Dancing crowds tend to be heterogeneous and ephemeral; they exist only as long as a specific club night. Redhead notes that music led styles such as heavy metal boys (and girls), goths, new romantics, acid housers or ravers dominated the 80s as cultural critics constantly sought the ‘new punk’. Acid House or rave culture was misread in this fashion, when in reality it looked to roots in the club-based Northern soul (all dayers, all nighers) of the 70s and was in fact notorious for mixing all styles on the same dance floor and attracting a range of previously opposed subcultures from football hooligans to New Age hippies. (Redhead 1993a: 3–4) I also asked fans whether they believe in the existence of the ‘Vienna Sound’ in the 1990s and its possible reflection of the ‘spirit of the city’. Both those active

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on the scene in this period and those knowing it only secondhand admitted that such a sound existed and that it was associated with Kruder and Dorfmeister’s (K&D’s) music. It was the best-known music from Austria in this decade, making many Austrians proud of their music, even if they did not particularly like the duo’s productions. K&D found their niche in the global market; they were seen as doing what they did to the highest standard. Additionally, their work was perceived as ‘Viennese’, because there was a fit between its slow tempo, their personal demeanour as keeping a certain distance and the way Viennese people see themselves, namely as being somewhat slow, easy-going, unwilling to imitate fashions produced elsewhere and minding their own business. Some respondents also mentioned a propensity to dark humour. The word most often uttered to describe the music and the city was ‘chill’ and ‘chill out’. Kruder and Dorfmeister were ‘chill’ in the 1990s the same way that Vienna was ‘chill’, namely elegant and laid-back. Another term mentioned in this context is Wiener Schmäh, used to describe Viennese humour. Arguably K&D had some of this Schmäh (and Tosca had it even in a larger measure, as I will demonstrate in due course), as reflected by their approach to sampling. K&D’s music played in official venues, preferably well-equipped clubs, accompanied by expensive cocktails. In some testimonies it was contrasted with the mood of Berlin which was nervous, frantic, open to change and to Berlin’s ambition to be at the centre of things, unlike Vienna’s ‘cultivated provincialism’. If Kruder and Dorfmeister stand for 1990s Vienna sound for their countrymen, this is even more the case for foreign fans of electronic music. They had all heard about Vienna’s foray into this genre thanks to their productions which they find timeless. However, practically all interviewees emphasised that Kruder and Dorfmeister’s music had its clear counterpart in Viennese techno, produced by Pulsinger and Tunakan and Cheap Records. While the message one can get from K&D’s music was ‘let it be’ (a phrase one can almost hear in their greatest hit, ‘Black Baby’) or ‘accept the status quo’, the message conveyed by Pulsinger and Tunakan was ‘keep moving’. Cheap’s productions were not as iconic and reflecting the spirit of the city as the work of K&D’s, but they were also recognised, in Vienna and elsewhere, as coming from Vienna. Cheap had its own style and sound, which its fans describe as more melodic and ‘lighter’ than techno coming from Berlin, to which it was routinely compared, perhaps also reflecting on the laid-back character of Vienna. Moreover, Pulsinger was singled out by practically all the interviewees who remembered the 1990s as the musician who best withstood the passage of time by continually experimenting and changing yet without giving in to commercial pressures.

Post-1990s developments Sebastian Fasthuber, tasked with writing for MICA (Music Information Center Austria) an overview of the Austrian electronic scene since 2000, began by stating ‘[o]ne thing is for sure: Electronic music in the noughties was definitely no longer

Vienna Electronica as scene and industry 75 the trendy, hot new shit, but had rather become a normality’ (Fasthuber 2013). Such an assessment, on one hand, recognises a certain decline of the scene and, on the other, argues that it has remained the most important part of popular music in Vienna and Austria at large. This raises questions about why the scene declined and how it transformed in the last one-and-a-half decades to survive and maintained its national and global presence. There were, as is always the case, general and specific factors. Let’s begin with the general ones, putting the scene in a wider perspective. As I mentioned earlier, 1999 was exceptionally good for the record industry. The next decade, by contrast, was one of a continuous decline, predominantly by a steep drop of the trade value of CDs. Although the digital revenues have steadily increased over the 2000s, up till the present day, they did not make up for the losses from the diminished sales of music in a physical form. Moreover, the displacement of brick-and-mortar record shops by iTunes and other digital retailers hastened the ‘unbundling’ of the album and the return of the single, a shift that fed the fragmentation of recording revenues (Klein, Meier and Powers 2017: 225–6). The vinyl revival to some extent reversed this trend, affording music producers and record shops a new lease of life, but most likely the new vinyl market, unlike CD market and the vinyl market of the type when it was a dominant format, will not make up for the losses resulting from the dominance of the internet (Savage 2016). Another aspect of the new situation was the changes in the way music was disseminated. This resulted from setting up in the 2000s new platforms, such as YouTube or Soundcloud, where musicians (as well as filmmakers and other artists) can present their work without the permission of gatekeepers or using intermediaries. Following Strachan’s term ‘convergent digitization’, this period can be labeled as that of ‘advanced convergent digitisation’. This situation gives the impression of the democratisation of the music industry, and in a way such democratisation occurs because of the narrowing of the gap between professional and amateur musicians (Wikstrőm 2009: 7–9; Strachan 2017: 6). But with this comes, what Hracs, Jakob and Hauge term the ‘dilemma of democratization’, namely fierce competition for the attention of potential audiences and curtailment of the ability of musicians (and cultural producers at large) to ‘stand out in the crowd’ (Hracs, Jakob and Hauge 2013: 1148–50). As a result, the bar for commercial success has been raised, which, paradoxically, requires from artists more investment in their career, more entrepreneurial spirit and greater use of intermediaries, helping to market their music, such as publicists, branding consultants and image enhancers, as well as spending more and more time on social media (Davis 2013: 18–19; Wikstrőm 2009: 147; Klein, Meier and Powers 2017: 228). The advanced convergent digitisation has a somewhat contradictory effect on popular music scenes. On one hand, it renders physical spaces where music is performed and enjoyed less important than in the previous periods, as most music can be accessed online, leading to a decline in clubs’ attendance and culture (on the situation of British clubs see Rymajdo 2016a). The physical proximity also plays a smaller role than before in production of music, and it is even possible to

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assemble a song working with artists living in ten different cities and meeting in virtual space, although in practice the ability to communicate and work together in a studio it still important (Wikstrőm 2009: 128–30). On the other hand, it forces artists to be very active in ‘physical space’, playing gigs as often as never before, because today most of the income generated by musicians comes from playing live music rather than from recording (Kusek and Leonhard 2006: 114–17; Laing 2012; Wikstrőm 2009: 58–60, 139–48; Gordon 2015: xxxix–xliii). The ‘unbundling’ of the album and a steep decline in sales of music in physical format had a particularly detrimental effect on the careers of those who, like the electronic musicians from Vienna, were album-oriented. And among them it hit most those who were financially most dependent on revenue from selling records, hence (merely) recording musicians, as opposed to those with more ‘diversified portfolio’. Not surprisingly, many of the artists who made their debut in the 1990s disappeared from the scene in the 2000s, disappointed by the low sales of their records. In the case of Sin, this happened, paradoxically, after releasing its most ambitious work, the double album Absinth. At the same time, at the beginning of the noughties the most famous actors on the scene were those who began their career in the previous decade and by this point had amassed a significant cultural capital. This was reflected in the nominations for the Amadeus awards (the highest recognition for popular musicians in Austria) between 2000 and 2010, where we frequently find names such as Tosca, Fennesz, Sofa Surfers and Peter Kruder. These artists did and do not need to fight their younger colleagues for space to perform in the situation when a queue for gigs in Vienna gets longer (Deisl 2009). These ‘veterans’ were also able to move, at least partially, from recording and performing live to engaging in other, more lucrative or stable music industry jobs, such as curating music festivals, writing music for film, theatre and advertising or producing music for younger artists. These were usually those, whose productions were seen as arty/experimental rather than commercial. Instructive from this perspective is to examine the list of musicians invited by the Red Bull Academy, an institution which serves as a model of the new type of patronage of music. Among them we find names such as Fennesz, Patrick Pulsinger and Susanne Kirchmayr (Electric Indigo), who gave lectures and led workshops for the new talent in electronic music. Such activity not only helped them to remain visible in the increasingly difficult market but also afforded them the position of ‘godparents’ of the new generation of electronic musicians in Vienna and elsewhere. We encounter similar names when checking curatorship of the most prestigious events in the musical life of the country. In 2013 Pulsinger was a curator of PopFest, one of the largest music festivals in Austria, which began in 2010. In 2014 this honour was bestowed on Wolfgang Schloegl, best known from Sofa Surfers and in 2015 to Electric Indigo. Some of the artists of the ‘1990s generation’ received prestigious awards. Peter Rehberg, Christian Fennesz and the Mego label were awarded the Grand Prix at the Ars Electronica Festival in 1999, which can be viewed as a recognition of their contribution to avant-garde music. In 2014 Pulsinger received an award for contribution to the music in Vienna from the city authorities and hence became, despite his relatively young age and youthful outlook, probably

Vienna Electronica as scene and industry 77 the most honoured electronic musician living in Vienna. Pulsinger and Fennesz also marked their presence as producers of some of the most successful Austrian young artists, respectively Elektro Guzzi and Soap&Skin. The new trends in making music and making money from music most affected the new generation of electronic musicians from Vienna and Austria at large. The successful newcomers to this genre tend to privilege standard, shorter pieces than extended compositions and concept albums. As if confirming the view of Christian Fennesz that in the noughties the difference between electronic and nonelectronic music ceased to exist, the use of electronic instruments in the production of Austrian pop-rock became very widespread. If anything, the audience’s recognition of a piece being electronic is based on its style rather than the way it was conceived and created. Moreover, unlike in the 1990s, when videos for electronic music were rare, now we find many of them, and on some occasions they are very elaborate, as exemplified by Koenig Leopold’s video for ‘Heat the Water’. A blurring of the division between electronic and non-electronic music is also reflected in the lineup of music festivals. The previously mentioned PopFest includes a large proportion of electronic musicians. At the same time, since 2015 Vienna has enjoyed a new festival, dedicated to popular electronic music – Electric Spring, which takes place in MuseumsQuartier and is financially supported by the City of Vienna. Here a new crop of electronic musicians has an opportunity to showcase their talent, for example Kids n Cats, Crack Ignaz & Wandl, Ogris Debris and Johann Sebastian Bass. In 2017 the estimated size of the audience was 15,000. It should be mentioned that this a smaller festival than the previously mentioned phonoTAKTIK and does not have an ambition of being a global trendsetter in electronic music yet acts as a recognition that electronic music plays a major role in the cultural life of the city. While in the 1990s Vienna was the unquestionable capital of electronic music in Austria, in the last ten to fifteen years this is no longer the case, to some extent reflecting the fact that in post-digital times, (physical) place is less important for making career in music and building a scene than it used to be. The electronic scene became pan-Austrian with the most commercially successful musicians being based outside Vienna: Parov Stelar (Marcus Füreder), who belongs to pioneers of electroswing, works in Linz, a duo Klangkarussell is based in Salzburg, and Klara Moto resides in Berlin. Parov Stelar’s case is especially interesting, as his business practices are at odds with the dominant model of production of poprock because he is recording and touring with a large group of musicians, including two singers and saxophone players, and he himself plays the role of a DJ and kind of conductor of his band, bringing to mind Johann Strauss’s orchestra. Among those working in Vienna the most successful are Filous, Camo and Krooked, HVOB (Her Voice Over Boys), Elektro Guzzi and Leyya. The first two on this list can be regarded as successors of Kruder and Dorfmeister, as they are best known as remixers. On the records of HVOB and Leyya, we hear a female voice in practically every track. It is Her Voice Over Boys, as suggested by the name of the band – the voice of a singer dominates over instruments, rather than

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merely complementing the sounds of the machines or pretending to be another instrument. In Leyya’s case the female singer also occupies the main position in the videos, as exemplified by videos for ‘Superego’ and ‘Butter’.9 Of these numerous new projects my favourite is HVOB, not least because the band, apart from showing some resemblance to the British stars of this genre, the xx, reminds me most of Sin (discussed in the next chapter), which was also about ‘her voice over boys’. Anna Müller’s voice is very different from that of Mona Moore of Sin, but it also comes across as fragile and otherworldly and exudes an atmosphere of suffocation and mild misandry. For example, in ‘Dogs’ the eponymous dogs are equated with ‘servant boys’ and ‘handsome slaves’. In ‘Window’ ‘[y]ou and I get kept on the haunted roof’. Yet, there are significant differences between career strategies of Sin and HVOB. Sin, despite having global ambitions, remained confined to the Austrian market and had a punk, do-it-yourself approach to its work. HVOB, almost from the beginning of its career, forged connections with the German music business. The band’s career took off in 2012, after being signed for the label Stil for Talent, owned by German music producer and DJ, Oliver Koletzki. Its first two LPs, HVOB (2013) and Trialog (2015), were released by this label. It has also been working with German booking agencies, currently Berlin-based Backroom Entertainment, and tour extensively in Europe, attracting audiences counted in thousands, something which Sin never did, its members seeing themselves as a predominantly studio band. For its last record, Silk, the band recruited Winston Marshall, a member of a British band Mumford & Sons, demonstrating its ambition to both broaden its palette and extend its audience. Attending HVOB’s concert in Budapest in May 2017 I was impressed by the band’s ability to transform its fragile melodies, known to me from their records, into dynamic dance pieces, putting into a trance a packed Akvarium club. Part of HVOB’s appeal lies in its videos. Those for their second album Trialog, produced by a visual artist Clemens Wolf and the collective Lichterloh, play with the concept of hapticity, as signalled by the title of one of its tracks, ‘Tender Skin’. The videos show semi-abstract objects, such as metal sheets or cubes which move, break or melt to the rhythm of HVOB’s music. Often they show forward and backward movement, reaching a certain state and reversing it, as in the video for ‘Cool Melt’, in which pieces of metal melt to become again solid objects. ‘Cool Melt’ nicely illustrates some of the ideas informing experiments in electronic music, such as a desire to repeat and manipulate sounds and render music abstract. HVOB is not the only Austrian newcomer who has a predilection to ‘featuring’ other artists on its record. For example, Camo and Krooked collaborated with a Jordanian singer based in London, Ayah Marar. Most of the newcomers mentioned in this section started working with music at a very young age, often as teenagers, and achieved success relatively early, usually in their twenties. This testifies to the fact that music is still seen as an attractive career and that new platforms, such as YouTube and Spotify, allow for accelerated musical education. Unlike their elders, they do not need to wait for fashionable records to be delivered to the only record shop in Vienna which will sell them. Their problem is, rather, abundance – too much music to choose from,

Vienna Electronica as scene and industry 79 too many possible styles to follow. Operating in a province is also less of a problem because their business life is international. What is the difference between then and now, the 1990s and the 2010s, from the perspective of the fans of this music? My informants claim that the 1990s belonged to music, while the 2010s belong to musicians. While in the 1990s the music at parties sounded like one single endless track and no differentiation was made between the artists during those parties, nowadays the focus is on the artists. They aspire to the status of stars, which is reflected in the design of the stage, with the musicians being placed above the crowds. This shift towards stardom reflects the changes in the popular music industry after 1999, namely its shrinking, making celebrities fundamental to the flourishing of record labels and other music businesses (Meier 2017: 154). The attitude of fans also changed. While those who started to listen to electronic genres, such as techno, felt as if they had discovered a new land and were unwilling to listen to any other music, finding it boring and old-fashioned, the taste of today’s audience members are more varied, and they are less dogmatic in their approach. A typical fan of electronic music listens to many different styles and appreciates musicians who experiment with different instruments and sounds. Again, this is facilitated by easier access to music via YouTube, Spotify and iTunes. Hence, there is a fit between the artists and fans in that both feel more at ease to cross the boundaries of electronic music. I was also told that the road to fame has changed. While in the 1990s one first had to be known in one’s city, then in one’s country and finally internationally, this is no longer the case – one can become global without necessarily being local at any point. The careers of Parov Stelar and HVOB illustrate this trend well. The name HVOB was mentioned most often in the testimonies of the younger fans. It could be suggested that they occupy the space which was once filled by K&D. Other names mentioned repeatedly included Camo and Crooked, Elektro Guzzi, Mynth, Austrian Apparel, and Filous. Furthermore, the 1990s was a time when cities had their sounds or at least people were talking about sounds of a specific city, be it Detroit, Berlin, Amsterdam or Vienna. Twenty years later this is less the case. Therefore, if we do not hear about the ‘Vienna Sound’, this is because listeners ceased defining electronic music in such terms. The young fans, some of whom aspire to become professional musicians, also suggested that, despite the advancements in technology, it is more difficult now to break into the local music scene in Vienna than in the 1990s. This seems to be a result of two trends. On one hand, the more established players guard their territory and do not welcome newcomers whom they perceive as competition. This is a different situation than in the 1990s, when there was an almost empty field, waiting to be taken by newcomers. At the same time, there is an expectation that young musicians will be working for free, merely for the pleasure of showing the audience their achievements. In addition, Vienna lacks clubs able to present electronic music in the best possible light and it is unlikely that its club base will expand in the foreseeable future. This is because there is little money to make in the club business and many administrative obstacles to overcome, largely because

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Viennese people do not want to live in the proximity of noise. Still, they agreed that if there is a future for Austrian popular music, this future will be electronic.

Notes 1 That said, practically all musicians whom I interviewed for this study admitted that as soon as they could afford, they moved from a ‘bedroom studio’ to a proper studio, and many enjoyed the privilege of having one for their exclusive use. Moreover, practically all the records released in the 1990s were at some point produced in a studio, dispelling the myth that during the period of ‘convergent digitisation’ studios became obsolete. In fact, it seems like the role of the studio increased during this period, although they were used more for mixing than recording (Théberge 2012). 2 Thornton offers a concise history of the changing meaning of a DJ, from the 1920s till the 1990s (Thornton 1995: 58–66). I suggest that her assessment is still valid as the role DJs have retained their position. If anything, because of the vinyl resurrection, it sounds even more convincing than at CD format’s heyday. 3 In Wien Pop Kruder and Dorfmeister are presented as ‘the Beatles of the 1990s’ (Grőbchen et al. 2013: 346). 4 Jelinek was also a guide during Rob Young’s trip to Vienna, which resulted in an article in The Wire (Young 1997). 5 Flex is one of the most-reviewed tourist attractions in Vienna and literature addressed to tourists highlights electronic music as a reason to visit Vienna. Often this type of music is framed in class terms. For example, in the Lonely Planet guide to Vienna we can read: ‘The upwardly mobile while away the wee small hours in unpretentious bars alongside black-clad night-owls, before moving on to clubs where DJs spin the latest electronica’ (Bedford and Eberle 2007: 6). 6 On reflection it would be better to use phrases such as ‘music in Austria’, ‘music in Vienna’, ‘band in Austria’ and so on, as opposed to ‘Austrian band’ or ‘Austrian music’, in the same way a distinction was made between ‘music in Canada’ and ‘Canadian music’ (Edwardson 2009: 5). There is an analogy between popular music in Austria and Canada, as both are thwarted by music produced in their larger neighbours, Germany and the US, respectively. 7 In due course the spirit of cosmopolitanism was recognised in the works commemorating this phenomenon, such as a documentary Out of Vienna (2016). Its very title suggests that something of value originated in Vienna, but at the same time it strove to leave Vienna, reaching a wider world. 8 Search for the work devoted to popular music in Austria testifies to the growing subfield of heritage studies in popular music studies, as demonstrated by such titles or subtitles of articles as ‘The invention of rock heritage in Austria’ (Reitsamer 2014), ‘The Hor 29 November Choir and the Invention of a Translocal Do-It-Yourself Popular Heritage in Austria’ (Reitsamer 2015) or ‘Mozart Year 2006 and the New Vienna’ (Usner 2011). 9 The motif of a small single marooned boat, used in the video, brings association with the artwork to Fennesz’s Venice and might be read as a subtle tribute to this composer.

Part III

3

Between rock and electronic music, or the pleasures of sin(ging)

Where there is sin, there is hope. – Werner Geier, quoting Socrates

Among the artists and projects, covered in this book, Sin is an oddity. First, it is the least known of them both in its own country and abroad. Second, despite using electronic instruments, in many ways it comes across as a traditional rock ‘indie’ band. For Sin, experimentation with sound was never a goal in itself, but a means to produce contemporary, yet classically structured songs, in which words are at least as important as music. Furthermore, Sin was not a post-Fordist, PLO-led unit, as described in the previous chapter, with different artists used for different records and its members being engaged in additional projects at the same time as playing for the band. For two of three of its creators, it was their only project. Yet, I include Sin, because the borders of Vienna Electronica are as important for this project as its centre. Moreover, for me this is the most hidden gem of Austrian music and the reason why I have started to research Vienna Electronica. Sin can also be regarded as a bridge between the earlier period of music in Vienna, such as punk and the work to which I devote the remaining pages of this book.

Sin’s history Sin was founded in Vienna in 1989 by Mona Moore (b. 1964, whose real name is a mystery even to the author of this book), who in the early 1980s moved from Linz to Vienna to study acting, and Richard Dorfmeister (b. 1968), better known from his later projects, such as Kruder and Dorfmeister and Tosca, discussed in subsequent chapters. By this point both Moore and Dorfmeister had some experience in music, she as a singer and he as a composer. They were joined by Andy Orel (b. 1960), a law graduate and designer who complemented the duo with his composing and designing skills. The innovative covers of Sin’s records and the booklets attached to them, presenting assemblages of photos and fictitious stories about the lives of the artists were authored by Orel. Orel, who set up Abuse Industries with Constantin Peyfuss, also distinguished himself as a designer of records of other musicians, as well as flyers, posters and decorations for clubs. Throughout

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the 1990s, he collaborated with Patrick Pulsinger and Erdem Tunakan’s Cheap Records and the jazz club Porgy&Bess, among others. He designed a large chunk of records of musicians, covered in this book and his style is easily recognisable, thanks to him using irregular letters on the covers of the records, giving the impression of hand-writing. This is a kind of personal signature of Orel, which also symbolises the attitude of the Vienna Electronica as a whole, as hand-crafted rather than mass-produced music. Sin benefitted from the changes in recording techniques which took place in the 1980s and gained momentum in the 1990s, namely widespread use of electronic instruments. This not only allowed the band to experiment with sound but also lowered the cost of music production. From the perspective of Sin’s career, it had good and bad sides. The good side was exercising almost full control over its productions. The bad side was its inability to overcome the constraints of the cottage industry, most importantly in the area of promotion. The band did not have a manager, able to secure a deal with a large, international label or an international concert tour. Its yearlong contract with GiG Records owned by Markus Spiegel, the label which released Falco’s first records, proved disappointing, as GiG limited itself to releasing the band’s singles and did practically nothing to promote its music and image, leaving Sin to its own devices. In such circumstances the relative success Sin achieved was because of word of mouth and the appreciation of some critics, most important, Werner Geier (whose role I discussed in the previous chapter), who recognised the avant-garde dimension of Sin, as conveyed by such a comment: ‘New ground was broken [in Austria] and barely anyone noticed what a micro-sized backyard industry had welded together: a redefinition of cool, a fine tuned seismographic instrument for reality checks’ (Geier 2003). While Sin played on the radio, it did not exist on television, which in the 1990s was the main medium to achieve national and international fame. This was particularly unfortunate, given its original look, as conveyed on its record covers and the physical attractiveness of its members, especially the singer, who, for the sake of AngloAmerican readers, can be described as a cross between Kate Bush and Kate Moss. A testimony to both Sin’s craving for independence and the lack of entrepreneurial spirit was the break-up of Mona Moore and Andy Orel with Richard Dorfmeister in 1993. As usual in such cases, there were complex reasons for this split, but one of them was the type of music they wished to pursue. Dorfmeister wanted the band to take a more mainstream route, moving into soul, jazz and disco. Moore and Orel hankered after their own path, which meant staying away from any well-defined genre. The difference between what Sin was and what it could become if Dorfmeister stayed with Moore and Orel, can be sensed by comparing Sin’s first 12’’ record, released in 1990 with its later production. This record includes the track ‘Stay Where You Are’ which later morphed into ‘Where Shall I Turn’, which can be found on its first record and includes four versions of this song. While we can recognise on them some connections with its later productions, such as the use of echo, it comes across as rather ‘un-sinful’. It is a dynamic piece, which will not be out of place in a disco, as opposed to slow tracks, which became Sin’s specialism. The piece goes on and on, without reaching a closure.

Between rock and electronic music 85 By contrast, in later productions Sin relied more on a classical structure of the song. Mona’s voice also changed, with the passage of years becoming very low and smoky, à la Amanda Lear. To develop this style and create a body of work took a significant amount of effort, as shown by the fact that nine years divides Sin’s birth and the release of their nine-track debut album, Insinuation, in 1998. The album achieved a relative commercial success,1 giving Mona Moore and Andy Orel a stimulus to develop their work. The distance between Insinuation and their next LP, Kissing, was shorter; it was released in 2001. The timing of the release, however, proved unfortunate, as it coincided with the September 11 attacks. This tragic event had a negative impact on the music industry and Sin’s career in particular. Not only did sales of the record go down during this period, but there was also some mismatch between the zeitgeist and the music of Sin, which always concerned private lives. Its third and final LP, Absinth, had its premiere in 2005. Although, again, met with critical acclaim, Absinth did not bring the band the expected commercial breakthrough. Consequently, Sin stopped recording new material and one year later closed its operations, although for some time it remained on the fringe of the popular music scene, thanks to Mona Moore working in radio and Andy Orel designing record sleeves for the records of fellow musicians from Vienna.

Sin’s style The name of the band, although badly chosen for the time when the internet became the main source of information about music, reflects well on its members’ attitude. Sin is an English word and thus points to the band aligning itself with Anglo-American popular music rather than any Austrian or Viennese traditions. It also suggests that its songs are about the ‘dark side’ of life and love. Sin’s style is described as trip-hop or downtempo, a term associated initially with the Bristol sound, represented by bands such as Massive Attack and Portishead, although Sin created it independently. This is also how Moore and Orel described their work. By that they meant slower-paced and more melodic music than hip-hop or techno. There is a special affinity between Sin and Portishead. Both bands sing about love which is condemned to failure, using a mournful female voice. Their music was compared to the soundtrack of a non-existent film which the listener is meant to construct in his or her head, and both bands recorded only three studio records. It is also a relative of synthpop (Gerlinde 2005), partly on account of its sound and partly because of lyrics focused on ‘tainted love’, as in the productions of Soft Cell or Pet Shop Boys (one of Mona Moore’s favourite bands). However, Sin is somewhat less synth and less pop than an average synthpop band, as well as more introverted. Hence, another term which comes to mind when one listens to its production is that of dream pop or shoegazing rock, a term used to describe a number of English bands popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s, such as Cocteau Twins, regarded as the model of this style, as well as Breathless, Lush, Moose and The Jesus and Mary Chain. In this case we can even talk not only

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about parallels, but also influences, as Mona Moore admitted that Cocteau Twins were one of her favourite performers. According to Nathan Wiseman-Trowse, what these bands had in common was a utilisation of digitally processed guitar sounds and an emphasis on studio production, as well as certain elements of performance: gazing at your shoes as you play rather than jumping around the stage (Wiseman-Trowse 2008: 147). As this description suggests, shoegazing rock was located somewhere in the middle between (typical) rock and (typical) electronic music. It relied heavily on studio work and electronic instruments but did not eschew a human voice; on the contrary, the voice (usually female) was crucial to the successes of the bands. Shoegazing might suggest a specific artistic strategy, by projecting oneself as inward-looking and spiritual but might also convey a genuine fear of facing the audience, of exposure. It seems to me that the latter was the case of Sin. Moore admitted that performing was, for her, always a cause of stress, which might result from her being regarded as difficult, even a diva. Sin’s productions are centred on Mona Moore’s performance. Although its tracks include many sound effects, Moore’s voice is not electronically transformed but remains or appears to be natural. It is music for listening, rather than dancing, and listening attentively in the privacy of one’s home for that. It is worth evoking here a distinction between ‘musematic’ and ‘discursive repetition’, made by Richard Middleton. ‘Musematic repetition’ is an extended repetition of short musical units; ‘discursive repetition’ concerns longer units, at the level of the phrase (Middleton 2006: 17–18). ‘Musematic repetition’ the author associates with the ‘ “hypnotic” rhythmic repetitions and audience trance: a collective loss of the self’ (ibid.: 19). Discursive repetition ‘involves more of the ego and the self’ (ibid.: 20), which probably means that it requires an intellectual reaction, which is easier to induce when one is sitting in one’s armchair than when dancing. Sin’s work is based on discursive, rather than musematic repetition, unlike most of the work considered in this book. Its pleasures are of more intellectual than corporal nature. It is meant to bring solace, not by saying that things will be fine but by suggesting that we have to learn to live with solitude and a sense of loss, even yield pleasure from such states. Sin was also inspired by the Francophone chanson tradition, identified with the lone singer-songwriter, one that makes of song a vehicle for sophisticated, ‘literary’ lyrics. Like the best performers in this genre, such as Jacques Brel and Charles Aznavour, whose work Sin sampled, their songs are lyrics-driven; they can be described as singing poetry. Moore’s singing often changes into reciting, so that the autonomy of the text is preserved. The dominant subject of Sin’s songs is unrequited love or disenchantment with a relationship, sometimes equated with death. In his analysis of Aznavour’s lyrics, Peter Hawkins underscores their directness and lack of Hollywood-style sentimentality (Hawkins 2000: 95–100). Such a description also pertains to Sin’s songs. However, unlike Aznavour, Jacques Brel or Edith Piaf, whose singing tends to be very dramatic, verging on exhibitionism, Moore’s performance is subdued. If we refer to the famous division of people who experienced loss into mourners and melancholiacs, as proposed by Freud,

Between rock and electronic music 87 the French performers of chansons can be classified as mourners, while Sin is melancholic: the sense of loss, conveyed by its productions, is permanent. The use of electronic instruments, with their understatement and repetition, helps to convey this state of stupor. Although Sin distanced itself from Austrian music and culture and addressed its work to the global audience, we can find Viennese traces in its work in its treatment of love, which harks back to the writings of such fin-de-siecle authors as Sigmund Freud, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Richard von Krafft-Ebing and, to some extent, Adolf Loos. All of them saw love as an eternal and psychosexual phenomenon rather than one conditioned by economy or politics. Sin also always sings about ‘placeless’ love, as opposed to loving in the end of the twentieth century, Vienna or London. Also, in common with the above-mentioned authors, the band recognises the importance of carnal pleasures, which in the Catholic tradition is seen as ‘sin’ unless it is safely contained in marriage. Its songs include phrases such as ‘messy beds’ and ‘sex is more to me’. Yet, as much as soul needs body to achieve fulfilment, so body needs soul to reach climax. The protagonist of Sin’s songs carefully chooses her partners to perversely prolong the pain of a broken heart. With the Viennese authors Sin also shares the idea that once love becomes part of every day, it stops being love: mystery and suffering are crucial ingredients of love. Sin also recognises the fact that women and men love differently. For female protagonists of its songs, love is the highest value; for men it is only one of many pleasures. Men are depicted as untamed ‘beasts’, ‘ravens’ or ‘devils’, who come and go. Women are like mermaids, who wait for their lovers, dreaming or sulking. When accounting for Sin’s Austrianness, I shall also add that among the songs they covered is one from Udo Jürgens’s repertoire, ‘Ein guter Stern’ (A Good Star). Although love in Sin’s songs is heterosexual, it lends itself to queering, partly on account of the low, almost masculine voice of the singer and design of its records, especially of its last record, Absinth, where Orel is stylised on a woman. I was thus not surprised when shortly before finishing this chapter I found on YouTube a series of videos to Sin’s songs, produced by Orel, under the moniker Mondo Senior, and with him in the main part of a drag queen. Their main topic is performance, understood as masking and exposure. Typically they present Orel dressed scantily and wearing strong make-up against the background which suggests some kind of performance space, with curtains and harsh lights. In some videos, such as that to On Boulevards, the private space of performance merges with the public space of the busy, neon-lit street. These videos have an uncanny, haunting feel to them and can be regarded as a means to come to terms with Sin’s desire to perform coupled with the anxiety to face the audience, to which Moore and Orel confessed in the interviews with them. The duo played concerts, usually in small to medium upmarket clubs in Austria and Germany. Their largest venue was the Wiener Stadthalle, where they opened Nick Cave’s concert in 2001. However, the band was essentially a studio act. The character of music it produced did not lend itself easily to presenting to live audience, because it was a music addressed to an individual, not a community of

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listeners. Moreover, the carefully designed records projected Moore and Orel as possessors of multiple identities. One might even wonder whether they existed at all. Seeing them performing brought risking of destroying their mystique. All Sin’s three LPs include mainly original material, written jointly by Mona Moore, the lyricist and Andy Orel, the composer and producer of the music, except for one or two songs which are cover versions of well-known pop-rock classics, such as ‘Sway’ on the first record, ‘Venus in Furs’ on the second and ‘Love Is Blue’ on the third. Musically, the band did not change its style much, although it matured; the bulk of its miniature masterpieces are on the third record, Absinth. However, one can identify a certain trajectory in the lyrics, perhaps reflecting the life trajectory of Moore. They can be regarded as her poetic diary, which she generously shares with her listeners. The first record, Insinuation, records the inner life of a young woman, striving for love, yet aware that love ultimately leads to disappointment. The second, Kissing, includes songs about more passionate love (as passionate as it is possible for the ‘committed melancholic’), despite or perhaps because lacking in permanence. The third, Absinth, comes as a confession of a woman who, after many adventures, left her love life behind, choosing a solitary existence.

Insinuation (1998) Sin’s first LP, Insinuation, was released in 1998, nine years after the band was set up. Although it cannot be called a concept album, it shows a high degree of consistency in subjects of lyrics and musical style, reflecting on its long gestation period. Insinuation, together with the titles of the two remaining records, Kissing and Absinth, was chosen because it includes the word sin. All these titles suggest that sin can be hidden in other objects and activities, an idea especially pervading Insinuation and, in hindsight, reflecting on Orel’s homosexual and exhibitionist tendencies, which remained hidden from his many collaborators. Yet, insinuation carries a different message to kissing or absinth. The meaning of insinuate is close to ‘imply’, ‘suggest’, ‘indicate’ or ‘hint’, but to insinuate is to imply something in a strong and impolite way. A person who insinuates risks being rebutted and punished, although she (as this is she in the case of Sin) also hopes that she gains something by sending her message. Insinuating is the way women, who passed their naivete stage and who are into sinning (rather than bourgeois love), communicate with men. The majority of songs are addressed to the current, prospective or ex-lover. They include phrases such as ‘set me free’, ‘dance with me’ or ‘listen to my heartbeat’. They are not impolite requests, but they indicate that the protagonist is not afraid to tell men what she wants. This is already the case with the first song, titled ‘Blind’. Such a title brings to mind the saying ‘love is blind’, and the lyrics play with this concept, suggesting that blindness is a condition of a happy love: Set me free Blindfold me You’ll set me free If I can’t see

Between rock and electronic music 89 By the same token, the song implies (or insinuates) that a clear perception makes lovers (or at least the female lover) unhappy because it allows seeing the other side’s infidelity and cruelty. The next song on the record, ‘Waiting’, confirms this opinion. It pictures a scene of a man who cheated on his lover: He has lied to her, he’s regretting But for her there’s no forgetting Punishment is her device His hands are cold as ice Although at the centre of Sin’s music is female suffering, conveyed by Mona’s mournful, mermaid-like voice, the band (perhaps reflecting the fact that its second half was male) also endows a man with ability to suffer but not so much because of his unrequited love but because of his inability to be faithful and missed opportunities of love. This is the case in ‘The Man Who Hates Himself’, whose subject once in a while escapes from the mundane family existence into alcohol and illicit sex: Oh let my rebel live! You know I do return

Figure 3.1 Cover of Insinuation Photo: Ewa Mazierska

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A companion piece to this song is ‘Treachery’. If ‘The Man Who Hates Himself’ hates himself for not being able to reconcile his mundane existence with his wilder instincts, the ‘treacherous woman’ from ‘Treachery’ feels guilty merely because she has treacherous thoughts: There’s a fight inside my soul Between loyalty and sin Even though there is no deed Where does treachery begin? The dilemma is again between monogamy and a desire for ‘sin’: ‘tasting’ different men and testing oneself in different circumstances. This dilemma cannot be resolved; therefore, there is always pain, guilt and shame. Usually this pain is lived privately, in bed, where the heroine re-lives past encounters and tries to numb her pain by alcohol and cigarettes. On occasions, however, it is taken to public spaces, to streets, as in ‘Too Many Faces’: Too many faces on the street today They see me while I stray Barking dogs, roaring cars My baby’s gone away The idea of implying, as opposed to saying things directly, is augmented by the style of performance. The singing does not break into a clear space, but one filled with noise made of fragments of conversations, laughter, music coming from elsewhere, which brings association with a busy nightclub where one can easily meet a friendly soul, but also get lost and feel lonely among people enjoying themselves. This is a very different noise than what we find on the records of Peter Rehberg, as will be discussed later, but behind the work of Sin and Rehberg one can find a similar desire to ‘dignify the background’. However, in the case of Sin it happens not through bringing it to the foreground, changing it into a (respectable) music but making it part of the story narrated in the songs. Each song includes repetitions and echoes, transforming the original utterance into a neverending chain of traces. Echoes and repetitions create an impression that the performer is locked in a house full of visual and aural mirrors. This brings to mind a mermaid locked in a time loop, forever mourning impossible love and trying to relive it by finding new lovers. This association did not miss Sin, as proved by including on the record a song about a siren who is washed on a shore to woo men and women to follow her into the water. The song, titled ‘Julia’, finishes with the words Julia, danger you are Julia, joy you are

Between rock and electronic music 91 Julia, danger you are Julia, lust you are And one day I went to the shore And I saw them Underneath the water Playing all the games we only dream of The record is accompanied by a booklet including about twenty photographs, mostly of Mona Moore. Her photos look like stills from a film or, rather, from many films with Moore as the main character, a point reinforced by small and funny stories scattered around the photos, concerning problems the duo encountered when trying to produce their record, like this one: ‘Without any money Moore and Orel were forced to do the weirdest, most humiliating sorta jobs. Mona for instance had to play in a SM musical for children dressed up like that Manson guy’. The idea of projecting oneself as a film character brings to mind the conceptual portraits of Cindy Sherman from the late 1970s, one of the most iconic examples of postmodern art. Yet, unlike Sherman, who played a different character on each photograph, Moore plays only one (meta) role: that of femme fatale: seductive, unhappy and causing pain to others. In one picture she wears a long dark dress and veil, as if she was a recently widowed bride. In another she has a rococo dress with a huge hat, a fan in her hand and heavy jewellery. In some pictures she is scantily clad, in black underwear, and wearing wigs and sitting or standing in provocative poses, showing off her slim body and long legs, like an underwear model or a luxurious prostitute. She also adopts Greta Garbo pose, resting her head on her hands. On another still she looks like a little waif or even an androgynous creature in a loose black jumper and a clown hat on her head. The photo next to the title ‘Julia’ shows only her face looking down. The photo is blurred, and her face is covered by white spots, as if she was locked in a fish tank. On all these pictures her eyes are surrounded by dark shadows, giving her a mournful, gothic appearance. On the front of the booklet we see ‘Mona’ leaning forward, with her eyes and mouth covered by dark make-up. Her slim neck and arms are naked, making her look pensive and vulnerable. She projects the image of a woman waiting, but with little hope left in her. She occupies a corner of the square image. Next to her there is something like a cross made up by an inner frame of a window. Whitish and yellow spots surround the cross, bearing similarity to the effect of the light playing on a glass surface. This ‘glass’, in different shades of blue and green, suggests a winter urbanscape with car lights illuminating the window. Against this frame ‘Mona’ occupies a liminal position. She is neither inside nor outside, as if not fitting any environment. On the back cover there is a photo of Andy Orel, performing ‘Andy’ in the mise-en-scene of a window frame and light playing on a window glass. He has dark shadows around his eyes. Both characters resemble vampires feeding on others or each other’s blood. However, there are also differences. ‘Andy’ is positioned distinctly on one side of the window and he looks straight ahead, as if confronting his viewer. ‘Mona’, by contrast, looks sideways. ‘Mona’ on the cover of the CD is again in the corner of a frame, although this time

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she occupies more space. She looks like a mermaid floating in the water, as we see only the upper part of her body, with the rest fading away in a semi-transparent substance. ‘Mona’ is a ‘psychedelic mermaid’, operating in an urban environment, nightclubs or peep shows, as suggested by her being immersed in red light. The upside-down writing of Sin and Insinuation adds to the effect of living in a house of mirrors, where everything is distorted and appearance dominates over hard reality.

Kissing (2001) Three years after its debut record, the band recorded Kissing. While insinuation suggests an imbalanced relation between the people (one insinuates; the other feels challenged by his or her behaviour), kissing implies a true partnership and a joyful activity which might lead to a greater sensual pleasure. True to the title of the record, most of the songs concern the pleasure of physical contact, even if only temporary. The first song on the record and the greatest hit of the nine included, ‘And I Sigh’, summarises this attitude. The heroine, after pronouncing all the differences between the couple, states that at special times it does not matter: When nighttime comes The colours fade The mind gives in And the senses wake No one else is near Only you and I So I’m falling again into your arms And I sigh Although the song is performed in Sin’s trademark downtempo, its mood is more cheerful than its average production. The next track, ‘The Raven’, is a love song tout court. The titular raven can be decoded as a mighty and mysterious lover, who strikes unexpectedly, affecting all senses of the receiver of his affection: A raven landed inside of me On quiet mighty wings. He fills me up beyond myself For me alone he sings. It is expected that the raven will not stay for long. His elusiveness furnishes lovemaking with intensity which normal relations are lacking. The topic of the next two songs is no longer actual but past love. ‘The Game of Despise’ (which together with ‘And I Sigh’ belongs to best-known songs of Sin), pictures love as a game, an idea conveyed by the lyrics and the performance, which at times recollects reciting of nursery rhymes. In this game somebody is supposed to be offended or hurt, as the word despise’ suggests. Nevertheless, it is

Between rock and electronic music 93 a pleasant and addictive game. The ending of the song, which reworks the beginning, announces that the game of love is over: No game of despise No lust in their eyes A fading youth A painful truth Still, the mortality of love is not a reason to reject it. People will always fall in love because this is part of human nature. As with ‘And I Sigh’ the reaction is sighing in acceptance of the imperfection and fragility of love. The message is different with ‘Erasure’, which is not only about love which has gone astray but also about a desire to nullify it: From my mind I’m gonna erase you Right out of my life I’m gonna chase you I’m gonna kill you inside my soul By addressing a lover who caused disappointment, ‘Erasure’ foretells Absinth, whose theme is learning how to live without love, in solitude, filling the holes left by past lovers. While the bulk of songs of Sin concern sexual love between man and woman or the lack thereof, the remaining tracks on Kissing are more versatile in terms of their subjects. ‘Geena’ (possibly the most autobiographical songs written by Mona Moore), is about a woman’s yearning for a mother, who, out of selfishness or vanity, neglected her daughter. Although the daughter is independent now, there is still a hole in her life. ‘Kim Fowley’s Gonna Die’ concerns the legendary music producer and experimental filmmaker, whom the band met when he visited Vienna. According to Moore, he appreciated their work as being ahead of their time but did little to further Sin’s career, most likely because by this point he stopped being active as a music producer. The last song on the record is ‘Venus in Furs’, written by Lou Reed for the 1967 album, The Velvet Underground & Nico. As with ‘Sway’, it demonstrates the wide range of works which inspired Sin. At the same time, ‘Venus in Furs’, because of also being a title of the book by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, is the rare case when Sin acknowledges its belonging to Austria, which did more to explore and dignify the non-standard, non-bourgeois love than any other country in the world. The whole record includes less background ‘noise’. The voice of the singer does not need to break the wall of sounds to reach her addressee. Consequently, we get the impression that the protagonists of Sin’s love songs enjoy more privacy. They do not meet in overcrowded nightclubs, sleazy bars or peep shows, but in their own apartments, where they can rekindle old affection. The booklet added to the CD comes across as a travelogue, recording the band’s adventures during recording Kissing. Images suggest exotic locations, perhaps in

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Latin America. The most prominent object is an old bus traversing an unidentified urban location, with Pilgrim written on its back, almost too obvious a sign of the artists’ colourful existence. There are more images of Orel, in comparison with the first record, projecting an image of a playboy. On one photo we see him sitting at a table with two ‘party girls’: a common accessory of a pop star. However, the way the images are assembled and the stories accompanying them undermine the truth of the pictures, suggesting that the duo spent most of the time in Vienna, struggling to put the record together. The story is thus not about Mona Moore’s and Andy Orel’s real lives but about their takes on the clichés surrounding pop stars. In this way, they subtly announce that they are a different sort of artist and people.

Absinth (2005) The title of Sin’s last two-record album, which is the name of an alcohol, brings a new take on sin, by suggesting transgression performed in solitude, unlike insinuation and kissing, for which two people are needed. Such sins, like drinking ‘absinthe’, which is a rare and exquisite alcohol, apparently popular among Parisian bohemians of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, need an introverted and artistic character. Accordingly, the songs included on the first record, named Absinth Pure, concern transformation of physical love into something immaterial. This theme is announced by the first track, ‘Love Is Blue’. This is not an original composition of Sin, but a cover version of a French song, ‘L’amour est bleu’, performed first by Vicky Leandros in the 1967 Eurovision Song Contest and popularised in the instrumental version by French orchestra leader Paul Mauriat. However, it reflects well on the subject of the entire record, namely transforming love (which normally needs a couple) into something which a single person can master. This theme is continued in the next song, titled ‘Sex Is More’, which is about a need to transcend or enrich physical love with spiritual experience: Sex is more to me Than scratching an itch More than wallowing In a dirty ditch . . . Eternal miracle A sacred craft A secret monastery An urging shalt The choice of words, such as eternal, miracle and monastery, implies that such sex exists only in one’s head rather than in reality. The structure of the song, with the lack of chorus and a simple melody, brings to mind a wave which comes and goes, never reaching its destination, similarly as sex, described in such lofty terms, is never to materialise.

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Figure 3.2 Cover of Absinth Photo: Ewa Mazierska

A kind of response or a mirror reflection to ‘Love Is Blue’ and ‘Sex Is More’ are ‘My Plants Are Enough’ and ‘Film Another Flower’. They come across as a manifesto of a woman who chose a single life because she was disappointed by her love. Both contain the same motifs: ‘ivory tower’ and ‘plants’. The first has a connotation of a productive solitude, where artists can work without any interruption. The heroine’s ‘ivory tower’ is also a place to escape from lovers. Occasionally men can pass through such place but cannot stay there permanently. Plants are favourite companions of those who are disappointed by human company, as put in this verse: No husband to sleep with For all eternity No children to make me Feel guilty not free No dog to walk No cat to feed In a more dramatic ‘Film Another Flower’, Moore’s mournful voice announces: How can I get up For yet another start

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An oddity in this collection is ‘Rosmarienbaum’ as this is a version of a German folk song, and it is sung in German. In other ways, however, ‘Rosmarienbaum’ suits perfectly the record’s theme, as it refers to love imagined or dreamt about, rather than experienced, and links love to death. Absinth Pure contains fewer sound effects than Sin’s two previous records, so Moore’s voice sounds clearer, and the lyrics are easier to follow. Overall, the songs sound more classical, less electronic. At the same time, it testifies to Sin’s attempts to try new genres, such as reggae in ‘Devildivine’ and chanson in ‘Poem for Raphaelle’. On the second CD, Absinth Remixed, Sin’s songs are remixed by various musicians, including Abe Duque, an Ecuador-born and New York–based DJ specialising in techno. He took responsibility for creating new versions of ‘So Sad’, ‘Sex Is More’ and ‘And I Sigh’ (as Kirlian). In the case of ‘So Sad’ the result is a ‘proper’ techno track to the detriment of the original, which, in the course of this ‘translation’, lost its original pathos. On two occasions, the remixes take Sin into regions which the band explored but never properly moved into, jazz in the case of ‘And I Sigh’ and reggae in ‘Devildivine’, remixed by The Waz Exp. The most successful track is probably ‘Erasure’ because adding echo and ‘space’ to this song underscores its subject, which is the torturous work of remembering and forgetting. Unlike the two previous records of Sin, Absinth does not contain any added story. We only get the texts of band’s songs, as if it wanted the listeners to judge it entirely on its music, not its image. The whole record is in black and white, which is ironic, given that the title of the record, Absinth, refers to a drink of a distinct green colour. The front of the booklet is adorned with the photo of Mona Moore, lying with her eyes closed. Although, as usual, she wears strong make-up, she looks more natural than on any of the pictures included in their earlier records. She lays against a black background, which underscores her isolation, which occurs during sleeping or in the moment of death. Another photo of Moore shows her looking down with eyes so strongly covered with make-up that she appears blind. On the whole, the image projected by these photos is that of not only a withdrawal but also a serenity coming from detachment. On the cover we see Orel, yet stylised to look like a woman, with painted eyes and lips and earrings. Unlike Moore’s eyes, his eyes are wide open, and he looks straight into the unknown spectator. It feels like, faced with withdrawal of his music partner, Orel decided to face the world on behalf of both of them. His gender-bending image brings to mind Brian Molko from Placebo, who also projected himself as an androgynous character. The connection is augmented by Sin’s covering one of Placebo’s songs, ‘The Crawl’, on Kissing. However, the point of Orel’s looking like that appears to underscore the couple’s similarity, both being somewhat otherworldly. Indeed,

Between rock and electronic music 97 when I looked at the cover of Absinth for the first time, I thought that it is another photo of Mona Moore. Authors of biographies of stars tend to list reasons why the objects of their inquiry achieved success. There are fewer studies about the lack of success in the music business, while Sin will provide perfect material for such a study. It was one of the highest points of Vienna Electronica yet ultimately was a commercial failure. In my view this was due to such factors as the lack of the entrepreneurial spirit of the members of the band, as reflected in their refusal to diversify their portfolio by engaging in different projects. Another factor is their focus on recording rather than performing live. These factors are easy to recognise when comparing Sin to a similar, in some ways, but more successful acts from Austria centred on a female performance, that of Anja Plaschg’s Soap&Skin and recently HVOB and Leyya. In a wider sense, Sin was also a victim of Austrian benign rather than promotional approach to popular music, namely leaving artists to their own devices rather than helping them to fulfil their potential. But, as Geier’s remarked in his quote of Socrates, where there is Sin, there is hope – hope that Sin’s music will withstand the passage of time and finds its new audience, even if one a niche one.

Notes 1 This was in the range of several thousand copies, but I did not receive precise data. It proved extremely difficult to find about sales of specific records. 2 Photographing and filming flowers are two of Mona Moore’s favourite pastimes, and she has her own style of capturing flowers, revealing more from their inside than outside. In her photos flowers appear very erotic, often resembling female genitals or little creatures embracing each other. Hence, I conjecture that ‘filming flowers’ might stand for creating erotic art in a gentler way, without ‘burning oneself’ in the process.

4

Kruder and Dorfmeister The studio(us) remixers

I only like the melodies which I know. – Dialogue from the Polish movie Cruise by Marek Piwowski

When Cruise, the film whose dialogue I used as an epigraph for this chapter, was released in 1970, these words were seen as capturing Polish inability to move beyond the safe zone of a well-known repertoire of images, melodies and symbols. Austrians allegedly are also stuck in the past (see Chapter 1). This would explain Kruder and Dorfmeister’s penchant for making capital from our pleasure of listening to melodies we already know, if not for the fact that they gained fame not from capitalising on Vienna’s music history but remixing songs coming from the Anglo-American centre of popular music, such as those by Depeche Mode, Madonna and David Holmes. Theirs is thus an interesting case of colonisation, which includes self-colonisation and reverse colonisation: taking something from the centre, reworking it and returning to the centre an improved version. Depending on the perspective, their productions can be seen as proof of the hegemony of the centre or a sign that the periphery can not only resist the centre’s power but also penetrate it on its own terms. Equally, they can be seen as a sign of the end of authenticity and originality in popular music (and art at large) in the postmodern era or a need to rework these concepts to fit the art of creative recycling.

Kruder and Dorfmeister’s careers Before teaming up with each other, Peter Kruder (b. 1967) and Richard Dorfmeister (b. 1968) worked with other musicians. Kruder, whose father was Italian, was brought up by a single mother who was a postal worker. His first trade was hairdressing. He also played guitar as a teenager and hung out with another boy his age, Rodney Hunter, who later became an important presence on the Viennese scene. They lived on the same housing estate in Ottakring. Kruder’s first public performance was in a charity concert in honour of Hunter’s brother who died in a car accident. Subsequently he set up the band, Dr. Moreaus Creatures with Sugar B (true name Martin Forster), later DJ and singer (Grőbchen et al. 2013: 291). The name of the band proved prophetic, as it was taken from an 1896 book by H. G.

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Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau, which deals with hybrid creatures, and for a long time Kruder would be a master of hybridisation. Kruder and Sugar B were joined by Hunter and started doing gigs till they changed their interest from traditional, guitar-led rock to hip-hop and other forms of electronic music (ibid.: 294). Their first attempt at recording was with Thomas Rabitsch, Falco’s bandleader and producer of his later work (ibid.: 299–300). Their first record, Swound Vibes (1990), was made for GiG Records, owned by Markus Spiegel, with whom Falco released his records. However, GiG, as mentioned in Chapter 2, proved inept in marketing electronic music. Unlike Kruder, who’s family was working class, Dorfmeister’s background is solidly middle class. His father worked in the electronics business, and his aunt had a shop with electronic equipment, named Dorfmeister, which makes the Dorfmeisters pioneers in electronics in Vienna in more sense than one. He learnt flute and later guitar, but by his own account started too late to stand a realistic chance to qualify for an orchestra. His entrance to music came through DJing, where he was helped by his more experienced friends, such as Makossa, who taught him the basics of the craft and arranged for him to have a regular night in rhiz. Kruder and Dorfmeister met about the time of Swound Vibes release, precipitating Dorfmeister’s departure from his first band, Sin, set up with Mona Moore and Andy Orel (see Chapter 3). Despite being very different from what Dorfmeister did later, Sin gave him the opportunity to elaborate his style. He learnt a lot about music equipment from Orel. It was during his time with Sin that Dorfmeister acquired his penchant for remixing. It is worth recollecting here that Sin’s first record, Where Shall I Turn, consists of four different versions of the titular song. The same song also appears in a different version on Kruder and Dorfmeister Sessions, and I am familiar with another version from 1990, making it one of the most remixed Austrian songs of the 1990s. Dorfmeister’s departure from Sin, in his own words, was to do with the limited artistic and commercial potential of this project. With the benefit of hindsight, he was right in a sense that Sin did not fit into the budding electronic scene. There were also personal differences, inevitable when we take into account that Moore and Orel were more of a team, while Dorfmeister was the ‘odd one out’. In 1993 Kruder and Dorfmeister (often styled as K&D) set up their own label, G-Stone, and recorded their first EP, G-Stoned, to great critical and commercial acclaim. Several more records followed, of which the two most successful were D-J-Kicks: Kruder and Dorfmeister (1996) and The K&D Sessions (1998), which together sold more than 2.7 million copies. This makes them the most successful Austrian pop musicians of their generation and locates them after Udo Jürgens and Falco in terms of the number of records sold. Throughout the 1990s Dorfmeister was also working with Rupert Huber on Tosca (see Chapter 5), and apart from recording their own music, the duo produced the work of other artists, including Kruder’s friends from his teenage years, Hunter and Sugar B. Kruder and Dorfmeister attempted to create a ‘G-Stone’ brand, as testified by the words G-Stone uttered on the records of the respective musicians. Other Austrian labels, such as Pulsinger and Tunakan’s Cheap Records, were not branded in such an

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ostentatious way. Despite this effort, as Dorfmeister admitted, G-Stone failed both as a commercial and as an artistic endeavour. One reason was the difficulty of combining a career as recording and performing artists with that of producing and promoting the work of others. Their own music proved more important in this case. This was unlike in Cheap, where Tunakan devoted himself largely to running the label (see Chapter 7). The second reason was the absence on their roster of musicians of similar standing to themselves. Sugar B, Rodney Hunter or Makossa and Megablast were popular as DJs in Vienna but never gained much recognition beyond the local club scene. Even Kruder and Dorfmeister’s own success would be more modest if not for the fact that G-Stone was not involved in the distribution of their records; it was left to the more established, even if small by international standards company, !K7 Studio. The story of Kruder and Dorfmeister thus demonstrates the potential and limitations of the ‘do-it-yourself’ model pertaining to the electronic music after digital shift. The K&D Sessions mark the slow ending of the collaboration between Dorfmeister and Kruder. After that Tosca became Dorfmeister’s main project, while Kruder devoted his energy to solo work, known as Peace Orchestra, as well as to collaborations with other musicians, such as Christian Prommer and Roland Appel, usually for a specific product. Kruder and Dorfmeister were also touring extensively, visiting places such as Las Vegas and Japan, accompanied by Fritz Fitzke, a leading Austrian lighting designer who also worked for the Wiener Staatsoper and other Viennese theatres. Fitzke took responsibility for their visual effects. In 2010 the two artists tried to revive the project, releasing the double record Sixteen Fucking Years of G-Stone Recordings with some new material, and started touring together. Such an attempt points to the previously mentioned fact that rather than merely promoting themselves as a specific brand, they tried to

Figure 4.1 Peter Kruder Photo: Screenshot from the television documentary Out of Vienna (2016)

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Figure 4.2 Peter Kruder and Richard Dorfmeister in Vienna in 2011 Photo: Andreas Bittesnich

manufacture their record label as a brand and to the increased importance of live music in an age of reduced record sales. This was more of a nostalgia tour than a serious attempt to create new music. Nevertheless, the warm reception of their works encouraged them to revive their project, although personal differences between these two artists did not allow them to complete the task. Yet, during the final stages of working on this book, they have resumed their collaboration. Despite their great popularity in the 1990s and good looks, Austrian television showed little interest in Kruder and Dorfmeister’s work, and they themselves did not care about enriching their tracks with videos. In this sense they also confirm the argument the emergence of computer technology in music contributed to the decline of the music star and hence the relative scarcity of videos for electronic music (Buxton 1990: 437; Cameron 2013; on the application of this argument to Kraftwerk see Grőnholm 2011). Still, even without videos Kruder and Dorfmeister were closest to the idea of the pop star Vienna electronica ever had.

The art of remix Kruder and Dorfmeister’s greatest renown is in remixing; hence, it is worth devoting some attention to this form of music. Remix belongs to an ostensibly intertextual artistic production. It can be regarded as an adaptation or, rather, to use terminology

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introduced by Gérard Genette in his book Palimpsestes (1982) and popularised by Robert Stam, as a hypertext, following some preceding text – hypotext, which the former transforms, modifies, elaborates or extends (Stam 2000: 66). The terms hypotext and hypertext are more suitable in this context than adaptation because they merely suggest that one piece is anterior to another but that neither is superior or original – both are texts in a texture or a network; both are palimpsests. The origins of remixes lie in Jamaica of the 1950s and the 1960s, where ska music, an early form of reggae, developed and reflect the country’s cultural and economic situation of the period. The music was influenced by American rhythm and blues and modern jazz, which partly came about thanks to the influence of black American sailors and soldiers who were stationed in Jamaica during the Second World War. R&B (rhythm and blues) could also be heard in Jamaica also via radio stations situated in and around Miami (Hebdige 1987: 62). According to Hebdige, the R&B from the southern states of the US ‘almost had a Caribbean tinge’ (ibid.: 62). As there were no local groups who could play the music competently, large mobile discotheques, named ‘sound systems’, were set up to meet the need. ‘Presiding over the whole affair, mounted on a stage behind the record decks, would sit the all-important disc-jockey’ (ibid.: 63). By the late 1950s R&B imports from the States were beginning to dry up, and local DJs, such as Prince Buster, began to produce their own music (ibid.: 64–5). Sound system owners financed the recordings, known as ‘rudie blues’, which were mostly instrumental cover versions of the old R&B songs or original New Orleans–style compositions, mixed with sounds that had become popular locally, like burru drumming, originating from an African tradition, in a process known as dubbing. Disc jockeys provided the vocal accompaniment over the track at the blues dances, which was known as toasting (ibid.: 65–6; Partridge 2008: 318–19). In this process the sound became modified, the shuffle rhythms were flattened out, the beats evened out and instruments lingered on the off-beat. From this tradition came such well-known musicians of the 1970s as Lee ‘Scratch Perry’ and Clement Dodd (Hebdige 1987: 69; Partridge 2008: 321–8). This reworking of the original songs, although using more sophisticated equipment, in due course became a standard procedure of many European DJs, including Kruder and Dorfmeister. The next important stage in the development of the art of remix was the creation of the maxi single, which reflected the cultures of American discotheques of the 1970s (Thornton 1995: 58–60; Poschardt 1998: 122–5). As Ulf Poschardt observes, [i]t had been prompted by the DJs’ constantly growing need of records in which the passages of pure rhythm . . . were infinitely extended. The first disco DJs had constantly switched from record to record, to set the ‘clean’ percussion points of the songs side by side and thus create a form of their own. But in the long run these experiments were unsatisfying, and many DJs helped themselves by making tapes to avoid the hectic switch of the little three-minute singles. (Poschardt 1998: 122)

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In 1972 American DJ Tom Moulton made his first disco remixes for the Trammps. As Poschardt notes, they show a very chaste treatment of the original song. Moulton sought above all a different weighting of the various soundtracks, and worked the rhythmic elements of the disco songs even more clearly and powerfully . . . Moulton used the various elements of the sixteen or twenty-four track master tapes and remixed them. Only very rarely did he add new tracks, so his remixes remained close to the original and usually appeared as their B-sides. (ibid.: 123) As time passed, the remixes got longer, and the authors of remixes were prepared to take more risks, taking apart the original track and adding to its extraneous material. One subgenre of remix became a mashup: a composition created by blending two or more pre-recorded songs, often to undermine the original meaning of the reworked material. Development of electronic tools, such as powerful home computers allowed for remixes to become more sophisticated and democratised the art or remix. In the 1980s and 1990s the names most often mentioned in this context were Art of Noise, Cabaret Voltaire, Giorgio Moroder and Yello. Kruder and Dorfmeister also joined this exclusive club. In due course, certain artists encouraged their fans to remix their work and even facilitated this process by including downable tracks on their websites; Nine Inch Nails is used as prime example of this approach. This short history of remix demonstrates that there are two main approaches to remixing: respectful and subversive. The aim of the first is to improve the hypotext or to make it more suitable to a new cultural environment. The second is to use the hypotext as a raw material for one’s own artistic pursuit or, ironically, to contest the meaning or value of the anterior text. At first sight, the second approach is more ‘auteurist’, as it underscores the role of remixer as a creator of new artworks and meanings. However, it raises the question of why use somebody else’s work at all if one’s goal is to foreground one’s own artistic presence. These questions, however, faded in significance in the light of the fact that around the turn of the twenty-first century the term remix started to be applied to other media besides music, such as visual art and literature and this led to the growth of respectability of remix (Manovich 2007). For example, one of the most innovative films is Jean-Luc Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinema (1989–1999), which remixes numerous fragments of earlier films, and nobody dares to question its originality or artistic value. Where to situate Kruder and Dorfmeister’s work against these categories? Their attitude to the hypotexts is respectful rather than subversive. They want their remixes to sound organic, to blend new elements into old ones, rather than dismantle the hypotext. At the same time, they show a certain anxiety about the originality and artistic value of their work as remixers, perhaps reflecting the fact that their successes came at a time when there was still doubt about the role of

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the remixer in the final product. This attitude is aptly conveyed by Peter Kruder, who said, The key to a good remix is making it sound like yourself, putting a personal mark on it [my emphasis]. That’s your job. When people ask for a remix, they expect a certain thing, a certain quality, and that’s our aim. A good remix is better than the original. That’s always the goal, the ultimate aim, to improve on a fantastic piece of music . . . . If I don’t think that I can improve a song [my emphasis] – either because it’s perfect or really terrible – then the best thing to do is just decline the job. (quoted in Goulding 2011) On another occasion Kruder said that with great regret he had to turn down the opportunity to remix Pink Floyd’s The Wall because the record was too good to be ‘messed up’ (quoted in Vandenblink 2009: 97). Of course, this points to the artists’ position as ‘official remixers’, who are approached by the authors of hypotexts or their managers to rework their material. Such a position means that their responsibility is not only to the specific audience but also to the authors of the original versions.

Kruder and Dorfmeister’s style In his essay ‘The Studio as a Compositional Tool’, Brian Eno lists the main steps in the development of electronic music, such as recording music on a disc, tape recording, stereo sound, three-track recording and, finally, treating the studio as a compositional tool. Eno’s argument is that these inventions created a new type of composer (which he himself represents): the studio composer: You no longer come to the studio with the conception of the finished piece. Instead, you come with actually rather a bare skeleton of the piece, or perhaps with nothing at all. Once you become familiar with studio facilities, or even if you’re not, actually, you can begin to compose in relation to those facilities. You can begin to think in terms of putting something on, putting something else on, trying this on top of it, and so on, then taking some of the original things off, or taking a mixture of things off, and seeing what you’re left – actually constructing the piece in the studio. (Eno 2004a: 129) This description reflects also changes in the architecture and the use of a studio, as documented by Paul Théberge. He claims that as a result of introducing analogue track recording, the ‘recording room gave way, in size and importance, to the control room where much of the equipment and activity associated with recording, processing and mixing was located’ (Théberge 2012: 80). The development of digital technology only increased the role of the ‘control room’ in relation to the ‘live room’ (ibid.: 80–3).

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Kruder and Dorfmeister are model studio musicians, according to Eno’s definition. Not only did they make music the way Eno describes, but the results of their work also perfectly reflect the possibilities of the (modern) studio. While the work of a pre-studio composer has a distinctive beginning and end, the work of the studio composer is always work in progress. By the same token, it fits well the definition of the ‘text’, as proposed by Roland Barthes in his seminal essay, ‘From Work to Text’, as it is ‘experienced only in an activity of production’, as one which ‘cannot stop’ (Barthes 1977: 155).1 This is reflected in the title of their bestknown record: The K&D Sessions, which points to the conflation of the process and its result; for the two artists the process and effect seem equally important and practically indistinguishable. In their case the studio is not only a compositional tool but also an archive. This is because to be a good DJ and (re)mixer, one has to find suitable material. This requires being not only ‘studio’ but also ‘studious’: studying the music of other artists from a number of perspectives: its attractiveness to contemporary listeners, its overall malleability and its appropriateness to the style of remixers and to their context, namely the overall style of the record on which they are meant to be located or the circumstances of the performance. Kruder and Dorfmeister’s choice is thus imbued with value judgement; they are effectively music critics. To choose fifteen or so tracks to go on a record, one has to amass hundreds of records and know them intimately, in the way a restorer knows paintings from a particular period. Maybe to emphasise that he is a researcher as much as an artist, Richard Dorfmeister signs his e-mails Dr. Richard.2 Even if such a title is a joke, as a Freudian slip it captures an important facet of Kruder and Dorfmeister’s work. Following the online-isation of music Dorfmeister expressed his anxiety about the possible decrease in the value of a remix, saying that they ‘used to be on 12” only and normally limited and hard to get. You had to dig hard and definitely spend a lot of time and money in record stores – since it’s all online the exclusivity is gone’ (quoted in Rymajdo 2016b). Throughout their career the duo has behaved as if they were not bothered about authorship. Not only is it difficult to discover the main responsibility of each of the pair, as both produce and DJ, but they also seem not to care whether a track is a remix or something they wrote from scratch or even something done in their studio by their friends. The tracks, which they themselves wrote, those which they remixed, and others’ remixes, produce a smooth continuum on their records. Eschewing of individual authorship applies particularly to Dorfmeister who in his musical career comes across as very promiscuous, because of working with a large number of musicians, often at the same time, and practically never on his own. He brings to mind the concept of a ‘script doctor’, whose job it is to improve scripts written by no less talented, yet less experienced authors. However, while script doctors remain anonymous, Dorfmeister is better known than the majority of his collaborators and one who provides them with a certificate of quality. He played such a role in relation to some Austrian bands, such as Count Basic or Madrid de los Austrias. From this perspective Dorfmeister can be compared to Holger Czukay of Can, probably the most musically promiscuous representative

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of krautrock. Dorfmeister himself mentions Can as an important source of inspiration for him. This refers not only to the type of music produced by this band but also to the method of their work, which privileges looser, ‘kinship ties’ than staying loyal to one’s musical ‘nuclear family’. As I argue in the subsequent chapters, this is also the case with other musicians, such as Christian Fennesz and Patrick Pulsinger. That said, with the passage of time the question of authorship gained in importance for the musicians. When I interviewed Dorfmeister in 2015, he mentioned that the reason that they stopped doing remixes and a factor why his collaboration with Kruder dissolved was the sense that they were working for others rather than themselves. They felt like vampires’ victims. Even if these vampires (fellow musicians or their representatives) were seductive, they nevertheless sucked their blood, leaving them little energy for more personal projects. Dorfmeister also mentioned that for him music for listening is more important than music for dancing because the latter is anonymous, disposable and shortlived. In addition, in 2015 he revealed a desire to delineate his own input into the joint projects. Kruder and Dorfmeister were always very self-aware of their status as studio musicians. In one interview, we can hear them saying that they never wanted to be in a conventional band: be the guys with guitars or drums who go on stage and play. This does not mean, however, that they were put off by the stage. On the contrary, they were star DJs and proud of their accomplishments in this area, comparing their position with that of a band: A DJ has to be very sensitive to his/her audience, it is much more challenging to entertain or satisfy those fans than it is for a band. When a band performs, generally the fans just get what they expect. A DJ needs to be more flexible and s/he has to listen to the crowd. When we perform, we also play our own songs, and in our set we include live musicians and VJs. This means we are also a ‘band’, if you like to use this word. (Dorfmeister, quoted in Vandenblink 2009: 96) The composing style of Kruder and Dorfmeister testifies to the specific property of the studio, namely the possibility of playing music on a loop. Their tracks and whole records often sound like recorded jazz improvisations because the same fragments are played again and again, although each time they sound slightly different. Here it is again worth quoting Eno, who in the same piece writes, ‘Recording created the jazz idiom, in a sense; jazz was, from 1925 onwards, a recorded medium, and from ’35 onwards . . . it was a medium that most people received via records’ (ibid.: 128). Nowadays we take it for granted. Indeed, the music produced by such top remix artists as Jamie xx or Caribou, or Austrian Clara Moto come across as more repetitive than anything Kruder and Dorfmeister made in their heyday, but in the early 1990s it appeared fresh. The musicians themselves were aware of this feature of their productions and in the book about G-Stone Records, included something like a personal statement, which underscored it:

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There is no better way to make a musical moment last than putting it through a delay, the music swings on and on and the echo floats in your head sometimes endlessly. Like a soft drug the little musical pieces are amplified and delayed and delayed, until the original gets more and more out of focus, fading away – forgotten. On every echo-unit there is a function called feedback – if you put it to maximum level the echo repeats itself until infinity. I think this is what we are trying here: to create an infinite loop in your head – a lasting memory. (Kruder and Dorfmeister 2000: 2–3) It is worth evoking here a distinction between ‘musematic’ and ‘discursive repetition’, made by Richard Middleton, mentioned in the previous chapter (Middleton 2006: 17–18). Unlike Sin, which favours discursive repetition, Kruder and Dorfmeister have an affinity to musematic repetition, namely an extended repetition of short musical units whose purpose is to put audience in trance, in a collective loss of the self (ibid.: 19). Even when they talk about creating a lasting memory, they have in mind a universal and content-less ‘memory experience’, which allows the listener to forget his or her real memories. The quoted fragment points to another feature of Kruder and Dorfmeister’s take on the existing tracks, which is particularly electronic, namely slowing down the music. The genre in which they specialised is downtempo, a music whose ideal setting was a ‘chillout area’, separated from the dancefloor.3 In the well-known article published in The Wire, Tob Young writes that K&D ‘refined their sound via multiple remix projects into a sleek, air-conditioned groove science’ (Young 1997: 21). Furthermore, in their remixes the voice, the lyrics and the original message is de-emphasised; everything becomes reduced (or upgraded) to a sound. In this process, which includes dubbing, the cultural specificity of the hypotext is downplayed. This happens, for example, when one word like happiness or under is repeated so many times that they lose their original meaning. It might be an accident that one of their favourite tracks is titled ‘Speechless’ (on the record Count Basic: The Peter Kruder Richard Dorfmeister Remixes we find three versions of this piece), but nevertheless it is symbolic – Kruder and Dorfmeister prefer to be ‘speech-less’ than ‘speech-more’. Dubbing, as I argue in the chapter on Sofa Surfers, does not need to involve purging the original of its cultural specificity or political content. But for Kruder and Dorfmeister it is a tool of cultural homogenisation or, to use a German term, Gleischhaltung of materials coming from different traditions. It demonstrates that every musical style or technique and in a wider sense, every sign, can be used for various purposes and interpreted differently. Kruder and Dorfmeister’s own compositions also have little cultural specificity; they are mainly instrumental pieces and if we hear in them words, they are more likely to be uttered in English than in German. This chimes well with the men’s unwillingness to be identified as Austrian or Viennese, which for them means parochial. However, they borrow widely from non-Western music, most important, Latino rhythms; many of their remixes sound like bossa nova.

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In such borrowing, again, the original context is erased. This can also be seen as something which likens K&D to Can, who are seen as pioneers of world music, understood as non-Western music (re)packaged for a Western consumer (Bohlman 2002: xiv). Kruder and Dorfmeister’s music comes across as unobtrusive. This does not mean that such music leaves the listener indifferent; it does affect him or her, but the influence is on the level of one’s mood or body, rather than intellect, although it does not fit the definition of ambient music (see Chapter 5). Music, of course, the most spiritual of arts, is also most corporeal, as observed by such authors as Roland Barthes and Pierre Bourdieu (1993: 105) and most likely is so spiritual because it is so corporeal. The vast majority of comments on YouTube about Kruder and Dorfmeister’s productions concerns their effect on the listeners’ bodies or mood: that this or that track was excellent for dancing, taking drugs, chilling out or lovemaking. This is a very different type of comment than those concerning Falco’s music, which is analysed by YouTube audiences typically as a representation of a specific culture: Viennese, German and manifestation of Falco’s personality and biography. The comments posted on Amazon and YouTube also point to the fact that Kruder and Dorfmeister’s music should suit everybody, for example ‘Play it for your mother some Sunday afternoon’ and ‘Parents, aunts and uncles all love this album’. A good example of Kruder and Dorfmeister’s method is their transformation of ‘Bug Powder Dust’, a piece by London electronic project Bomb the Bass, which can be found on their K&D Sessions. In its hypotextual version the track is sharp and rough, and includes something like the personal credo of a musician who positions himself as heir to a rock tradition: Check it, yo, I always hit the tape with the rough road style You hear the psychedelic and ya came from miles. In K&D’s version such connotations are gone. The effect is ironic, given that the song is about being purposefully obtrusive: ‘Like an exterminator running low on dust I’m bug powder itchin’ and it can’t be trussed’, while the effect of K&D’s remix is balsamic. One wants to listen to it over and over again without thinking what the song (if it is still a song) is about. This feature was picked up by some critics who tried to pinpoint K&D’s phenomenon. For example, Jon Pareles, writing for The New York Times, observed, Peter Kruder and Richard Dorfmeister made their reputation together in the mid-1990s with remixes that linked them to the trip-hop movement: pensive and unhurried, with minor chords and undertones of foreboding. They placed themselves where hip-hop, drum-and-bass, mope-rock, dub reggae and 1970s jazz-funk could overlap, a realm of midtempo syncopations and electronic gleam. Yet where British trip-hop opened gaping spaces in the music,

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Kruder & Dorfmeister filled them in and rounded them off; there were no chasms or jagged edges, just burnished tones, from drumbeats on up. (Pareles 2010) I argue, at least in relation to Dorfmeister, that K&D ‘filled gaping spaces and rounded jagged edges’ opened by Sin, Dorfmeister’s earlier band. It is worth mentioning again here Where Shall I Turn, the debut record of Sin, which included four versions of the titular song. Not only does this record shows the future direction of Dorfmeister, forever remixing some source material, but also resistance of some hypotexts to his manipulation – in this case the impossibility of ‘filling gaping spaces’ left by the smoky, deep, obtrusive, disagreeable, dramatic voice of Mona Moore. Referring to the controversial, yet pervasive division, functioning in the discourse on popular music, it can be said that Kruder and Dorfmeister perform pop-isation of music they take to task. ‘Pop’ functions as the opposite of ‘rock’; it is associated with studio, ‘manufactured’ work and music which is soft, safe or trivial and is produced for money rather than self-expression (Keightley 2001: 109). Acknowledging that one is pop rather than rock thus requires courage. It is typically displayed by those who amassed enough cultural capital as not to be afraid of any label. An eminent example is Pet Shop Boys, who once said through the mouth of Neil Tennant, the ‘talking’ part of the duo: ‘It’s kinda macho nowadays to prove you can cut it live. I quite like proving we can’t cut it live. We’re a pop group, not a rock and roll group’ (quoted in Auslander 2008: 91). However, it is easier to align oneself to pop in Britain than in Austria, a country where ‘pop’ has particularly bad connotations, as it is associated with the parochial Austropop. Kruder and Dorfmeister have fared rather well, thanks to adopting a similar posture to Pet Shop Boys, namely admitting that they are ‘not-rock’ and ‘inauthentic’ by design rather than because of failing to reach the pinnacle of rock, as on a booklet to D-J-KICKS Kruder&Dorfmeister, where we can read, While K+D were hanging out at the G-stone lounge, Ellen the health instructor at G-stone leisure 1 handed them over the telephone. It was a guy from Germany, who called himself the mighty Horst. Since K+D were relaxing in a jacuzzi with Luna de Morantos of Heus 69 they could not understand more than the word – compilation. K+D immediately said no because compilations nowadays tend to be boring anyway. After days and days of please do it, STUDIO K7 came with an offer that suited them: drugs, money, mo’ drugs + money and then some gals and their sisters. Since K+D are not made of wood they gave in. Here we find everything of which a pop musician can be accused: working for money rather than any higher goal, indulging in a playboy lifestyle and even lacking in initiative and original ideas and instead being led by an employer. But the cliché-driven language suggests that they want to remain opaque.

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Studio musicians typically do not have strong visual presence. In this respect it is worth comparing Brian Eno with Brian Ferry. Although at one point both of them were prominent members of Roxy Music and Eno later ventured into visual art, the first is as well known for his music as he is for his appearance, while Eno is better known for what he does than how he looks or what kind of life he leads. This is also the case with Kruder and Dorfmeister. It does not mean that they wanted to remain anonymous. Perhaps the opposite is true, as suggested by the fact that they published an expensive, CD-shaped book, titled G Stone Book (2000). However, the effect of this book is not of two men unlike any other but, rather, of two model tourists and male consumers of the type which in the 1990s was described as ‘lad’. We see two men putting on different clothes, such as Hawaiian shirts and Japanese gowns, but without embracing foreign cultures. The sense of detachment is underscored by the frequent use of photo frames. Even the part of the book which presumably documents Dorfmeister’s personal life, as suggested by the sign ‘Power Love’ and a photo of him with an attractive young woman, followed by several pages devoted to her, photographed like a model, with her body fragmented and fetishised, creates the effect of distance rather than intimacy. In the introduction I referred to Susan Sontag’s conceptualisation of production of new art as post-romantic because of involving research and solving problems rather than acting on inspiration. Kruder and Dorfmeister fit the post-romantic label perfectly. Most likely the post-romantic approach came to them naturally, and they share it with the majority of Viennese musicians active from the 1990s. In this context it is worth again mentioning Can because this band was ostentatious in conveying the values which Kruder and Dorfmeister transmit implicitly. In the documentary film about Can, directed by Rudi Dolezal and Hannes Rossacher, we can hear Can members saying that ‘[n]either of us cared about personal expression. We try to exclude a human being from the music’ or ‘[r]ock bands always expressed something: rebellion against the parents or something like that. And all we did was music’. Kruder and Dorfmeister also avoid the issue of politics and see their strength in the musical qualities of their productions; their ability to draw on and add to different music styles. Even the label of being pioneers of downtempo mildly irritates Dorfmeister, who said to me with pride that he is as much down- as up-tempo; no type of music is alien to him. Similar to their eschewing references to politics, the duo was avoiding references to the place where they came from. They never attempted to be ambassadors of Vienna or Austria. Asked why their music is so ‘place-less’, Dorfmeister mentioned two reasons: his own cosmopolitan outlook and that in the 1990s even ‘selling Vienna to Viennese’ would not work, as the inhabitants of this city lack local or national pride, confirming Tony Judt’s words, quoted in the first chapter, that Vienna of 1989 was a perfect place to ‘think Europe’ rather than to ‘think Vienna’. Yet, ironically, they were seen as more Viennese than any other electronic act coming from Vienna in the 1990s. Kruder and Dorfmeister’s cosmopolitanism and post-romanticism, in part, provides an explanation for why they did not remix Falco’s songs during his life and

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never collaborated with him in any other way, despite the fact that Falco wanted to be ‘adopted’ by these young Turks when the three musicians met in the late 1990s. Although when Kruder and Dorfmeister started their careers, Falco was still active, the ‘studious musicians’ viewed him as an anachronism. This was because Falco, as I have argued elsewhere, positioned himself as a romantic artist – unique, tormented and ‘authentic’ (Mazierska 2014: 74). Only in 2016, eighteen years after the singer’s death, did Kruder remix one of Falco’s songs, ‘Königin von Eschnapur’, true to his approach, choosing a song which belonged to the weaker songs in Falco’s career, hence one which could be improved.

G-Stoned (1993) On their first record K&D wear their postmodernity literally on their sleeves, using on the cover a photograph of themselves in a pose which ostentatiously evokes the cover of the Bookends album by Simon & Garfunkel from 1968, with Kruder taking the place of Simon and Dorfmeister of Garfunkel. Choosing as their patrons Simon & Garfunkel suggests that they wanted to position themselves as the new Simon & Garfunkel. This might have to do with the fact that Simon & Garfunkel’s work is classified as electronic – Mark Prendergast in his volume The Ambient Century puts them between the Velvet Underground and the Rolling Stones (Prendergast 2003: 213–15). For the majority of listeners, however,

Figure 4.3 Covers of Kruder and Dorfmeister’s records, used at ‘Ganz Wien’ exhibition, in Wien Museum Photo: Ewa Mazierska

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Simon & Garfunkel means catchy melodies and virtuosity of performance, which withstand the passage of time. Despite the mellowness of their songs and avoiding overtly political subjects, the New York duo is also associated with 1960s’ counterculture, almost to the same extent as Bob Dylan. Simon & Garfunkel stand for pop which is as good as rock, if not better. K&D’s was thus meant to offer us pop of the highest quality. Such a cover, as well as the very name of the group, also gives us a hint about the roles each of the men was to play in their joint project. In the prevailing narrative about Simon & Garfunkel, Simon was credited with composing the band’s hits, with Garfunkel being only a performer, shadowing the main voice. However, without this shadow or ‘echo’ Simon & Garfunkel would lose their distinct style; its addition changed good songs into masterpieces. Garfunkel is also known as a more versatile artist, who had more of a life outside Simon & Garfunkel than Simon, playing in films. This might also be true of Kruder and Dorfmeister. One can imagine that Kruder was the one living in the studio while Dorfmeister went to the studio to work. As already mentioned, he also had a penchant for ‘co-habiting’ with many musical partners at the same time. The first record has all the marks of a typical K&D production. It is slow, repetitive and with little voice, which conveys no discursive content, but sounds like any other instrument. It comes across as music for those who are ‘stoned’, overdosing on some drug and dignifying such a state, when things lose their contours and one object becomes very much like the next one. The mood is distinctly laid-back, as in a nightclub after midnight. Sex is in the air, but most likely it will not be consummated because the prospective lover is too stoned to care, so the ‘baby is (eventually) going home’, as we can hear on ‘Original Bedroom Rockers’, that is if we care to listen to the lyrics and focus on their semantic function. The titles of the tracks are distinctly un-poetic, reflecting well the duo’s selfperception as post-romantic musicians. The instrumental ‘Definition’ is ‘scientific’, suggesting that their music is a product of research rather than intuition or quasi-religious illumination. It is also a good example of what defining involves: finding a common core of different objects. This common core is a simple melody which reappears through this track. Maybe this piece was meant to function as the band’s artistic credo: being able to strip (any) music to the bone, to rebuild it and to adorn it with ornaments. ‘Original Bedroom Rockers’ makes a reference to the way electronic music was produced at the time in Austria (and elsewhere) – in bedroom-size studios or just bedrooms. The title is imbued with multiple ironies, resulting from incongruous juxtaposition of the three words and borrowing its title from a reggae album of Augustus Pablo, Original Rockers, released in 1979. It suggests that K&D do not care about originality or, rather, want to be original on their own terms, do not want to be rockers and are even mildly contemptuous about rock (as is the case with electronic musicians at large). Moreover, the album, referenced by this title, is a dub album. In it, Pablo’s recordings are being remixed with additional electronic processing such as reverb, delay and filtering, techniques pioneered in Jamaica by the previously mentioned Lee ‘Scratch Perry’ and King Tubby. By using such a title, K&D located themselves as heirs of this tradition.

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‘High Noon’ samples and reworks one of the best-known pieces from the repertoire of Elvis Presley, ‘Blue Moon’. It also shares its title with a famous Western film by Fred Zinnemann from 1952, a classic of this genre, perhaps conveying K&D’s desire to be listed among the classics. Such a title might also account for the extended harmonica solo, with the harmonica being one of the few instruments found in the culturally impoverished Wild West. Finally, ‘Deep Shit prt 1& 2’ betrays Kruder & Dorfmeister’s penchant for mild vulgarity and their tendency to see the world, including themselves, in quotation markers, as ‘rockers’ rather than rockers. G-Stoned feels jazzier than their later productions. Jazz was apparently where Dorfmeister wanted to take Sin but failed; K&D gave him this opportunity. The style reflects the then popularity of acid jazz; some reviewers classify G-Stoned as belonging to this genre. Moreover, it is not a collection of remixed tracks written by other musicians, but their own work, as if Kruder and Dorfmeister had to prove that they knew how to compose music from scratch before embarking on abstracting and remixing the work of others, not unlike painters who had to prove first that they could paint realistically before venturing into an abstract art.

D-J-KICKS Kruder & Dorfmeister (1996) This is one of two records which made the duo famous. The idea came from !K7 Studio, which invented the series of electronic DJ club-style mixes as a way to create a more sustainable brand than one based on the fame of an individual artist. The series started in 1995 and Kruder & Dorfmeister were the fifth in the cycle and till now belong to its most successful endeavour, despite the fact that by the time of writing these words there have been fifty records released under this brand. Having ‘DJ’ in the title says much about the approach taken by Kruder & Dorfmeister: it is the work of people who know the records of their times. The tracks used for remixing come from the second half of the 1990s and represent the then cream of electronic music from genres such as drum‘n’bass, techno, acid house and hybridised jazz, as exemplified by tracks of Herbalizer and Aquasky. The majority of music comes from independent labels. Anglo-American music prevails; exceptions are two tracks authored by Kruder and Dorfmeister themselves and one by Showroom Recordings, a name adopted by Patrick Pulsinger and Erdem Tunakan, and the track by Hardfloor, a duo from Cologne. The original tracks were remixed using the same formula; they were dubbed and ‘downtempo-ed’. The blueprint of this work can be found in the piece which Kruder & Dorfmeister themselves composed and included on their first record: ‘Definition’. Every track feels like a search for the core (‘essential melody’), which emerges and then becomes subsumed by the flood of sounds. The greatest value of this record lies not in any individual track but in its smoothness. It is a record one wants to listen to from beginning to end without jumping to one’s favourite piece. Although it is far from the concept album, it still belongs to the time when musicians thought in terms of producing an LP, rather than catchy tracks. Not surprisingly, the record lacks any

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explicit message. Although all the tracks testify to the high quality of Kruder and Dorfmeister’s work, the ‘pearls’ come near the end: ‘Que Dolor’ and ‘DJ Kicks’, also known as ‘Black Baby’, with the latter remaining the most popular tune of K&D, with over 3 million hits on Spotify. ‘Que Dolor’ betrays Dorfmeister’s penchant for world music, understood as relocating ethnic music from its original context and repackaging it for a western consumer. As with all the records, for D-J-KICKS, the cover of the record presents the authors of the remixes. What is remarkable about the photo is how unremarkable and casual these two men appear. Kruder half-smiles to the camera, Dorfmeister does not even look at the lens and they are shown against a neutral whitish-greenish grass-like background. If anything, this is a perfect image of post-romantic musicians, who want to be judged on their music rather than personalities.

Kruder Dorfmeister the K&D Sessions (1998) This two-record album repeats the formula of D-J-KICKS: it remixes tracks composed by other artists. However, the records come across as more continuous and have a stylistic consistency rarely found not only in remix records but also in originals. One track merges with the next one, yet each preserves its distinctiveness. Paradoxically, the remix feels so perfect because it does not feel like a remix – the ‘scissors, glue and tape’ are invisible. The material is clearly divided, leading to each record having a different atmosphere. The first is more dynamic, includes more singing and leans towards bossa nova. It is more of a dance record. The second is largely dubbed, includes more echo effects and seemingly accidental noise and has more of an eerie atmosphere. At times it bears associations with the soundtracks to David Lynch’s movies with their mood of foreboding and lends itself more to listening. This one also comes across as more polished and personal, as testified by including the voice of somebody repeating the names of musicians at the end of Where Shall I Turn. Even the choice of this song is meaningful, as this is one of the first songs written by Dorfmeister and one which he reworked many times in different constellations. If there is a fault on Sessions, it is on the second record, when the eerie atmosphere is broken by ‘Bomberclaad Joint’, a piece lacking the musicality and lightness of the other productions. The music K&D remixed comes from the 1990s; hence, it can be described as the best of this decade in the genres close to K&D’s hearts: drum‘n’bass and trip hop. Examples are Roni Size, Rockers Hi-Fi, Bomb the Bass and Alex Reece. One value of such a choice for today’s listeners is it being a guide to what was fashionable twenty or so years ago. Meaningfully, the fortunes of the majority of the producers, whose work Kruder and Dorfmeister remixed, took a turn for the worse in the 2000s, which can be seen as testimony to the changing fashions in music, as well as the role of the internet in production and distribution of music. A significant proportion of the tracks come from the repertoire of Austrian bands, such as Count Basic, Sofa Surfers, Aphrodelics and the remixers themselves. In this sense The K&D Sessions act as an advert for Austrian electronic music, rendering the duo as its ambassadors. It is worth mentioning that Falco also appeared

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in such a role in the 1980s, but then his main point of reference was Mozart. The K&D Sessions can thus be seen as a testimony to how much Austrian music developed since ‘Rock Me Amadeus’. I mentioned earlier that Kruder and Dorfmeister are model studio, post-romantic musicians and the cover of this album perfectly captures this identity. The front presents their photo, but it is blurred and out of focus so that only half of the face of each man is visible. The message seems to be ‘do not look but listen’. On the back cover we see them from the back, walking away from us and each other. Given that this record practically ended their collaboration, such an image is prophetic. Inside we find a sharper photo of Peter and Richard, evoking their ‘Simon & Garfunkel’ picture from their debut record. The two men have obviously changed. Their ‘clean’, almost angelic appearance has gone, and they look hardened and scruffy, with Kruder sporting uncombed hair and Dorfmeister a cigarette or joint in his mouth (although the last sentence in the booklet states that ‘this is not a joint’), suggesting that success corrupted or at least exhausted them. Such an image can be seen as merely putting on a mask, but for postmodernists masks are as true as what is beneath them. The mask of burnout most likely expressed burnout or at least boredom. In the interviews given more than a decade later the musicians confessed that after the successes of their records they could have done more of the same but did not want to repeat themselves. This is a commendable decision, proving they possessed both personal integrity and understanding that careers are based not only on what one did well but also on what one avoided to do badly. By and large, they come across like perfect guests who came at the right time, entertained us in style and left before we were fed up with them and they themselves got bored.

Notes 1 Barthes refers here largely to the fact that the meaning of the work is created by its receiver (consumer), but his concept suits well the production of electronic music and that of K&D especially because, as I argue, on this occasion the boundary between consumption and production is blurred. 2 It is worth noting that unlike the pop stars of the past, who liked to present themselves as being self-taught (as this added to their romantic aura and the status of genius), the current crop of musicians and especially those specialising in electronic music come across as being proud of their education, often with degrees in science, mathematics or ethnomusicology. Take, for example, Dan Snaith, better known as Caribou, who holds a doctorate in mathematics from Imperial College London. This also goes, of course, for those who are on the side of ‘serious’ electronic music. Composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, Brian Eno, John Oswald and Michael Nyman not only produce their music but also theorise on it. This also refers to Austrian female DJ, Electric Indigo (Susanne Kirchmayr), who contributed a chapter to an academic collection, Neue Musik Heute? (2014). 3 The introduction of chillout rooms to dance clubs may have been partly due to a code of conduct introduced in Manchester at the end of 1992, which specified that clubs should provide seating in a quieter area along with free drinking water or risk losing their licences.

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The cool ambience of Tosca

Play a sound Play it for so long Until you feel that you should stop Again, play a sound, play it for so long until you feel that you should stop And so on Stop when you feel that you should stop But, whether you play or stop, keep listening to the others At best play when people are listening Play a vibration in the rhythm of your body Play a vibration in the rhythm of your heart Play a vibration in the rhythm of your breathing Play a vibration in the rhythm of your thinking Play a vibration in the rhythm of your intuition Play a vibration in the rhythm of your enlightenment Mix these vibrations freely Leave enough silence between them – Karlheinz Stockhausen

It is difficult to imagine two more different bands operating within the same musical genre as Sin and Tosca. Sin is dramatic; it forces the listener to confront his or her deepest desires and gravest disappointments. Tosca allows one to regain his or her composure and to see things in proportion, suggesting that nothing is really bad but maybe because nothing was ever really good. Sin does not allow one to listen to its productions when doing one’s chores or waiting for a delayed plane. In such circumstances their music most likely will get on one’s nerves. Tosca, by contrast, seems perfect for such occasions. Not without reason its style is described as ‘ambient’ or ‘chill-out’, and one of its records is aptly named No Hassle. As one reviewer of this record observed, Tosca’s music has a tendency to ‘drift off rather than going into deep focus’ (Matos 2009). While Sin’s fan risks giving into drama and embarrassment, Tosca’s audience might suffer from the lack of emotional anchoring and, ultimately, indifference.

The cool ambience of Tosca 117 However, there are also connections between these two projects, including personal ones. Richard Dorfmeister, who set up Tosca with Rupert Huber, was also co-founder of Sin. Both projects were prompted by a desire to create soundscapes, as well as songs: music which fills the whole room, or (in the case of Tosca) the whole church or cosmos, before returning to your ear. Yet, the fact that Dorfmeister moved to Tosca points to different sensibilities of him and Mona Moore and Andy Orel, with him gravitating towards jazz and privileging sounds emitted by instruments over human voice and longer, ‘borderless’ compositions over standard songs, favoured by Sin.

Tosca’s history Tosca’s history has its pre-history. It started in the 1980s when Dorfmeister and Huber were in the same secondary school in Vienna and began experimenting with electronic equipment as a means to create sounds which could not be brought into existence using more traditional instruments. In due course their compositions took more distinctive shape, providing a basis for works presented in their subsequent records. The band started to work officially in 1994, shortly after Dorfmeister broke with Sin, slightly before Thievery Corporation, an American band with which Tosca is routinely compared. Since then, the band released fourteen records, of which seven are studio albums and the remaining ones contain remixes of previously recorded material, produced either by Huber and Dorfmeister or by other artists. Commercially, the most successful of them is Suzuki, which sold over 400,000 copies. Dehli9 should also be mentioned in this context, as it reached high positions in the charts in countries such as Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France and the US and attracted positive reviews. With more than twenty years of continuous recording and performing, to my knowledge, Tosca is the longest-lasting electronic project in Austrian history. There are two secrets to its longevity. First, it is a project of two men with quite different musical sensibilities. Huber leans more towards experimental, minimalist music. When asked about his influences, he mentioned the classics of blues, such as Muddy Waters, and the pioneer of electronic music Karlheinz Stockhausen’s groundbreaking Gesang der Jünglinge, and on several occasions expressed his dislike of ‘commercial music’, for example the records Falco made with the Bollands. It is also predominantly Huber who indulges in the idea of producing records as continuous works, rather than chopped into individual tracks. Huber’s entire posture is a cross between Stockhausen and young Pogorelic: somebody who makes the audience observe and admire him working rather than trying to communicate with his fans directly. He is also rather taciturn during interviews, allowing Dorfmeister to do most of the talking. At the same time, he is amongst the most intellectual musicians I ever met, and his views gave me much food for thought not only for this project but for others as well. Dorfmeister’s taste is more eclectic, as I argued in the previous chapters, and he better fits the idea of, if not a pop star (as such titles are normally reserved

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for singers), at least a showman, even though in his public declarations he also accentuates Tosca’s quest for artistic autonomy and distance from commercial music. Each of the men even wears (literally) his hat in a different way. For Huber, whose hat covers a large part of his forehead, it seems to be a protective device; for Dorfmeister, the prop of a dandy. Tosca does not exhaust either Huber or Dorfmeister’s artistic activities. Dorfmeister was active in Kruder and Dorfmeister, another successful act from Austria and distinctly more commercially oriented than Tosca (see Chapter 4). Huber is a successful solo artist, composing and presenting his music in venues normally reserved for experimental musicians, such as the old Carthusian monastery complex in Seville, where he played in 2004. His compositions have been commissioned by, among others, Wiener Festwochen (Private Exile, 2004), Centre Pompidou (Sonic Process, 2002) and Ars Electronica (Radiotopia, 2002). In

Figure 5.1 Richard Dorfmeister and Rupert Huber in 2014 Photo: Larry Hirshowitz

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Figure 5.2 Richard Dorfmeister and Rupert Huber in 2014 Photo: Larry Hirshowitz

addition, Huber worked on a multichannel sound installation for Vienna airport, in 2012. Such a project inevitably brings associations with Brian Eno’s ‘Music for Airports’, even though Huber insists that his and Tosca’s brand has nothing in common with ‘music for airports’. He also writes music for radio and holds positions of an ‘artist in residence’. Such posts are common among contemporary artists with significant ‘high art’ capital, but in this way Huber also follows in the footsteps of German and Austrian musicians of earlier generations. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Stockhausen could all be described as ‘community’ artists. In the context of Huber’s stint as composer for an airport (which can be seen as a contemporary equivalent of a cathedral), it is worth mentioning that Stockhausen wanted to create an electronic mass for Cologne Cathedral, a desire which was never fulfilled, as was the case of Beethoven, commissioned to compose a grand new work for the dedication of the Viennese Stadttempel. The role of the separate projects of Dorfmeister and Huber is twofold. On one hand, they act as laboratories for Tosca’s music, enriching what Dorfmeister and Huber do together and helping to establish the boundary of Tosca’s style. On the other hand, they offset possible commercial failures of this project, making the duo less dependent on the sales of their most recent record. Not being committed to each other all the time also allows the artists to ‘breathe’ and avoid personal conflicts, which normally kills bands after times of intensive collaboration. This goal might also be facilitated by them living in different places – Huber in Vienna, Dorfmeister in Zurich – yet close enough to meet frequently to work on joint projects.

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The second reason for Tosca’s enduring success is them making the most of glocalisation. They make their recordings in Vienna, in their own studio, which allows them as much time as needed to accomplish satisfying results. Tosca’s polished style, as well as the relative frequency with which they release their records is in part a reflection of their luxurious working conditions. Recording in Vienna also allows them to draw on a pool of local musicians. Although Huber and Dorfmeister do not use this opportunity as much as one might expect, seeing themselves as part of a global rather than local scene, it is worth mentioning their collaboration with Stefan Wildner from Graf Hadik, a punk band of cult status in Austria, and Roland Neuwirth from eccentric folk-jazz band Extremschrammeln. Their presence is important inasmuch as it demonstrates some connections with Vienna and takes the edge from their somewhat cold image as cosmopolitan musicians. While Huber and Dorfmeister record locally, they sell globally. Their work is released by an international company, !K7, whose headquarters are in Berlin and which has offices also in New York and London. !K7 has on its books such acts as Tricky and Wu-Tang, as well as dozens of other electronic bands. This facilitates Tosca’s access to their target audience of listeners of electronic, trip-hop or ambient music, scattered around the globe. Their work was also frequently used in a global context, such as the popular American series Sex and the City.

Ambient and downtempo There are several labels used to classify Tosca’s music, such as ambient, downtempo and chill-out. It is worth unpacking the group to come to grips with Tosca’s musical specificity. The very term ambient music was invented by Brian Eno, who is also one of the main creators of this type of music, thanks to records such as Discreet Music (1975) and Music for Airports (1977). Eno links the birth of ambient to the changing mode of listening to music, which happened in the early 1970s. During this period people made sophisticated choices about ‘what kind of sonic mood they surrounded themselves with’, and there was a shift away from ‘clear rhythms and song structures and, most of all, voices’ and exchanging long cassettes of music chosen for its stillness, homogeneity, lack of surprises, and most of all, lack of variety. We wanted to use music in a different way – as part of the ambience of our lives – and we wanted it to be continuous, a surrounding. (Eno 2004b: 94) Eno adds that technological developments, most important, the ability to create with electronics virtual acoustic spaces helped the development of ambient music (ibid.: 95), namely music as a ‘place, a feeling, an all-around tint to my sonic environment’ (ibid.: 96; see also Roquet 2009). Eno admits that music defined in such a way brings association with music produced by Muzak Inc. in the 1950s, which was an early type of music created for ambience, but Muzak’s music equalled

The cool ambience of Tosca 121 ‘familiar tunes arranged and orchestrated in a lightweight and derivative manner’, while the music he composes is of high quality (ibid.: 96). Other musicians share this view, most important, Aphex Twin, who gave two of his albums the titles Selected Ambient Works 85–92 (1992) and Selected Ambient Works Volume II (1994). There are some problems with this definition, as it can be argued that every type of music can produce a mood and soundscape – it, in part, depends on the listener and the place where it is played. Thom Holmes picks up this problem, saying that ‘ambient music defies definition’ and pointing to a different lineage of ambient music, beginning in the 1960s rather than 1970s (Holmes 2016: 449). He also identifies ‘space music’ as a subgenre of ambient music because of its ‘spacey or dreamy nature’ and lists Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Vangelis, Isao Tomita and Jean-Michel Jarre as its main representatives (ibid.: 453). Because ambient music ‘doesn’t have a beat, doesn’t have a melody, doesn’t have a singer, doesn’t have words’ (ibid.: 453), individual sounds gain in importance, as they are played for long and are surrounded by silent patches and encourage meditation (ibid.: 452). Mark Prendergast, the author of a substantial volume The Ambient Century, sees ambient music as a response to modern life with its noise and buzz. As he puts it, in the twentieth century music didn’t need to have to jolt people out of their quiet lethargy. It no longer, as it did in the Romantic music of the nineteenth century, had to carry the sum of all human emotions. Life was hectic enough without more stormy symphonies. Many opted for quiet. (Prendergast 2003: 2) The author goes on to argue that electronic music reflected a fascination of composers and musicians with individual tones and atmospheric sounds (ibid.:3), which can imitate the natural sounds and those never heard before, which can be imagined as the sounds of the cosmos or of the future. This fascination led to tangible results because of the possibilities offered by electronic technology. Downtempo, known also as trip-hop, is not regarded as a subgenre of ambient music because it is based on beat, although less intense than in trance or house. However, there is a common ground between downtempo and ambient. As one author puts it, once a beat is set up, sounds and melodic fragments float above it, and things go on for a while, sometimes a really long time. Making downtempo records is more like cutting lengths from a bolt of cloth than writing songs (FrereJones 2000). Moreover, downtempo is regarded as an ideal background music, not something to play in a disco or listen to intensely in solitude. Its slowness and peacefulness do not disturb conversations in bars or cafes, and this is helped by the fact that a piece can go for longer than a standard song. In the UK the capital of downtempo was Bristol; here the music of this type was produced by Massive Attack, Tricky and Portishead, all included in the guide to jungle, big beat and trip-hop, produced by Peter Shapiro (1999). Other eminent representatives include the Orb and Kruder and Dorfmeister, also presented by Shapiro.

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Tosca’s style I will list two main features of Tosca’s style. Each by itself is not particularly original, but in combination, they render this project unique, not least because these features are somewhat contradictory. The first is a tendency to create larger compositions than individual songs, as signalled by the title of their first record, Opera, which is a prerogative of ‘serious’ music. By the same token, Dorfmeister and Huber emphasise their desire to play concerts in ‘special’ places, such as churches, where their music can reverberate and be appreciated in all its dimensions. The second characteristic is quirkiness. This feature was already revealed in their first hit, ‘Chocolate Elvis’. This piece humorously makes reference to the most iconic character in the history of popular music, Elvis Presley. It also refers to the history of Elvis and his music as objects of numerous recycling and representations, and kitsch of the majority of such attempts, by including the word chocolate in the title. Humour is also included by punctuating its melody with a short piece from Puccini’s aria, reflecting Tosca’s members’ claim that they enjoy merging things coming from different sources. I mentioned earlier that Vienna is known for Wiener Schmäh, its quirky and dark sense of humour. This quality is typically attributed to Kruder and Dorfmeister, but in my view it suits Tosca better. The band’s name captures both tendencies, towards the seriousness of classical music and quirkiness. Tosca is, of course, the title of an opera, yet not of any average opera but one of the most clichéd and exaggerated, almost an epitome of opera as a camp genre.1 Tosca is also a good example of cultural translation, in which the new version upstaged the original: the hypertext became better known and appreciated than the hypotext. I refer here to the fact that Puccini’s opera, which premiered in 1900 in Rome, was based on the French-language play by Victorien Sardou. The play is forgotten, and few people even know that Tosca has French roots. By naming their project ‘Tosca’ Dorfmeister and Huber transmitted their desire to be ‘lost in translation’, suggesting, in a postmodern fashion, that the issue of originality is of little importance to them. The question of translation is on occasion even inscribed in the content of their works, as in Rondo Acapricio from J.A.C., where a female voice, apparently broadcast on radio and coming from Singapore, announces that it will read poems which were published in Mandarin and French, to be followed by a male voice uttering words whose meanings are impossible to decipher. The serious, opera-like character of Tosca’s music and Huber and Dorfmeister’s penchant for larger forms bring to mind the works of the pioneers of electronic music and classical minimalism – Karlheinz Stockhausen, Steve Reich, Philip Glass and Terry Riley. It makes sense evoking their names in this context also because there is a strong link between classical minimalism and certain forms of popular electronic music such as minimalist techno (Sherburne 2004; Stoppani de Berrié 2015; see also Chapter 8). Minimalists try to reduce rather than expand their means of expression by employing a limited variety of instruments and using repetition of sounds, as well as echo, reverberation and silence. Reduction,

The cool ambience of Tosca 123 however, is not for its own sake, but for getting something extra, allowing every sound to achieve autonomy and live longer, rather than being thwarted by the cacophony of the neighbouring sounds. By the same token, it helps its listeners to rest, to ‘breathe’. If minimalism is on the edge of popular and serious music, so Tosca can be seen, with some other artists discussed in this book, as a bridge between Austrian popular electronic music and experimental music. Tosca’s tracks also fit the description of ambient music. It is easy to imagine Tosca’s fans as successful, overworked middle-class men who have enough hassle in their life and therefore, after hours, want ‘no hassle’ but to relax in the company of elegant, ‘cool’ women and ‘cool’ music, both of which make no demands but patiently wait to be appreciated and consumed. Such a perception is confirmed by comments on Tosca’s tracks, posted on YouTube, which come predominantly from men. Some even state that one has to be a man to enjoy this music. Fortunately this does not exhaust all productions of Dorfmeister and Huber or even all layers of their pieces. Tosca is saved from the banality of the Muzak style by quirkiness, also conveyed in the titles of their tracks, such as ‘Rolf Royce’ or ‘John Lee Huber’, or sounds in the background, which suggest that something uncanny happens there, which the foreground music tries to suppress. Tosca’s love affair with ambient music culminated with the second CD, Dehli9. This part of its music is not based on beat and comes across as if written and performed according to a recipe of Stockhausen, which I used as an epigraph to this chapter. Every sound is played for a long time, which allows not only hearing it but experiencing its afterlife, its disappearing into (outer) space. Listening to such compositions not only soothes one’s nerves after a day of hard work but also offers an experience (or illusion) of transcendence, of moving to a different space. Ambient music is usually associated with creating a good mood, with healing, but not all representatives of this style are happy with such classification, finding a ‘positive ambience’ somewhat banal or outmoded, in the same way the concept of ‘new age’ is seen these days as passé. Huber and Dorfmeister also became aware of these dangers and insisted that their last ambient record, Odeon, strives towards creating darker moods. There are about as many Tosca’s pieces which use words as those which are instrumental. The large proportion of the latter results from the duo’s ostensibly privileging music over words. When I mentioned to Huber that I assumed that he is not a fan of rap, he replied, half-jokingly, that he would be a fan of rap if it was purified of words. It shall be added that neither Dorfmeister nor Huber is himself a singer, which can be seen as an additional factor why they favour instrumental music. However, even tracks which use words can barely be described as songs because the phonetic function of words gets precedence over their semantic function. Tosca’s texts are a form of sound poetry, full of meaningless combinations of spoken letters such as ‘Diddy dum dum dum da dum’ on ‘Oscar’ or short phrases repeated again and again so that they lose their original, already minimal meaning, such as ‘shake baby shake’ in ‘Chocolate Elvis’ or ‘In my brain Prinz Eugen’ in the song of the same title. A special affinity to sh brings to mind ‘She Moves

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Sh’ from Music for the Gift by Terry Riley, a minimalist with whom, after Stockhausen, Tosca has most in common. The words on Tosca’s tracks often sound like quotations or samples juxtaposed with other samples: fragments of radio programmes or random conversations captured in clubs or on the streets. On such occasions they create collages, in which they are dislocated from their natural context and their original meaning is lost. In this respect Tosca’s approach to words can be compared to that of sounds poets and surrealists. For example, Tristan Tzara cut single words out of newspaper, shook them in a bag and took them out one by one to write a poem. A sense of dislocation or abolishing of original meaning of words is added by repetitions of a phrase or short sentence, often an already-included non-realistic element, as in ‘Me and Yoko Ono’, where during the track we hear over and over again ‘Standing on the corner, just me and Yoko Ono, waiting for Jeremy to land’. In a documentary accompanying the production of No Hassle we can hear Huber saying that singers usually try to express something while he does not want music to express, just be. Such a statement brings to mind the famous saying of Susan Sontag that art should not be about something, but something, which is viewed as a manifesto of postmodern (haptic and depoliticised) art. In an interview with me the musician also mentioned his distrust of words because of their being a tool of deception. Music cannot deceive because it cannot be judged according to the criterion of truthfulness. One can conjecture that to put words and music on the same footing (as art forms which are neutral in relation to truth/falseness) one has to free words from their representational function or at least question it by the previously described methods. There might also be a more important reason for Tosca’s hostility to words with meaning: their aim to create mood. This is because mood is beyond discursive order; words not only fail us when we try to describe a mood but can also destroy it because creating mood requires ambiguity and subtlety. For such purpose, coherently organised words with their ‘sharp’ meaning are too blunt an instrument.2 Another specificity of Tosca’s approach to speech is their multilingualism. Apart from songs written in English, they also use German, French and Portugese. Such multilingualism reminds one of Falco, a fellow Austrian who was perhaps the most multilingual pop artist ever to reach international fame, although there are differences in their approach to language. In comparison with Falco, German is marginalised on Tosca’s records (and on some records we do not hear this language at all), and its local versions are absent, reflecting the fact that Tosca never tried to get local credibility. Moreover, languages are normally not mixed on one track. Their multitude typically reflects their collaborators coming from different countries, such as the UK, Brazil and France. The sense of coherence of Tosca’s artistic output is augmented by designs of their records. One characteristic feature is the inclusion of a frame; we find frames on the covers of Opera, J.A.C. and Outta Here. A frame suggests distrust towards the world which lends itself to our senses or a desire to put reality in brackets. Such a meaning is proposed most clearly on the cover of Opera, on which the Vienna State Opera is looked at through the window of a car, as if to make us

The cool ambience of Tosca 125 aware that if we buy this record, we will not listen to a real opera but only to ‘opera’. We are thus promised to remain in safe distance from the world of divas with high-pitched voices and ornamental clothes thanks to being wrapped up in a protective blanket of modern technology. Design of record sleeves also betrays an affinity to surrealism. Surrealist influences are easiest to detect on the covers of Suzuki, Dehli9 and Odeon, which can be seen as homage to Magritte, although they also reflect on the salient features of Dorfmeister and Huber’s Weltanschauung. On these records we see headless people, an image which produces the effect of incongruity, of clash of meanings, which is a surrealist trademark but which might reflect the artists’ anti-pop-star approach, their wish to be known for their music rather than their private lives and faces. An exception to this rule is the cover of their last record, Outta Here, which includes a photo of Huber and Dorfmeister in the foreground and barely recognisable images of the singers, Cath Coffey and Rob Gallagher, as if acknowledging that it is Huber and Dorfmeister who are the main authors of this record. As a nod to surrealism we can also regard the way they present objects on their covers. For example, a tree on the cover of Dehli9 is clearly a cut-out tree, having a different surface than its background; it is just a tree transported from somewhere and re-presented somewhere else. A similar idea informs the collage of small photos on the inside cover of J.A.C., of which the majority presents objects divorced from a context: hands, pieces of instruments or furniture. The works of surrealism and Magritte, in particular, derive from a desire to create something new and unreal out of familiar, everyday objects, such as a hat (which is significantly a most memorable element of Huber’s and Dorfmeister’s wardrobe). In this sense surrealists can be seen as early postmodernists, who recognised that nothing completely new can be created, yet this does not foreclose originality, which is achieved through reshuffling existing elements. Equally, Magritte conveyed a desire to transcend a mundane, bourgeois existence through creating art. Such a desire informs Tosca’s music, as expressed by Dorfmeister, who, in relation to No Hassle, pronounced that ‘[i]t is a human right not to deal with reality all the time.’

Opera (1997) As Rupert Huber admits, the concept behind Opera is ‘found footage’. This term normally refers to pieces of old films which are used in new films but is also used in all situations, when something old and usually discarded is recovered and placed in a new context. Such practice is linked to postmodernism, but an important precursor of found footage art and its theory is Walter Benjamin, the creator of ‘magic encyclopaedia’, whose methods were compared to a nineteenth-century collector of antiquities and curiosities (Eiland and McLaughlin 1999: ix–x). Benjamin saw nothing outrageous in putting side by side private treasures or pieces of rubbish with things which belong to grand history. There are two principal ideas behind producing ‘magic encyclopaedias’, found footage films and similar products. One is to discover something about the ‘original’ which was hidden when we experienced it for the first time. William Wees argues that thanks to situating

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fragments of an old film in the ‘tissue’ of a new film, its richer implications become apparent and it becomes open to unexpected readings (Wees 1993: 17). The second goal of using found footage is producing something new. Michael Serazio in his discussion of music mash-ups observes that they have the potential to transcend borders and formats as a means of resisting narrowly imposed cultural parameters, most important, those relating to music genres. Serazio’s crucial example is 2 Many DJs’ ‘Smells Like Teen Booty’, which is a hybrid of Nirvana’s 1991 ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and Destiny’s Child’s ‘Bootylicious’ (2001). This is an ironic work, as it ‘peels off Kurt Cobain’s iconic, angstful lyrics, subverts what had been Cobain’s genuine lament and erases originally coded meanings and readings. Instead of a growling “I feel stupid and contagious” ’, the listener hears, ‘Is my body too bootylicious for you, baby?’ (Serazio 2008: 83). These comments are relevant to Opera because the ‘footage’ Tosca collected for this record, and which includes fragments of trivial utterances in American English, sound strange, as in ‘Amalienbad’, when we hear somebody saying, ‘Actually, actually, if I did have the money for vacation in Hawaii, I will gonna take it’; the already-mentioned ‘Chocolate Elvis’, introducing a man impersonating Elvis Presley; and ‘Listen My Friend’, which samples utterances of another man with most likely unfounded musical pretensions. There is something too confessional about these utterances, rendering them embarrassing to the ear of a welleducated cosmopolitan tourist, which is the most likely addressee of these tracks. Tosca’s way of sampling brings to mind Jean Baudrillard’s reminiscences from his travels to America and, perhaps even earlier trips of Theodor Adorno, included in his Minima Moralia. The difference is that Baudrillard and Adorno distanced themselves from American culture while Dorfmeister and Huber assimilate it, make it part of their own ‘song’. Their project is thus more democratic, in the spirit of Benjamin. The music is very repetitive and minimalistic throughout the entire record. The sounds on some tracks, such as ‘Worksong’ and ‘Gimmi Gimmi’, imitate the sounds in a factory. They might be regarded as an answer to techno, which was the dominant genre of the 1990s, the music of de-industrialised Detroit or even Kraftwerk’s early productions, with beats imitating rhythmical movements of machines and objects placed on a conveyor belt. However, Tosca’s sounds are less robotic and aggressively Germanic, less techno, more mellow and funk. Tracks in the second part attempt to create the sense of space, especially ‘Bouna Sarah’, which can be seen as an introduction to the later Tosca’s productions.

Suzuki (2000) This record was dedicated to Shunryu Suzuki, Japanese Zen master and progenitor of Buddhism in the US, best known for Zen’s Mind, Beginner’s Mind.3 Such a dedication might reflect true (quasi-religious) beliefs of Huber and Dorfmeister but can also be seen as a key to their music. First, it is an act of cultural translation, in which music with Eastern roots is transformed to such an extent that it sounds Western, in the same way Shunryu Suzuki’s work comes across as palpable for

The cool ambience of Tosca 127 Westerners. For example, ‘The Key’ borrows from Caribbean music, and the delicate ‘Honey’ flirts with bossa nova, and most of the tracks sound funky, but these influences are filtered by the electronic instrumentation, which render them modern. Second, in line with the Buddhist teaching, which advises to do everything in moderation and to learn to control one’s emotions, Suzuki brings peace rather than excitement. As one reviewer noted, it will make you move, but it’s just enough to keep you at home (Cinquemani 2001). The sense of tranquility and harmony results as much from the character of individual tracks, which are subdued and ‘mechanical’, with the human element cleansed or hidden in the background, as from the organisation of the record, on which one track moves smoothly to the next. There is no longer any desire to juxtapose contrasting elements – opera voice with electronic music or the voice of a drunken man with a piano or at least such effects are kept to a minimum. The majority of tracks are instrumental, and when a voice appears, it sounds like another instrument. On some pieces, such as ‘Doris Dub’, I was not even sure whether there was a voice used or a computer produced a sound similar to the human voice. One can imagine that the whole record was produced by ‘dubbing’: gradual purging the original of the meanings, then words and eventually voice. The result is a sense of perfection, yet one which is ultimately sterile. Even when listening to ‘Orozco’ or ‘Honey’, on which Anna Clementi coos like a mermaid, I imagine a ‘cold mermaid’ who has no intention of either falling in love or bringing death to her followers, only of playing a ‘mermaid game’. Among these ‘cool’ pieces, which merely soothe or tease, some convey deeper emotions, or at least yearning for something deeper. One, significantly titled ‘Busenfreund’, juxtaposes the melancholic sounds of a neoclassical piano with strong rhythm of drum and bass and ‘cosmic’ noises, as if asking a question whether true friendship can be preserved under the pressure of fast pace of life. Finally, the two pieces, opening and closing the record, ‘Pearl In’ and ‘Pearl Off’, with their sparse sounds of the piano, demand from us to stop and listen – listen not only to the music but also to ourselves, to reflect on our lives – which arguably Buddhism is all about. That said, ‘Pearl Off’ is a very short piece, as if suggesting that too long or deep introspection is dangerous – after all Buddhism is meant to help its followers to stay in this world rather than leave it permanently.

Dehli9 (2003) Dehli9 is proof of Tosca’s achieving maturity. The successful features of the first two records are built on, and the weaknesses are reduced. Moreover, Dehli9 has some of the humour of Opera and the smoothness of Suzuki yet overcomes the roughness of the former and the sterility of the latter. It also develops and separates two genres previously tried by the duo: the dub sound and the atmospheric sound. The dub fills the first CD; the atmospheric music, the second one. The humour is conveyed in the titles of two pieces, ‘Me & Yoko Ono’ and ‘Rolf Royce’ which allude to a desire for high status, money and fame, often conveyed in popular music, and renders them absurd. ‘Me & Yoko Ono’ also

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alludes to Dorfmeister’s unexpected encounter with John Lennon’s widow. Huber and Dorfmeister also use a wider pool of vocalists and styles. While ‘Oscar’ with the sexy vocal of Anna Clementi is reminiscent of ‘Orozco’ and hence acts as a bridge between this record and Suzuki, ‘Me & Yoko Ono’ has the found-footage quality of Opera. ‘Gute Laune’, featuring black singer Tweed, is close to dub in the original sense of this word: it comes across as a reworked reggae piece. These are the best pieces on the first record, especially ‘Gute Laune’, which has the power of putting the listener in a good mood without trying too hard. ‘Wonderful’ is also worth singling out, with Earl Zinger, whose jazzy, whispering, warm but disengaged voice is a perfect vehicle of Tosca’s ethos of staying some distance from the audience and the world at large. The second record contains a composition of Rupert Huber, played by him on the piano but enriched by electronic sounds. It brings association with Glassworks (1982) by Philip Glass, probably the most accessible work by this minimalist. Both records include very melodic pieces, and they progress by adding new instruments and human voice to the sound of a single piano. On the track entitled ‘Einschlaf’, it feels like a louder opponent tries to overpower the piano, but without success – it remains in command. On occasions instrumental music is enriched by human voice, as in a choir in ‘Wien in E’, when we hear something like a choir of mermaids, maybe wooing us to leave this world and relocate to another ontological plane. This is perhaps the most successful piece according to the criteria of success of ambient music – it sounds otherworldly. Another track worth mentioning is ‘Song’ because of its simple melody. While the majority of Tosca’s tracks which take their time to affect the listener, this feels too short, and one wants to repeat it as soon as it is finished. No doubt Rupert Huber appreciated the ‘hit quality’ of this piece, giving it such a title and playing versions of it on different occasions, for example on his record Live in Sevilla. The question arises whether the record would be better if the two records were mixed. This question will be partly answered some years later, with the release of Odeon.

J.A.C. (2005) This record was named after the three sons shared between Dorfmeister and Huber: Joshua, Arthur and Conrad. Family values carried (literally) on one’s (record) sleeve suggests music which is innocuous and sweet, which expresses affirmation of life rather than doubts about its value. Such a claim to some extent pertains to this record. This is music which can be played by a parent who wants to escape the cheesiness and tedium of conventional lullabies and nursery rhymes yet preserve their soothing, sweet quality. Of course, if one is a composer, the temptation to do it is particularly strong. The tracks on J.A.C. fit this description, although the record begins with ‘Rondo Acapricio’, whose first words are not ‘go to sleep’ but ‘good morning’. Mixing day with night became Tosca’s specialty, with Odeon finishing with ‘Bonjour’. After ‘Rondo Acapricio’, we get ‘Heidi Bruehl’, on which, as one reviewer put it, ‘Egypt-born Parisian Samia Farah sassily lilts her way through the electro-cocktail number’ (Richardson 2014b).

The cool ambience of Tosca 129 Such a piece, however, is also perfect music to play to a sleepy child, as is ‘Zurü’, with mermaid-like vocals accompanying a simple melody made interesting by adding echo and background noises. Another piece, which might have been written with a baby in the author’s mind, is appropriately called ‘Pyjama’. This jazzy piece begins with sounds reminiscent of those produced by bells or mobiles put over children’s beds and then changes its tack, as if imitating the rhythm of a train. The majority of tracks, based on percussion and bassline, have a jazzy laidback feel, with ‘Damentag’ being the most dynamic: the only one which will not be out of place in a disco. Sometimes Tosca introduces a note of melancholia, especially in the last tracks, such as ‘Zurü’ and ‘Sala’. The female voices merge with instruments; the male voices are understated, sometimes whispering. Practically all tracks appear to be played on the loop. ‘No More Olives’, whose minimalism puts a listener almost in a psychedelic trance is most extreme in this respect. Together these pieces evoke a good parent who never raises his or her voice and has the patience to tell the child the same thing many times. On the whole, J.A.C. is full of catchy pieces which age well. However, the record is inferior to its predecessor because it fails on the novelty front; it feels too much like the first part of Dehli9. One can even match pieces from these two records. ‘Heidi Bruehl’ and ‘Zurü’ are reminiscent of ‘Orozco’, while ‘Superrob’, the most groove-rich track on the record, with Tosca’s stalwart Earl Zinger providing vocals, is an answer to ‘Gute Laune’. It is difficult to imagine how such a style could be perfected. Not surprisingly, after that Dorfmeister and Huber tried something different.

Odeon (2013) This record came into existence because of Tosca’s concert at the Odeon theatre in Vienna. Although it was subsequently recorded in a studio, it comes across as a concert album because of a strong sense of ambience, of sounds floating in the air and filling a concert hall. However, unlike in a mood-rich Dehli9, on this occasion Dorfmeister and Huber tried to create ambience through both instrumental pieces and songs. It gives a sense of a whole, despite being on many accounts heterogeneous. Coherence results from extensive use of reverberations and the same beat, which imitates the beating of the human heart. As some reviewers noted, it is darker than Tosca’s average fare, perhaps the darkest record in its entire career (Johnson 2013), as signaled by a cover, on which black and blue, which are the colours of the night, prevail. The music conveys the mood of an insomniac sensing approaching menace, although the danger is usually diffused or left to linger rather than reaching a climax, as is the case with a cinemagoer. At the same time, the record is diverse thanks to the use of a large number of singers, using different languages: English, German and Portugese. The Brazilian Lucas Santtana brings the taste of ‘world music’, hybridising Brazilian influences with Tosca’s trademark echoes in a piece mysteriously or humorously titled ‘Stuttgart’, given that this piece is about a womaniser or a dreamer who in three minutes changes his affection, being first in love with Cira, then with Regina and finally with Nana.4

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One of my two favourite pieces is ‘Cavallo’, performed by Viennese musician and leader of the band Extremschrammeln Roland Neuwirth. His melancholic, whispering voice acts as a guide through the night filled with treacherous sounds, trying to mislead us. The second is the instrumental piece ‘Bonjour’, closing the record. Placing a song of this title at the end of the record is proof that not everything evaporated from Tosca’s original humour. However, such a decision seems to be dictated by the inner logic of the record, not a desire to amuse its fans. If the record is about surviving the night, then it should finish with the dawn breaking, as in a classical thriller. Indeed, as with several other pieces, ‘Bonjour’ begins with the heart beating and some indistinguishable voices in the background, as is the case when one tries in vain to fall asleep far from home. Gradually the sound becomes richer; more instruments are added, with some sounding like delicate bells. It feels like the morning eventually came, and there is no point trying to fall asleep – better to take a stroll in the foreign city. ‘Bonjour’ ultimately invites us to listen to Odeon again. By the same token, it announces with quiet authority that Tosca’s music should keep us company through all parts of the day.

Outta Here (2014) Of all the records Tosca created Outta Here most openly aims towards creating a good mood. This goal is transmitted through the titles of the tracks: ‘Swimswimswim’, ‘Have Some Fun’ or ‘Happy Hour’. Such attempts bring to mind the ‘technologies of self’, deplored by Foucault: ways to overcome one’s problems by dealing not with their root causes but only with their effects by, for example, taking a pill when one is unhappy. This way of dealing with problems through escaping them is also conveyed by the title of the record, Outta Here, although the musicians explain it by their desire to move out of the confinement of a studio and work with singers. The record gives more than it promises, or at least gives something different. It does not contain ambient music, based on sparsely delivered sounds, surrounded by pregnant silences, but instead consists of more or less classically structured songs, based on beat. The songs convey the subdued anguish of somebody ‘with a past’, who lost many opportunities for happiness and knows well that his or her chance for success is not high yet wants to give it a last ‘shot’. The mood thus oscillates between mourning and optimism, as in ‘This Crazy Love’, ‘Lone Ranger’, ‘My Sweet Monday’ and ‘Happy Hour’. ‘Happy Hour’ not only finishes the record but also summarises it. Unlike the majority of Tosca’s tracks, which play down semantic meaning, it has distinct lyrics which read like the confession of an older couple in search of lost time: Gonna make a head shot Gonna make a moon rock Baby won’t play Baby won’t blame

The cool ambience of Tosca 131 And later Baby don’t play She got life to shake She got money to make She got love to give and take It is worth noticing how the meaning bounces in these rhyming verses (play and blame, make and take), reflecting the risks people take engaging in romantic liaison, especially if they have their youth behind them. One review of this record states that the singers, Rob Gallagher and Cath Coffey, sound like a drunken couple performing in a karaoke bar (Robash 2014). However, this might have been an intention of the producers of this record, which is a kind of tribute to lost souls and even perhaps to the institution of karaoke as a kind of ‘dub for beginners’. Such souls venture to karaoke clubs in search of somebody willing to listen to their ‘song’, knowing that it cannot be entirely original: for that they lived and experienced too much. Gallagher and Coffey impersonate such characters well, being themselves kind of survivors from a bygone era. Gallagher, who performed on earlier records of Tosca as Earl Zinger, is also known from working in Galliano, a London-based acid jazz group popular in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. Coffey is another 1990s veteran, who worked before in Stereo MCs, one of the first English hip-hop bands. The style of the vocalists, on most tracks singing in a duet, is understated, with Gallagher oscillating between whispering and singing in a scratchy way, and sometimes providing background to a more expressive performance of Coffey. In ‘Swimswimswim’ their voices merge seamlessly with each other and the sounds of instruments. On the whole, however, it feels like Huber and Dorfmeister put too much effort into escaping (from whatever they wanted to escape) and not enough in making themselves at home at the place where they arrived. While previously Tosca’s productions created a sense of freedom, of floating into space, this time its music feels trapped in pre-programmed beats. Only near the end does the corset start to loosen and the musicians begin to feel more comfortable in the new genre. Even if not as accomplished as its predecessor, Outta Here demonstrates that Huber and Dorfmeister are still experimenting and trying to show their human faces, betraying vulnerability absent on their earlier records and having their photo on the cover of the record.

Conclusion Tosca’s oeuvre, while worthy of consideration in itself, brings to mind two approaches to a ‘classic’. According to the first approach, something becomes a classic because of its sheer popularity at a specific moment, which has to be acknowledged by future generations. A ‘classic’ according to the second approach is that which does not age, like a woman who is not bothered about changing fashions because she has perfected her own style. Classic in the second sense exudes an aura of quiet authority, of elegance and charisma.

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Tosca’s music fits largely the second definition: it resists the passage of time. Its records do not belong to a specific period and, hence, do not feel outmoded when one listens to them many years after their release. It is a remarkable achievement, given that time in electronic music passes very quickly. This might be to do with the fact that the music appears to be less dominated by technology than in the case of other musicians operating within this genre, whose style strongly reflected on the new inventions, as in the case of such artists as Jean-Michelle Jarre or Tangerine Dream. One often gets a sense that its main point of reference is music of classical concert. Neither do Tosca’s productions have instant hit value; they grow on the listener, like somebody whose charm we appreciate the longer we talk to him or her. This quality is recognised by its fans. One of them in a review posted on YouTube wrote, ‘I found myself skipping through the disc to find tracks that had the same flavour as the preceding discs. Will grow on me in time.’

Notes 1 Susan Sontag in her classic essay on camp singles out opera as camp genre because of the disparity of its trivial content and grandiose style (Sontag 1994b: 278). 2 Films renowned for their ability of creating mood typically have reduced dialogue; instead, the music in them is more important than in the films not known for this quality. 3 Suzuki was also the name of a vocalist of Can, Dorfmeister’s favourite krautrock band. His full name was Kenji ‘Damo’ Suzuki. As Ulrich Adelt notes, ‘Damo Suzuki’s lyrics, an occasionally incomprehensible mix of English, Japanese and invented language, further removed Can’s sound from African American influences’ (Adelt 2012: 365). This description also fits Tosca’s approach to language and its interest in non-Western musics. 4 On Santtana’s own record, the title of this song is ‘Cira, Regina & Nana.’

6

Sofa Surfers Surfing and post-rocking

I think of globalization like a light which shines brighter and brighter on a few people and the rest are in darkness, wiped out. They simply can’t be seen. Once you get used to not seeing something, then, slowly, it’s no longer possible to see it. – Suzanna Arundhati Roy

While the majority of bands and musicians discussed in this book take a distinctly non-political stance, either helping us to escape from this world or encouraging us to relive very personal affairs, Sofa Surfers come across as being in touch with social and political reality. Yet, the social world per se never becomes the subject of its songs; it is always filtered by individual experience, typically of a male looking for a place in an inhospitable world. This is implied by the band’s name, which refers to a common practice of taking advantage of somebody’s sofa while looking for a more permanent place to live. The term sofa surfing makes a certain type of homelessness look acceptable, even cool, and such an idea is frequently conveyed by Sofa Surfers’ songs. The ‘surfing’ in the band’s name also implies continuous movement: old-style moving of one’s body in a physical space but with extra speed, as in windsurfing, and more contemporary virtual travel: surfing the internet. These connotations are confirmed in interviews with its members, who present themselves as ordinary blokes, grateful for the opportunity of making a living from their music, not really any different from their fans. They emphasise the scarcity of their technical and financial resources, announcing in the sleeve notes to their first record that they used ‘a tiny drum kit, someone else’s bass guitar, a broken melodica, second hand vibraphone, a wreck of turntable, some electronics plus three sofas’. Sofa Surfers members do not even describe themselves as a band but as a ‘collective’. Such a term suggests not only a loose structure, with some musicians working only on some records or tracks, but also a community based on socialist values: on sharing what one creates rather than trying to produce a monetary surplus value. One can regard such declarations as a kind of coquetry (perhaps harking back to punk), but I am not in a position to assess Sofa Surfers’ moral integrity. What I can testify to, however, is a coherence between this image and the music they produce affording it a sense of authenticity.

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Sofa Surfers’ history In common with Tosca, Sofa Surfers’ prehistory harks back to the 1980s, when two teenagers from Vienna, Wolfgang Schloegl (b. 1972) and Michael Holzgruber (b. 1971) started to write their own music. Within a couple years they were joined by Markus Kienzl (b. 1973) and Wolfgang Frisch (b. 1974). The last and most nomadic member of the band is Manni Obeya (b. 1969). He was born in Nigeria and moved to London when he was seven years old and has lived in New York and Germany before semi-settling in Austria. Obeya was first employed as a singer for one-two songs, on the PLO basis, as explained in Chapter 2. However, he proved indispensable to the band and in due course became a permanent member of the band, taking the main responsibility for its lyrics. In 1996 the band started its official existence and one year later released its first record, Transit. Schloegl confessed to me that he and his friends wanted to produce music ‘in a new way’, something along the lines of Gesamtkunstwerk, namely creating spectacles, in which music is juxtaposed with live performance and virtual reality. He was inspired by the news that when Elvis Presley died, his band was still touring and performing. Schloegl did not know how it could have happened but liked the idea of the performer being both present in a spectacle through his accented absence and wanted to test such possibility. The second source of inspiration for Sofa Surfers were David Cronenberg’s films, especially the celebrated Videodrome (1983), in which the boundary between material and virtual reality is blurred and the latter overpowers the former. Such a concept informs other science-fiction films of the 1980s, such as TRON (1982), by Steven Lisberger, and Blade Runner (1982), by Ridley Scott, with the latter being evoked by critics writing about Sofa Surfers. In Cronenberg’s film the crossing of ontological boundaries is dystopian, but for the future members of Sofa Surfers (as for many people of their generation) it had a peculiar charm. Schloegl mentioned that Sofa Surfers wanted to have ‘virtual singers’ on stage, controlled by the computer. This dream was not realised literally, as in due course the band employed ‘real’ singers whose voices sound natural rather than manipulated. However, something of the original idea survived, as (in common with Tosca), key members of Sofa Surfers do not sing, and until Obeya became the official member of the band, the singers were not listed as the band’s members, hence their mode of existence appears to be different from that of Schloegl, Holzgruber, Kienzl and Frisch. Moreover, during their concerts the image of the singer was projected on screen and appeared to belong to a different reality than that occupied by the band. The crossing between material and virtual reality also became a privileged topic of their songs. Transit proved a critical and commercial success, establishing the band as one of the most important creators of electronic music in Austria. Since then the band released eight records. Of them the most commercially successful is Encounters, which sold more than 30,000 copies. This is a modest achievement in comparison with the sales of Kruder and Dorfmeister and Tosca’s records, but it should be seen in the context of the worldwide trend of declining sales of recorded music

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after 1999, and especially following the rise of YouTube and other platforms, where music can be downloaded or streamed for free. Some of Sofa Surfers’ records were self-produced; others were released by label klein, holding offices in Vienna and London. By and large, the collaboration of this band with klein was less advantageous than Tosca’s with !K7, the two breaking their connections amidst accusations of klein owing the band money. As with three other projects discussed so far, I shall mention here Richard Dorfmeister, who made some of their remixes, such as ‘Sofa Rockers’, included on The K&D Sessions. This version has remained the most popular track of Sofa Surfers, getting almost 2 million hits on Spotify. In contrast to the bulk of artists included in this book, there is a number of music videos in Sofa Surfers’ portfolio. They are produced by Timo Novotny, filmographer, videographer and photographer who is also responsible for the visual side of the band’s performances, as well as designing the covers of their records. Sofa Surfers’ Markus Kienzl and Wolfgang Frisch also provided the soundtrack to the most ambitious of Novotny’s productions to date, Life in Loops (2006), which is a remix of the famous film Megacities (1998) by Austrian documentarist Michael Glawogger. The role of the music in this production was recognised by Julia Binter, who observed that the film offered an ‘audiovisual translation of a complete absorption of the human being into the industrial machinery’ (Binter 2013: 190), which, as I argue in due course, is also a constant thread of Sofa Surfers’ productions. Till 2014 the band recorded and played in its original line-up, when Schloegl left. In 2015 Sofa Surfers released its first album without him, Scrambles, Anthems and Odysseys.

Figure 6.1 Sofa Surfers in 2005 Photo: Udo Titz

Figure 6.2 Sofa Surfers in 2009 Photo: Ingo Pertramer

Figure 6.3 Sofa Surfers in 2012 Photo: Bernd Preiml

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Sofa Surfers has not exhausted all the creative energy of its members, which is a factor in the band’s longevity. They were engaged in projects with other artists, writing music for film and theatre and producing music for other bands. Recently, activity of this type has occupied them more than the ‘regular life’ of rockers. This can be explained by the Surfers achieving maturity, with its members now being in their forties and having families, and the greater financial stability such work ensures. Moreover, apart from working in Sofa Surfers, members of the band have their own projects. Schloegl, who was living in Los Angeles from 1998 to 2003, released solo work under the alias I-Wolf during this period, with the album I-Wolf Presents Soul Strata (2003) being his greatest commercial success. Obeya, who is also a dancer and choreographer, has worked with dancing and theatre companies in Germany and Ireland and is a member of another music project, Indus Tree. Kienzl has released solo material since his first EP Tilt (1999) and produces work of various Austrian pop and rock singers, including Richard Dorfmeister. For Tosca he remixed ‘Honey’ (a track from Suzuki LP) under the title ‘Honey – Markus Kienzl Dub’, in 2000. In 2001, together with Dorfmeister, he remixed ‘The Stopper’ for Jamaican musician Cutty Ranks. Subsequently the track was sampled by Drake and received a Grammy Nomination in 2016. Frisch’s first solo release in 2001 under the moniker Humbucker is a permanent part of Sofa Surfers live set. He keeps releasing solo works and contributes to productions of a variety of artists, including Conchita Wurst (presented in Chapter 1).

Sofa Surfers’ style While using electronic instruments is at the core of the identity of the bands discussed so far, this is less the case with Sofa Surfers. The members use electronic instruments in the same way they use traditional instruments, as they themselves admit (quoted in Schokarth 2015). This is one reason that this band can be classified as post-rock, according to Simon Reynolds’s definition: Post-rock mean bands that use guitars but in nonrock ways, as timbre and texture rather than riff and powerchord. It also means bands that augment rock’s basic guitar-bass-drums lineup with digital technology such as samplers and sequencers, or tamper with the trad rock lineup but prefer antiquated analog synth and nonrock instrumentation. (Reynolds 2004b: 358) Sofa Surfers also fit the post-rock formula because of its abandoning of the verse-chorus-verse structure in favour of the soundscape and its ideology. Again, to quote Reynolds, [p]ost-rock abandons the notion of rebellion as we know and love it, in favor of less spectacular strategies of subversion – ones closer to psychic landscapes of exile and utopia constructed in dub reggae, HipHop, and rave. At the heart of rock’n’roll stands the body of the white teenage boy, middle

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Sofa Surfers finger erect and a sneer playing across his lips. At the center of post-rock floats a phantasmatic un-body, androgynous and racially indeterminate: halfghost, half machine. (ibid.: 359)

Among the precursors of post-rock Reynolds mentions German cosmic rock bands, such as Can, Faust, Neu! As if to confirm the link between Sofa Surfers and post-rock, Schloegl listed Neu! as one of the main sources of inspiration for the band’s music. However, although Sofa Surfers began its existence as a postrock band, it later leaned towards the traditional style of pop-rock music based on three- to five-minute-long tracks. Its attitude to sampling is also different than most electronic bands, including Tosca, discussed in the previous chapter. While Tosca samples in an ostentatious, postmodern way, to underscore the artificial character of its music, Sofa Surfers do it discreetly, ensuring that the material it reuses comes across as an organic part of its tracks. This is because the principal referent of the reality, conveyed through its music, is political and social reality, not art. Sofa Surfers also use extensively human voice in its records, especially in the second part of its career, and it is impossible to mistake human voice on its records for the sounds produced by electronic instruments. Moreover, it does not sound like ‘recycled’ material but addresses us in the present tense, in a way which is typical for rock bands, and it always tells a human story rather than offering us an abstract work, devoid of discursive content. This is essentially the same (meta)story of being lost in the world, escaping, being caught and trying to run away again. The position adopted by the protagonist of Surfers’ songs is that of a stranger, the excluded, the alienated, the ‘other’. Asked what is the main topic of their lyrics, they said, ‘Emotional alienation of man in a fully commercialized world’ (Interview with Sofa Surfers 2012). His exclusion has two dimensions: political and technological. Sofa Surfers evoke the experience of a black man, or even a black slave, exploited, haunted and mocked by a white man. This experience on a literal level belongs to the past, as black slaves regained personal freedom a long time ago. However, at the same time it belongs to the present due to affecting the identity and status of their descendants and a large proportion of black people living in a diaspora. Using Marianne Hirsch’s famous term ‘postmemory’ (1997), the Surfers sing about the oppression of slaves as an aspect of the constellation, introduced by post-memory of black people. In this context we can also refer to the concept of constellation, introduced by Walter Benjamin (Benjamin 1969: 262). As Michael Rothberg explains, the ‘constellation is a sort of montage in which diverse elements are brought together through the act of writing . . . The constellation is the name for the in-between space that ties together the present and the past’ (Rothberg 2000: 10). The second recurring motif on the Surfers’ records is technological change, which negatively affects our identity and relations with fellow human beings. We have to consult the media to find out who we are, as such knowledge does not come to us naturally anymore. Yet, we cannot trust the media because they serve

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those who have political power; they are a tool of surveillance and control. The more developed the technology, the greater the risk of humans becoming divorced from themselves and each other. The character projected by Sofa Surfers is thus suspended between a miserable past and dystopian future; he (as this is almost exclusively male) yearns for utopia which was promised to him in some old religious texts and in contemporary times by the ‘prophets of technology’ but ends up disenchanted. This take on the present, the past and the future encourages considering the work of Sofa Surfers also through the concept of Afrofuturism, which came into existence in the 1960s and gained momentum in the 1970s. This trend, epitomised by novels of Octavia Butler and the music of Herbie Hancock; Jimi Hendrix; Earth, Wind and Fire; Jeff Mills; Derrick May; and especially Parliament-Funkadelic and Sun Ra, was meant to reflect on the culture of African diaspora, especially the confusion and alienation of black males in the twentieth century in the US, who looked for their spiritual home both in the past, before black people became slaves and into the future when centuries-long inequalities might be overcome thanks to the development of technology. As Michael Veal observes, Afrofuturism uses ‘the imagery of space travel and other advanced technology to recast the turbulent black past in terms of the liberated, technological utopia’ (Veal 2007: 208). Dub in this context is seen as a particularly Afrofuturist style because its production involves removing original lyrics in the process of remixing and extensive use of reverberation and delay techniques (ibid.: 196–7), which acknowledges the existence of the past but as a past which is erased, lacking a coherent and well written narrative and which can be accessed only through the development of technology. For Veal, ‘dub’s heavy use of reverb is a sonic metaphor for the condition of diaspora’ (ibid.: 197). Afrofuturism is a means of linking science fiction with mythology or cosmology; in this sense it has connections with magical realism, flourishing in South America, except that magical realism was more about magic, Afrofuturism is more about technology. Both movements acknowledge the difficulty experienced by oppressed groups on their road to achieving equality, prosperity and justice in ‘this world’, hence their need to look at or invent different ontological planes and modes of existence where these goals can be realised. However, within Afrofuturism one can identify two trends: utopian and pessimistic, with the latter pointing to technology as a tool of oppression rather than liberation. Sofa Surfers’ members align themselves with the darker overtones of Afrofuturism. The future, proposed in their work, is closer to Blade Runner, Matrix and Cronenberg’s films than the reports from man’s first steps on the moon, which fuelled 1960s’ optimism. Technology in its songs is more often an instrument of subjugation and oppression than a means to reverse the hierarchies of power. Sofa Surfers’ affinity to reggae and dub add to its connection with Afrofuturism, as such musical styles perfectly express Afrofuturistic motifs of dislocation and acknowledging gaps in one’s history. Sofa Surfers’ affinity to Futurism might be explained by the influence of Mani Obeya, who is of Nigerian origin and, as I have mentioned, is a principal lyricist

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for the band. It is possible that the Surfers relocated their identities to be in tune with their leading vocalist. His blackness gives credibility to the stories of dislocation in a similar way it gives credibility to songs about slavery and poverty of such American black artists as Jay-Z or Kanye West, even though these artists are themselves millionaires several generations removed from the actual experience of slavery. The second answer to why Sofa Surfers adopted such posture is that Afrofuturism is the preferred answer to the perils of the current neoliberal condition, marked by inequalities and losing connection to what once constituted our home: physical dwellings, traditions and governments. Such a reading is in tune with the opinion that African slaves were not relics of the premodern past but a premonition of the modern and postmodern future. Mark Fisher in his essay on music and Afrofuturism, drawing on Slavoj Žižek and Kodwo Eshun, argues that Haiti slave plantations were . . . models of efficient capitalist production; the discipline to which slaves were submitted served as an example for the discipline to which wage-laborers were later submitted in capitalist metropolises . . . Forcibly deprived of their history, the black slaves encountered “postmodernity” three hundred years ago: the idea of slavery itself as an alien abduction means that we’ve been living in an alien-nation since the 18th century. (Fisher 2013: 48) Sofa Surfers’ posture can also be seen as a response to specific events from Austrian and global history, such as the rise of the far right in this country, associated predominantly with the Austrian Freedom Party of Jörg Haider, whose popularity in the late 1990s and early 2000s was to a large extent a result of its anti-immigration stance and the war in Iraq with its distinct anti-Muslim overtones. The members of the band overtly express their disapproval of this political development, even citing it as their main worry and source of discomfort (Kománková 2015). Against the ideology and politics whose purpose is to erect walls between the affluent, white and Christian world (the ‘first world’) in the name of protecting it, they offer an image of the world in which almost everybody feels like a refugee and advocate breaking down the walls in order to regain a sense of security. Sofa Surfers were not the first musicians to mix German sounds with those reflecting black experience. In this respect they follow in the footsteps of one of the first American rappers, the ‘godfather of hip-hop’, Afrika Bambaataa, who in his groundbreaking song, ‘Planet Rock’ (1982), built on the work of Kraftwerk and the previously discussed Kruder and Dorfmeister, but in these earlier examples the Austrian musician borrowed the aesthetics while leaving accompanying it politics behind. The artwork on Sofa Surfers’ records reflects well on the band’s Weltanschauung. Typically they present symbols of modern technology and imply the futuristic world of robots, space travel and networks but also on occasion of going deep, into the caves and deepness of human history. The objects presented on their

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covers give an impression of being looked at from a particular vantage point – a special angle or using vision-enhancing equipment. Usually we do not see the whole thing, only a fragment, as if to suggest that our vision is partial. The objects are often blurred, as if Sofa Surfers’ members wanted to distance themselves from the slick design dominating advertisements. People are absent on the covers, perhaps to underscore the fact that technology develops according to its own logic, disrespecting human needs. Booklets to some records show the members of the band, busying themselves with their work and ignoring the presence of the camera. There is also a certain logic to their videos. They fit well the idea of remix, used in relation to Novotny’s work, as they typically do not present material shot especially, but found footage, which is subsequently manipulated. They support the idea that electronic music (and the music of Sofa Surfers especially) is haunted; it does not show what happens in the present, but the ghost of the past haunting the present. The origin of the footage is unknown to me, but the impression is of faraway places (from the perspective of a European) – for example an overcrowded Asian metropolis, saturated with technology, or a black ghetto. Buildings often lose their natural shapes and become reduced to abstractions – this happens, for example, in the video for ‘Sofa Rockers’. Often people move in speeded-up motion, as in ‘Can I Get a Witness’, or the reality presented in the film is shown from the perspective of a traveller as in The Plan or ‘A Good Day to Die’. Given that the character gazes on what was shot in a different place and time, there is a sense of travelling not only and not so much through space but as traversing time as well.

Transit (1997) Sofa Surfers did not go through a period of developing its own sound or at least by the time the members recorded the first record; its sound seemed to be fully developed. Neither has the band substantially changed it over the twenty years of its existence. In a sense, everything we want to know about Sofa Surfers we can find on their first record, Transit. This also refers to the structure of its records, with the most catchy, dynamic and arguably best track opening the record and finishing on a subdued, instrumental melody. This is different from Tosca’s approach, which has the tendency to start its record slowly, often with a rather unremarkable piece and having the best tracks at the end or buried in the middle. The record, true to its title, gives a sense of moving energetically, as signalled by heavy drumming on many tracks, such as ‘The Plan’, ‘Internac Ional’, ‘Monoscopolis’ and ‘Daktari’, but never reaching its destination. Practically all tracks are repetitive and based on a strong, mechanical beat, as if somebody was trying to escape the inescapable. Sometimes we hear something like heavy boots (or boots with chains), running away or chasing the fugitive, as in ‘Lada Taiga’. The sense of futility is augmented by ominous titles, such as ‘Walking Ghosts’, ‘Dead Men Tell No Tales’, ‘No More Bonjour’ or even more playful, short ‘Lost Muchachos’. ‘Walking Ghosts’ brings to mind voodoo, the mixture of ancient

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African beliefs and Christianity, flourishing among black slaves in West Africa, and marked by fear of not being liberated from slavery even after one’s death: remaining forever a zombie: half-dead, half-alive. Several tracks are instrumental, and when we hear human voice, it appears only after a prolonged instrumental fragment, as in ‘Sofa Rockers’. However, when we hear it, it is very effective, as if it was a political intervention, the speech of a prophet, as in ‘Walking Ghosts’, on which the poet Victor Oshloke recites his ‘Anthem of a Season’. In ‘Sofa Rockers’ the effect of transmitting a prophecy is achieved by pairing scarce vocals with the reggae rhythm. The prophets evoked by these tracks conjure up an Afrofuturistic world, where technology collides with superstition or perhaps even leads to creating myths, because development of machinery awakens fear, especially in those with a modest real and cultural capital. The future, projected on Transit, is that of humans being subordinated to computers and robots rather than being their masters, as well as being stuck in an old-fashioned, noisy factory, with their merciless conveyer belts. Several tracks, such as ‘The Plan’ and ‘Fiaker’, sound like the soundtrack to a gangster film, perhaps pointing to crime as a way out of this inhuman(e) world. But crime is another blind alley, as suggested by these tracks being no less, but indeed more repetitive, than the remaining ones. The artwork for the cover reinforces these themes. Repetitive music has its equivalent in the repetition of a small number of visual motifs, located in an eightpart booklet, which unfolds like a paper snake. The motif used most extensively, including on the cover, is of a black and a yellow circle filled with a grey shape inside sticking out, bringing association with the wheel not only of a train engine but also of a traditional vinyl record placed on a record player. These black, yellow and grey circles appear in different sizes, often touching each other and producing the effect of a chain. The idea seems to be that old-style iron chains, used to prevent the escape of slaves from plantations, became replaced by lighter and more sophisticated chains used in factories, power stations and labs. These circles are connected with futuristic objects, such as robots or space stations, implying that the journey into outer space might bring no liberation but be a continuation of the factory bondage, in the same way death in voodoo beliefs brings the risk of a prolonging of slavery. If we accept such an interpretation, then the titular Transit might refer not only to the experience of an individual, but also to that of humanity, moving from the premodern to postmodern and futuristic stage yet being always stuck in the same social framework.

Cargo (1999) Cargo is heavy and amorphous; when we think about it, we imagine large containers carried by ships and lorries rather than their interiors. Unpacking cargo requires effort and skill, as heavy boxes might include more delicate material, which needs to be handled with care. The record under this title is organised according to the logic of handling cargo. It begins, appropriately, with ‘Container’, a slow piece bringing to mind a long journey when not much happens. Such a monotonous

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journey might cause boredom or put its participant in a trance, as can this piece also. Then there is ‘Beans and Rice’ and much later ‘Guns and Bombs and Knives’, implying that the band is smuggling in their ‘containers’ more versatile music than it seems initially. Indeed, each song brings some novelty. ‘Long Bone’ is closest to a classical reggae piece; ‘Yoyogi Dahara’, true to its oriental title, introduces Indian sounds; and ‘Latal in Tampere’ was described by a reviewer as a ‘shamanic groove’ (NME 2005). Nevertheless, the overall mood is heavy and menacing, bringing to mind industrial techno, as well as the work of Can and Mezzanine by Massive Attack, although in comparison with these works Cargo is darker and rougher, as if the band members were working in an old-fashioned factory, maybe as far back as the Industrial Revolution. As mentioned earlier, the music of Sofa Surfers looks back at least as much as it is looking forward. The design of the record underscores the point that it takes issue with industrial, rather than postindustrial, reality. The front cover shows fragments of containers, one with a sign ‘CARGO’ and another with ‘Sofa Surfers’, divided by layers of metal or wood. The back presents geometrical objects of different shapes and sizes yet neatly arranged, which can be read as an allusion to the layered character of Sofa Surfers’ music. As always, the covers are low in colour; on this occasion we get shades of blue and grey, reflecting on the cold character of the music. One wonders if cold hides here warmth; it does but in rather small quantities, even according to Sofa Surfers’ own standards. Inside we see workers building something, most likely from elements brought by cargo shipment. We see people whose bodies and faces are covered by their working gear: anonymous people in Fordist industries, to whom Cargo is perhaps addressed.

Encounters (2002) The meaning of encounter is close to meeting, but not every meeting is an encounter. Encounters tend to be casual, unexpected and sometimes violent. It is not an accident that the science-fiction classic, directed by Steven Spielberg, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) uses encounter in its title. Encounters in this case might point to the fact that this record, more than any other in the band’s career, is a product of collaboration with musicians who are not ‘regular’ members of the band. Almost each song is performed by a different artist, with the exception of DJ Collage, who is featured on three tracks. Among guest performers we find MC Santana, Dalek and Levi. Such guest appearances, which are at the centre of the PLO mode of music production, require bowing to somebody else’s style and render it difficult to maintain the post-rock style with its penchant to producing soundscapes. Consequently, Encounters is stylistically more eclectic than Sofa Surfers’ earlier records and consists of more traditionally constructed songs, marking the reverse road of the band from post-rock to rock, or perhaps post-rap to rap, given that the majority of pieces belong to hip-hop tradition. For Paul Cooper, who wrote a review of this record, the record is a sign of a crisis of creativity on the part of the band: ‘Sofa Surfers relegate themselves to providing moody soundscapes for their guests to faff around in’ (Cooper 2002).

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It begins with ‘Formula’, a hip-hop piece imbued with melancholia, similar to the work of white American rapper Sage Francis. Then we get ‘River Blues’, indeed a blues, which appears to be played from a scratched old record. Then there is an aggressive reggae, aptly titled ‘Babylon Tymes’, which is followed by a dub track, ‘Twisted Tongue’. The second half of the record is more in the usual style of Sofa Surfers, but here we also find a piece which is out of kilter, ‘Can I Get a Witness’: an R&B love song with simple lyrics. The eclectic music implies encounters of people belonging to different cultures. This theme is also suggested by titles of several songs, such as ‘Babylon Tymes’, ‘Twisted Tongue’ and ‘Elusive Scripts’. Language is here presented not as a connector, but a separator, as in the world of science fiction, where the inability to communicate leads to suspicion and aggression towards foreign civilisations. In ‘Twisted Tongue’ it is literalised by DJ Collage singing with ‘twisted tongue’, delivering lines which are almost impossible to decipher. One of the most interesting tracks on the record and fitting its ‘Babylon’ approach is an instrumental ‘Gamelan’, whose title refers to traditional Indonesian music. In the world, conjured up on this record, people do not trust each other, as suggested by the sentence ‘Show me your way of life and show me your identification card’, repeated many times in ‘21st Century Army’. Neither do they trust themselves because technology separated them from their original self by creating our digital doubles. The titular ‘encounter’ might thus also be a difficult encounter with oneself. Of all Sofa Surfers’ records, the design of Encounters is most difficult to decipher. The name of the band is written in a mysterious alphabet, with parts of the letters missing. The cover shows some blurry yellowish-brownish shapes on a brown background, maybe suggesting a state of flux or some matter drifting in the outer space. Such a cover might be seen as an invitation for the listener to overcome passivity and use imagination. In a less sympathetic reading, the design is a form of admitting that on this occasion the band lacked a clear idea of what their record is about: it remained amorphous and blurry.

Sofa Surfers (2005) The fourth album by Sofa Surfers has both a simple title and a simple cover, with the title Sofa Surfers put diagonally on a red surface. Such simplicity, even in the context of the Surfers’ overall ‘no frills’ approach to their record design, is meaningful, as it implies that by this point the band matured, and this record catches the essence of its productions. One can think here about Portishead, which also gave its middle album the title Portishead, not mentioning the White Album of The Beatles. What characterises Sofa Surfers’ mature style? Part of the answer is its predilection to a standard song with natural vocals, provided by Mani Obeya. Sometimes the voice is followed by an echo, as in ‘Softly’, but it happens less often than on the Surfers’ earlier songs. The record is also devoid of electronic effects, which gives it a warmer feel. The record again engages with the experience of a black man who, although living in the twenty-first century, carries on his skin the scars of many generations of his ancestors: their slavery, misery

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and despair. He knows that the worst is over, but this does not mean that he and his brothers achieved equality. The oppression continues, although its tools are subtler and the memory of the past injustice lingers, colouring everything that the protagonist does, rendering him disillusioned. This music gives the impression of somebody being followed, even haunted, reflecting the idea that Afrofuturistic art has a ‘hauntological’ dimension (Fisher 2013). The lyrics extensively draw on biblical motifs while pronouncing distrust in Christian ideals of love, solidarity and sacrifice. Three songs which deal with the black experience most directly are ‘Notes of a Prodigal’, ‘Strings’ and ‘Believer’. In ‘Notes of a Prodigal’ the experience of a black slave is conflated not only with that of a black man living in contemporary times but also, more specifically, with that of a black musician. While art and music especially are often romanticised as a means of ensuring transcendence and reaching a better world, this is not the case here. Moreover, the song implies an Orientalist discourse in which a black man is displayed as a spectacle to be consumed by the white audience, seeing him as a kind of monkey doing funny moves: Watch him dancing Watch him singing Watch him shaking his ass on the deck Watch as his smile is slowly widening And there’s a rope around his neck The question arises whether the performer, in this case personified by Mani Obeya, is not himself complicit with such a discourse. Most likely the singer would say ‘no’, pointing to irony permeating this song. ‘Strings’ contains such lines: An eye for an eye Soon everybody’s blind I’m quaking from the demons I’m gonna find My back is breaking From the things left behind And the dead shall walk And the truthsayers talk Humming in our heads As peter pays paul It’s a rich man’s war But a poor man’s blood ‘Believer’, on the other hand, mocks the way black slaves were encouraged to deal with their misery – by the act of faith (in God or better future). It is about reluctance to give in to faith, treated as a form of anaesthetic: Monopolise me Magnetise me

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Sofa Surfers Take me for the fool for you that I am Idolise me Philosophise me Change me from the innocent to the wisest of men Make me a believer

As Mani Obeya is the only black member of the band, it raises the question on whose behalf he is singing. The clue to the answer is provided by Reynolds in his discussion of post-rock: the body at the centre of Sofa Surfers is racially indeterminate and ghostly. This is reflected in the way the musicians play with the words black and white. An example is ‘White Noise’, opening the record. White noise is a technical term, referring to a random signal having equal intensity at different frequencies or just to any signal that has a similar hissing sound. Metaphorically, it can be interpreted as a sound emitted by white pursuers following black fugitives or any effect their actions have on their victims. At the same time, the black experience gets universal dimensions thanks to the lyrics, which shun from evoking the issue of race. Upside twisted Getting long Wanna get it right but get it wrong Act like you knew it all along Signs that you followed Begged, stole or borrowed Won’t make a difference when you’re gone The song might concern somebody living today, but being confused, perhaps by the multitude of information attacking him from everywhere, not unlike a postmodern ‘schizophrenic’, as described by Fredric Jameson (Jameson 1985: 118–23). In the most universal sense, the record can be interpreted as the confession of somebody who wants to change his life but cannot do so precisely because the things which make him want to escape are also those which keep him in his place, immobilise him. Yet, the escape continues, as pronounces the title of the last track on the record: ‘Never Go Back’.

Blindside (2010) Blindside brings to mind loud hard rock or even industrial techno acts, rather than lighter reggae music, favoured by Sofa Surfers on its earlier records. On many tracks drums are emphasised, as if the musicians wanted to use its sound to drown in it more sinister sounds, perhaps the sounds of war. The heaviness of music is matched by the lyrics, which offer a dystopian vision of the world, with images of people running away, although they know from the beginning that each attempt at escape will be unsuccessful. It is a dark world, plagued by acid rain and a lack of natural light. These lyrics are also delivered in a ‘heavy’ way. Rather than full

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sentences, we hear single words, usually nouns, dropping on our ears like stones or bombs. The lyrics of ‘Heavy Water’, a piece which is most reminiscent of hard rock classics, contain only such ‘bomb-like phrases’: ‘my earth, my house, my sun, my skills, my skin, my sweatshop, my trees, my tricks . . .’. Another example is ‘Tired Nation’ with ‘all connected, once infected you are implicated’ and ‘conformer, superconsumer, liar, leader’. The overall idea from putting together words which have different meaning is that reality obliterates their difference. Leaders are liars, ‘governments swing left, right, left’, as pronounced in ‘Safe Zone’, social and political engagement leads to being incorporated into some sinister project. Although it is not spelt out, the world described on these tracks can be equated with neoliberalism and imperialism. These are not new motifs on Sofa Surfers’ records. What is new, however, is the consistency with which they are deployed. There is nothing here which can distract us from this dystopian landscape, like friendship or love. Sofa Surfers are aware that listeners might have such an expectation and quash it in a conspicuous way in a song titled ‘Sinus’: You and me We’re like natural enemies There’s no give there’s no dmz We’re like a mutual catastrophe Another difference between this and their earlier record is that previously Sofa Surfers tended to look simultaneously backwards and forward, to the past and to the future, while on Blindside they focus firmly on the present: the present of military conflicts and governments which betray their citizens. When Sofa Surfers worked on this record, the Iraq War was still in full swing, becoming a kind of byword for the neverending, neoliberal ‘war on terror’. Blindside draws on the imagery and vocabulary of the ‘war on terror’ with phrases such as ‘we’re dying on the vine, we’re deaf dumb and hooded’ and ‘elbow room and torture chambers’, in ‘Tired Nation’. Such a present can be derived from the television news, as well as from popular computer games. The conflation or transfer between the ‘reality’ of neoliberal wars and their recreation in the films or computer games, bringing to mind the theories of Paul Virilio (1989), is signalled by the title of the first track, ‘Playing the Game’, containing such lyrics as I’m in the real bloodrush now I’m transfixed I’m transfigured A trance in transit as I sit on the pyre And I sing bonfire melodies I’m in the real bloodrush now We are the rulers of emergency There are no winners only losers now This might be a confession of a soldier, fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq or of somebody sitting in front of an XBox, as both situations are conducive to losing

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oneself: to trance and transfiguration. The design of the record also well illustrates Virilio’s writings, in which the realm of war is linked to that of surveillance and spectacle. The image on the front cover looks like the pupil of an eye, the back like a gun target. Inside we see what looks like a window with iron bars or more exactly, on each page a different fragment of the window, perhaps reflecting on many perspectives offered on this record on the price some people have to pay for others to feel safe: imprisonment. The colours used on the cover – white, black, brown, yellowish – reinforce the association with contemporary prisons and detention centres for supposed terrorists. In the universe projected in Blindside things only go down, albeit slowly. There is no death, only tiredness and agony. This is the world of a ‘quiet catastrophe’, as put in ‘Safe Zone’, closing the record. Such a vision is not new; in this way the neoliberal system is frequently presented. It can even be argued that in Austria it was already proposed in the 1990s by Falco, in his techno song ‘Krise’. On this occasion, however, we have a record consisting of ten ‘dark’ songs. The danger of such a dark vision is that it leads to a dark tunnel from which there is no exit. Sofa Surfers managed to avoid such danger by a small margin thanks to the voice of Mani Obeya, whose warmth lightens this apocalyptic vision. It is the voice of a potential friend, not an angry prophet.

Superluminal (2012) Thematically and stylistically Superluminal has much in common with Sofa Surfers’ previous record, Blindside, as well as Sofa Surfers. It is a record made up of classically constructed songs, sung by Mani Obeya and engaged in the traditional motifs of Afrofuturism. Yet there are also differences. Musically Superluminal leans more towards soul and dub than techno. Echo is used effectively, especially on ‘Begin (The Shadow Line)’ and ‘Bound’. While Blindside was about misery and despair, caused by treacherous governments sending their own people to wars which have no winners, the main theme of Superluminal is a need for strength and hope. Like the light, which has to be ‘superluminal’, to break the thick walls of caves, one has to be extra-resilient when faced with adverse circumstances. The title of the record brings association with Sun Ra, the pioneer of Afrofuturism, whose very name was ‘superluminal’, with Ra being the Sun god in the Egyptian mythology. Doubt about the future informs practically all the songs. The protagonist of ‘Begin’ asks, ‘How I begin to turn the ship around? Life is a shadow, how will I begin?’ Yet, the fact that there is a question mark suggests that there are various possible answers, including an optimistic one: one will begin somehow, somewhere, trying to transcend the shadow and maybe find a light at the end of the tunnel. Phrases such as ‘start again’ and ‘I want a new life’ dominate the lyrics of this record. Other songs include complaints, such as ‘My head feels like it is gonna explode today’ in ‘Glitches, Crashes and Ashes’, and shy invitations to build alliances or at least communicate, such as in ‘Broken Together’ and ‘Word in a Matchbox’. Such mode of address renders the songs more intimate and engaging

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the listener than the tracks on Blindside, which come across as statements about the permanent near-apocalyptic status quo. Even the fact that on this record Mani Obeya is accompanied by another singer, Jonny Sass, points to the possibility of overcoming the state of solipsistic misery. Both singers have melancholic, fragile voices that balance the heavy beat. The theme of losing identity again features prominently on this record, even providing title to one of its best songs, ‘Valid Without a Photo’, which contains the lines I am a refugee without an identity My body does not feel like me Of all the records by Sofa Surfers this has the darkest cover, with black, dark grey and a small amount of light grey. The image is probably of the interior of a cave, with a diamond or other superluminal object shining inside, elusive yet tempting, like a Holy Grail, searched for by the believers. Inside the booklet we see the members of the band in this cave, once trapped and on another occasion trying to break free. The first and last pages of the booklet show a man, most likely Schloegl, being pushed through the wall and then appearing blurry – perhaps from the effort such a task entails. Or, alternatively, the blurry image might suggest a liminal (rather than luminal) status of Schloegl, who shortly after recording Superluminal left the band, acknowledging in this way that after ‘superluminal’ one has to search not for a stronger light but a different one altogether.

7

Patrick Pulsinger The happy techno kid

It’s not in the interest of futuristic music to become clinical. – Patrick Pulsinger

To be a successful electronic musician, one has to like playing with equipment. Almost all creators of ‘Vienna Sound’ considered in this book, are partial to the beauty of synthesisers and computers, but Patrick Pulsinger exceeds them in his love of machines. His road to electronic music was through buying discarded gear from no-longer-functioning studios, repairing it and finding out what can be done with it. Such interest is also reflected in his other activity: renovating old cars. Taking machinery apart and reassembling it is even inscribed in the ironic title of one of his records, Easy to Assemble. Hard to Take Apart. But, at the same time, he would not have received his renown and survived on the music scene till today, if not for the fact that he is much more than a technician and über nerd. Indeed, among the artists discussed in this book, he is probably the most versatile music worker, being a performer, producer of electronic and guitar music for other artists, curator of music events and educator. For ten years he was also the head of a record company.

Pulsinger’s career Pulsinger was born in 1970 in Weisselfels in East Germany and in 1980 moved with his mother and Austrian stepfather to rural Styria. From his teenage years he divided his time between Styria, which he found socially backward (with most mothers of children in his class being housewives), and Vienna, where he was making contacts in the then budding electronic scene. His independent life began relatively early as his parents spent much time abroad, with his stepfather working as a specialist in gas extraction. Pulsinger studied electronics in a ‘polytechnic’ (a continental term for a technical college or university) but did not finish his studies and for some time earned his living working as a hairdresser (which was also a job of Peter Kruder before his music career took off). During the time of his studies Pulsinger gained a basic knowledge of the ways pieces of machinery are put together, which grew with

Patrick Pulsinger 151 experience. He confessed in interviewers that he was always more interested in technology than the intricacies of modern composition and that he did not play any traditional instrument well enough to perform on stage. Working on the equipment led to exploring possibilities of more creative engagement with electronic instruments. In the early 1990s the future composer of Porno moved to New York for a year, where he made his living from DJing and producing music. At the time house, and then techno, was capturing a large audience in the US. This music enchanted Pulsinger thanks to its energy and simplicity, chiming with the simplicity of the new electronic technology, as he perceived it. In New York he became acquainted with a fellow German musician, DJ Hell (Helmut Josef Geier), with a similar passion for electronic music, who was later involved in setting up the label Disko B, which released Pulsinger’s work. Techno also was finding its fans in Vienna, and Pulsinger returned home in 1992 to become one of the main players on the local electronic scene, literally and metaphorically. The latter happened thanks to setting up a recording studio in Vienna and the label Cheap Records, in 1993, together with Erdem Tunakan, which became one of the most successful companies releasing electronic music in Vienna. It released work of artists such as Mika Vaino, Robert Hood, Christopher Just and Gerhard Potuznik, among others. The most successful records sold in the range of 20,000 copies, of which the majority was shipped abroad. In commercial terms, Cheap Records was slightly more successful than Mego, with whom it was once housed in the same building. Records coming from Cheap Records, as its very name suggests, were meant to be cheaply produced, in the proverbial bedroom studios. The concept behind Cheap was to create a platform for new talent from Austria, to allow for self-expression and exchange of ideas without waiting for them being discovered by a talent scout from a large record firm and given a six-digit advance, because, as Pulsinger claims, this would never have happened and was not even desirable. International recognition, by Pulsinger’s own account, came as a surprise to the young producers. The firm operated on a do-ityourself principle, with most jobs shared between the owners of the label. There was, however, a degree of specialisation, with Pulsinger being more engaged in the production of music and Tunakan representing the label externally and taking responsibility for the business side. It was Tunakan who set up the Cheap Record shop in the Museumquartier in Vienna and was in charge of the label’s accounts. Design of some of the records was done by Andy Orel, at the time half of the duo Sin, which gave them a warm feel of handmade work. As with the majority of work released in the 1990s, Cheap Records invested little in marketing its products. This is reflected, among other things, in the scarcity of videos, as discussed in Chapter 2 or any advertising campaigns in the press. As a result, there is a sense that Cheap Records produced music rather than stars. The concept of a ‘star’ appears to be alien to Pulsinger even now. The artist sees it as archaic (evoking Falco’s times) and undermining the independence and playfulness, which informed the operations of Cheap Records. Cheap Records lasted ten years, finishing with a double CD, Ten Years of Cheap Records, documenting its greatest successes, with artists such as Robert Hood, Christopher Just and

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Gerhard Potuznik. In 2003 Pulsinger left the business, effectively marking the end of the label. This reflected his realisation that changes in technology would soon make the firm unprofitable and that he desired to move on to new pastures. Since then, Pulsinger and Tunakan have been working separately. During his time in Cheap Records Pulsinger produced a number of records under his own name, but most of them were not released by Cheap Records but by Disko B, a company based in Munich. In this respect Pulsinger’s activities resemble those of Kruder and Dorfmeister, who on G-Stone released records of their friends but turned to firms based in Germany to take care of their music. His discography is also enriched by aliases, including Sluts ‘n’ Strings, Restaurant Tracks, and Showroom Recording. Pulsinger also made remixes for other artists, including fellow musicians from Vienna, such as Kruder and Dorfmeister, as well as Pet Shop Boys, Abe Duque and Grace Jones. Since 2004 Pulsinger’s main endeavour has been managing Feedback Studio in Vienna, where he produces his own music and that of other artists, such as Elektro Guzzi, one of the most successful electronic projects to come out of Vienna in the new millennium. In a sense, Feedback Studio is a continuation of Cheap Records, except that it includes less responsibility for selling music and all the hassle related to it. Since the beginning of the 2010s Pulsinger has collaborated with the label col legno, which specialises in contemporary and experimental music yet one with appeal to a wider and hippier audience than the average (projected) listener of classical music. Both the name, meaning ‘with the wood’, which serves as a metaphor for expanding the methods of playing, and the design of the label are very different from that of Cheap and Disko B – ascetic and elegant rather than aggressive and quirky. A record of col legno shows a simple square in different colours for different records with the title of the record and the name of the artist at the top. With con legno Pulsinger released his own records as well as curated Austrian Heartbeats, a record showcasing the new talent from Austria, such as Fijuka and Wandl. Pulsinger is also part of the team ‘La Boum de Luxe’ on the Austrian radio station FM4, where he hosted the series FM4 Soundpark, dedicated to upcoming Austrian musicians. This is one of the most prominent series on Austrian radio featuring local talent. In common with Dorfmeister and Fennesz, Pulsinger is an instinctive, yet promiscuous collaborator, who in order to flourish has to use other people’s talent and helps others to fulfil their potential. The list of his collaborators is very long and includes Gerhard Potuznik, Christian Fennesz, Sam Irl and, of course, Tunakan. There is a certain logic to his collaborations. While he lends his hand to a variety of artists, largely those who lean towards pop-rock, for his own projects he invites those who broach the division between pop-rock and ‘higher’ genres, jazzmen and experimental musicians. Moreover, the closer we are to the present day, the more his productions approach the avant-garde pole of electronic music. His early excursion into the world of classical music was his adaptation of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake at the Volksoper Vienna in 1999 (together with Erdem Tunakan) which won the Austrian New Music Award. Another example is his

Patrick Pulsinger 153 participation in a record Re: Haydn, released by Universal Music in Austria in 2009. In due course, as I demonstrate later in this chapter, his involvement in reworking of classical music (or, more precisely, classical experimental music) deepened. Most likely his work in this area, rather than his early successes as a techno producer, brought him a coveted Preis der Stadt Wien für Musik (Music Award of the City of Vienna), in 2014, whose earlier recipients were such composers as Josef Matthias Hauer and György Ligeti. Nevertheless, he is the only pop-rock musician who has ever been honoured in this way.

From ordinary to intelligent techno Pulsinger describes his early work as ‘techno’, without adding any adjective to it, and pronounces his allegiance to its Detroit and German pioneers. Kraftwerk is a band Pulsinger mentioned on various occasions, including during our meetings. What is techno? It is widely agreed that the predecessor of techno was house, the Chicago-produced dance music, which came into existence in the late 1970s and early 1980s ‘in a space created by the exclusion of certain identities in a racist and homophobic American society’ (Rietveld 1998a: 107). According to Sarah Thornton, its symbolic birth was 1988, when Virgin Records released a compilation Techno: The Dance Sound of Detroit. Prior to its release there were discussions about what to call the music of the three black Detroit-based DJs whose tracks were featured on the album: The term ‘house’ was then strongly identified with Chicago and was in dangerously ubiquitous use in the UK. They decided on the name ‘techno’ because it gave the music a distinct musical identity and made it appear as something substantially new. Crucially, the press release validated the music by emphasising its roots in subcultural Detroit . . . Despite the fact that the music was not on the playlist of a single Detroit radio station, nor a regular track in any but a few mostly gay black clubs, the British press hailed ‘techno’ as the sound of the city . . . . The term ‘techno’ was later appropriated to describe a slightly different descendant of Chicago house. When ‘acid house’ became unserviceable because of tabloid defamation and general overexposure, the clubs, record companies and media went through a series of nominal shifts (about twenty different adjectives came to modify the word ‘house’) until they finally settled on ‘techno’. The term had at least two advantages: it was free from the overt drug references of acid house and it sounded like what it described – a high-tech predominantly instrumental music. (Thornton 1995: 75) For Thornton, the trajectory of techno exemplifies the road of a music that begins as ‘black’ and ends as ‘white’ (ibid.: 74). Techno is also frequently seen (although not by Thornton) as music which not only came from a particular place but also captured the spirit of this place: Detroit during the period of a brutal shift

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from Fordism to post-Fordism before becoming global and placeless. Deborah Che asserts, Techno artists drew inspiration from Detroit’s mechanized sounds and environment, its past industrial glories, post-industrial problems and future possibilities, which were tied to technological improvements. Through postFordist flexible production methods made possible by the falling cost of Japanese electronics and utilization of music industry infrastructure from the Motown past, Detroit’s techno innovators created ‘machine soul’ music. (Che 2009: 261) The influential producer Robert Hood (who released some of his work on Cheap Records) adds, Back in ’92, ’93, I sort of crafted this sound I liked to call ‘the grey area.’ What that is is the atmosphere in Detroit from the factories that emit this smoky and grey climate, this atmosphere. It’s just like ash and dirt from the sewers that just come up from the car emissions and it creates a grey haze over the city. That inspired me, and I kind of piggybacked off of what my contemporaries had created and rode along with that and interpreted my own Detroit sound from that. (quoted in Stoppani de Berrié 2015: 106–7) Techno, more than other genres of electronic music, is linked to minimalism, a ‘style distinguished by [the] severity of means, clarity of form, and simplicity of structure and texture’ (Strickland 1993: 4). Some authors point to the inspiration the techno musicians took from ‘high-brow’ minimalists, such as the Orb borrowing from Steve Reich (Scott 2005: 124). More often, however, there was parallelism, resulting from the fact that both types of musicians tried to strip the music to its basics (Stoppani de Berrié 2015), even if for different reasons. In the case of the avant-garde minimalists this was to offer an alternative to the sensory bombardment characteristic of industrial period (Strickland 1993: 10); in the case of techno it was to preserve the industrial sound which was to disappear (at least in the West) in the postindustrial era. House and techno led to a specific culture, marked by large parties (raves), in which people danced for long hours and sometimes even the whole weekend, often using Ecstasy, which can be described as a ‘performance-enhancing drug’. A large part of the literature of house and techno concerns the role of Ecstasy in the development of acid and techno cultures (for example Redhead 1993b; Melechi 1993; Richard and Kruger 1998: 163; Reynolds 1998). The key point is that Ecstasy is a recreational drug; admittedly, it does not affect its consumers in the same way heroin does. For a typical Ecstasy user of the 1990s life was clearly divided into a week, where he or she diligently worked in the office, and the weekend, used to release the tension of work, in repetitive movements, facilitated

Patrick Pulsinger 155 by repetitive, lyric-free music. Techno culture was thus essentially conformist; it did not rebel against the political status quo, as was the case of, for example, punk, but instead created conditions of accepting it, by providing a safety valve or even training one’s body for the extra effort of a demanding job (Richard and Kruger 1998: 163). A comparison can be made between techno culture and earlier disco culture, as represented in Saturday Night Fever (1977) by John Badham, whose protagonist escapes from his mundane existence into a disco. The peak of techno’s popularity was in the early 1990s. Its unofficial European capital became first London, then Berlin. In the Berlin of 1990, techno had similar connotations to those pertaining to Detroit. This was because de-industrialisation in East Germany was no less rapid and dramatic than in the US. Moreover, in this country it was read not only as a result of a ‘natural’ shift from Fordism to post-Fordism but also as a testimony to political change – reunification of East and West Berlin and Germany. Berlin lent itself to techno raves because there were plenty of unoccupied, often derelict spaces, where such parties could be organised (see Chapter 2). One of the most important became Tresor, set up by West German Dimitri Hegemann. There was also plenty of unoccupied living space in East Berlin, where squatters from West Berlin and West Germany could move. As Hegemann and other ‘veterans’ of this period reminisce, at the time they could work undisturbed by police or authorities; it was thus a perfect time to create a scene. The rise of Berlin techno is usually presented as a means to heal the divisions between East and West Berlin, East and West Germany and even Eastern and Western Europe at large; it was a force for unification. The largest event on the techno calendar, the yearly ‘Love Parade’ (Loveparade) Festival, attracting millions of visitors, presented itself as a festival of peace (Richard and Kruger 1998: 171). Peace, of course, has universally positive connotations. One who is ‘for peace’ is seen as tolerant and against ‘war’. But being ‘for peace’ might also be read as being ‘politically castrated’ and accepting of the status quo whatever the circumstances. Such connotation also fits a model raver, who uses the party to release ‘steam’ or ‘poison’, to be a placid and disciplined worker for the rest of the week. The development of Berlin techno can also be regarded as another manifestation of Western hegemony, although more benign than sacking East German government officials or academics to put in their place those from West Germany not tainted by the allegedly dangerous virus of MarxismLeninism. As time passed, German techno moved to a new stage, in which the derelict spaces became privatised and gentrified. In the documentary film Berlin the City of Techno/Electronic Music we can hear veterans of this movement, including Hegemann, complaining that the techno scene became colonised by ‘cheap tourism’ and bouncers admitting that they have to carefully select people coming to clubs to prevent too many ‘uniformed’ guests or ‘tourists’ polluting the exquisite atmosphere of the clubs. Vienna also went through a techno phase, but not on such a scale as Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It never had so many spaces for raves, and they did not have such political connotations as those in Berlin. Indeed, even in Austria Vienna

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failed to become a rave capital. In an article published in 1993, Hans Kulisch remarks, The biggest raves in Austria take place in Salzburg. Apparently due to the geographical closeness to Italy and Munich (with very restrictive closing time policy) 2000 enthusiastic ravers can be gathered together without any problems. A similar situation is observed in Linz. Strangely enough, Vienna is still far away from reaching these numbers. (Kulisch 1993) Ecstasy also did not take root in Vienna to such an extent as in London, Manchester or Berlin, and, unlike in England, there was no mythology developed around this drug. By and large, Vienna techno was more about music and less about creating a united Europe, fighting for peace or escaping the corporatist treadmill. This also means that, although the techno scene in Austria declined over the years, it never gained the snobbish aura resulting from a division between its insiders and outsiders, locals and tourists. Its outlook was cosmopolitan from the start, partly because it relied on incomers to fill the available spaces. In the UK, the rave subculture declined in the second half of the 1990s, and when specific music culture deteriorates, the music itself often becomes more sophisticated. Simon Reynolds, quoting Steve Beckett, the head of the celebrated Warp label, presents this situation in such terms: By early 1992 there was a demand among worn-out veteran ravers for music to accompany and enhance the comedown phase after clubbing’n’raving . . . If you’re coming down off [drugs], you can get really lost in your own thoughts and concentrate on music, pay more attention to detail . . . From our point of view, it also felt like a lot of the white-label dance music had gotten really throwaway. It felt like somebody should start paying attention to the production and the artwork – the whole way the music was presented. (Beckett, quoted in Reynolds 1998: 183) Artificial Intelligence, a compilation released by Warp in 1992, is one of the first records which captured the new attitude to techno, as music for contemplation rather than for dancing. Its cover presents an android sleeping in an armchair, with Kraftwerk and Pink Floyd albums at the side. The image suggests that this music is for listening, in the same way the records of Kraftwerk and Pink Floyd are. The term artificial intelligence points to two ideas. First, it suggests that computers can be as intelligent as people, therefore might be given ‘free reign’ in composing music. The second, perhaps more important, connotation on which Reynolds ponders, is that intelligent techno demands an ‘intelligent audience’, older than the average clubgoer and familiar with techno traditions. The insistence for ‘intelligence’ and ‘knowledge’ is also a typical attitude of the veterans of a specific genre towards the newcomers.

Patrick Pulsinger 157 Intelligent techno flourished not only in England but also in Germany, Belgium and Holland. In these countries Tresor (Berlin), Mille Plateaux (Frankfurt), R&S Records (Ghent) and 100% Pure (Amsterdam) were most identified with this music. Reynolds also mentions Pulsinger as belonging to ‘post-rave experimental fringe’ and characterises his style, somewhat strangely, as ‘abstract hip-hop’ (Reynolds 2013: 478). The proponents of intelligent techno advocated a return to the pure, minimal sound of Detroit and underscored the artistic and personal connections between European and American techno musicians. To this effect, in 1993, Tresor Records released the compilation album Tresor II: Berlin & Detroit – A Techno Alliance, a testament to the influence of the Detroit sound on the German techno scene and a celebration of a ‘mutual admiration pact’ between the two cities. As the mid-1990s approached, Berlin also became a haven for Detroit producers, such as Jeff Mills and Blake Baxter. By early to mid-2000s the fashion for techno in all its forms had largely passed. In 2008, Manchester-based music critic, Tom Naylor, published in The Guardian an article titled ‘The Strange, Lingering Death of Minimal Techno’. As if it was not clear enough from its title, the author insists that minimal techno is ‘boring Europe’s dancefloors to death. But, if minimal is over, what’s next?’ asks the author and replies, Well, more of the same. Only different. Subtle shifts, suitably enough. Logically, this should be boom time for maximal dance music, a la Crookers and Hervé. And it might be, in Britain. But, the German scene and media . . . isn’t prey to the same vicious swings, the same boom-bust, hype-kill cycles. “Evolution not revolution” is Germany’s style and, with Berlin unlikely to cede its position as electronic music’s global centre, that is where the most exciting innovations are still going to come from. (Naylor 2008) Naylor, of course, looks here at the entire techno scene, rather than transformations in the style of individual artists. But even from his bird’s-eye perspective one can conjecture the behaviour of those who wanted to influence the pulse of techno music rather than react to it.

Pulsinger’s style Dan Sicko writes that ‘techno’s strongest characteristic is individualism. The music is produced predominantly by solo artists and a smattering of duos and trios. An antithesis to the ‘band dynamic of rock’n’roll, techno allows each artist to serve as his or her own producer, promoter and distributor (Sicko 1999: 11). This description also suits ‘young Pulsinger’. However, with the passage of time he became an ardent collaborator, inviting to his musical ‘house’ all kinds of musicians: jazzmen, rockers, and fellow producers of electronic sounds. From this perspective, he is probably the most ‘networked’ of all musicians covered in this book.

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As in the case with many artists discussed in this book, Pulsinger’s preferred route to creating original work is through playing with ‘found footage’, but his approach to it is different from Kruder and Dorfmeister’s or Fennesz’s. In one of his workshops or lectures in the framework of Red Bull Academy, he mentions that in the early part of his career he used samples, but instead of sampling a snippet of an old piece, he sampled everything, cutting it into small pieces. Then he added things to it, such as beat, bass, strings, and finally got rid of the sample. Fennesz might also bury the ‘found footage’ deep under his original work, but he will make sure to preserve it, as the hypotext would matter to him as a signifier of his interests and his place in a specific music tradition. For Pulsinger the art of assembling and taking apart is more important to what is assembled. Unlike Kruder and Dorfmeister, he is also not put off by the perfection of some old work, as his purpose is not to improve it but to play with it and place it in new decorations. This approach is reflected in his reluctance or difficulty to describe his taste in music. He seems to like more varied music than the others, but he is not a fan who feels an urge to pay tribute to his masters. Pulsinger, as I already indicated, came to music through technology and in his interviews underscores its significance for the development of music. An example is the development of MP3, which led to stopping using certain type of sounds, due to listeners not being able to recognise them. He concedes that this development cannot be stopped, hence no point to resist it. Yet, at the same time, old technology should not be discarded solely because it is old. If something is functional, or even if it is not, but has a good design and creates the right ambience, it should

Figure 7.1 Patrick Pulsinger in 2013 Photo: Lukas Gansterer

Patrick Pulsinger 159 be preserved and fused with the new technology. Pulsinger’s defence of old technology is also based on his conviction that it is less vulnerable to obsolescence. While broken mechanical and electric goods can be fixed by replacing a faulty part, faulty computers become trash, and this process cannot be reversed. Enchantment with simple, outmoded technology is reflected in the few videos produced to music released by Cheap Records. According to Pulsinger, its origin was his friend’s interest in Super 8 camera productions. He bought himself such a camera at a flea market. Subsequently, he also bought old films made using such equipment. Fragments of those were edited with new material, shot during the travels of Pulsinger and Tunakan, also on Super 8, with the music from Cheap, eventually becoming music videos. Pulsinger claimed that they did not have ambition nor did they want to be featured on MTV or VIVA, but eventually some of these videos were featured on special programmes devoted to techno and niche/ experimental music. An example is a video for ‘Dig This?’ from the record Carrera’ by Sluts’n’Strings & 909 (which was a joint project with Tunakan). The video looks like an amateur film about skateboarders and cyclists doing their acrobatics in a car park or scrapyard to a techno track. The rhythm of the music is reflected in

Figure 7.2 Patrick Pulsinger in 2017 Photo: Lukas Gansterer

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a montage of cars, mostly BMWs, suggesting a fit between digital technology and the mechanism of classic cars. The images are blurred and pixilated, reflecting the jagged, digitally ‘striated’ quality of the music. Although Pulsinger and Tunakan feature in the video, in accordance with the ‘no stars’ ethos of early techno, they are shown as just young men enjoying hanging out. There are some palm trees, but apart from them the place where the film is set and shot is not foregrounded. Pulsinger’s artistic trajectory can be deduced from the titles of the albums signed in his name. The first was Porno (1994). This title invites a plethora of connotations, to which I will refer in due course, but one of them suggests stripping music to its basics – to naked sound. In 2002, Pulsinger produced Easy to Assemble. Hard to Take Apart, which implies that by this point the musician had moved from the stage of exploring the dimensions of the sound to their assemblages. On this occasion the title still suggests playing with technology rather than creating a mood or producing a message. Impassive Skies from 2010 points to another shift – towards creating a ‘cosmic sound’, which might be read as a kind of reflection of the influence from krautrock. The trajectory, on which the three records stand as milestones, can be compared to a human development, from a child who plays with toys, to a mature person who tries to communicate with the universe. However, in reality, Pulsinger’s artistic journey is less linear, because between these records he was engaged in other projects. Finally, his post-2010 work, Besides Feldman (2011), In Four Parts (2013) and Take Death! (2014), testifies to another shift: towards researching and updating music produced by the pioneers of experimental electronic music. Together with some other musicians considered in this book, such as Rupert Huber and Christian Fennesz, Pulsinger can be considered as both a pop-rock and experimental/serious musician. However, unlike them, he does not question the boundary between popular and experimental music but, rather, proves to be capable of and comfortable in working for different categories of listeners.

Porno (1994) Pulsinger’s recording career started shortly after the release of Artificial Intelligence and Tresor’s compilation, in 1993, with the single ‘Oebles’, at the time when ‘intelligent techno’ took root in the UK and continental Europe. His first LP, Porno, was released by Munich-based label Disko B (previously Disko Bombs), which was founded in 1991 by Peter Wacha. ‘Porno’ is regarded as the most ‘classic’ techno album made by a Viennese artist, an opinion which is confirmed by its re-release in 2004. The album was described as the soundtrack to a non-existent film (Intro 1995). Such an idea is conveyed by its title, artwork and, finally, music. Porno in the first instance refers to a pornographic film; the title was probably meant to add sparks to what is often regarded as a somewhat robotic and dull genre. The cover was designed by Andy Orel and shows the young Pulsinger with a gun pointing in the direction of the audience, against the background of scantily clad women, kissing each other. Such a pose, bringing to mind James Bond, suggests that the main point of

Patrick Pulsinger 161 reference of the record is classical popular culture, treated with a pinch of irony. Nostalgia for old pop culture is reinforced by the choice of small photos on the back cover, showing a classical sports car and semi-naked people, as if taken from an old porno or criminal film. As with practically all records discussed in this book, there is no reference to Vienna or Austria. The assemblage of the photos encourages us to create a narrative. The titles of the tracks, such as ‘Hesitate’, ‘Free Smack’ and ‘Reflections’, bring to mind different stages of an assignment undertaken by a gangster. Yet, in tension with the idea of having a soundtrack to a film, the record’s title betrays an ambition of stripping music to its haptic qualities, as in pornographic films, which are poor in narrative but rich in sensual content. This is indeed the case here. Not surprisingly, the record was compared to those created by techno minimalists from Detroit (Intro 1995). Strickland’s definition of musical minimalism, as a ‘style distinguished by severity of means, clarity of form, and simplicity of structure and texture’, pertains especially to ‘Risk’, ‘Hesitate’, ‘Care’ and ‘Free Smack’. The first track brings to mind a gangster frantically preparing for action, nervously accounting for more and more issues requiring his attention. ‘Hesitate’, contrary to its title, offers an image of him already in action, professionally and without rush executing his assignment. ‘Care’ covers the period when the main job has been done. The gangster has left the scene of the crime and travels to a safe location, perhaps being wounded and chased by the police or by the memory of his shooting. ‘Free Smack’, on the other hand, is about a drug addict, whose senses are impaired by substance abuse and who has problems with differentiating between stimuli; everything seems to be the same to him. ‘Free Smack’ evokes a gangster, who rewards himself with a drug after a stressful job, or just an ordinary worker, who goes to a nightclub after a week of slaving in a corporation. Each of these tracks are based on the same rule, pertaining to minimalist techno – a track begins with a simple ‘unit’, which is then repeated to the end of the piece, except for small modifications: adding a new instrument or changing texture. Against this pattern, two tracks stand out. One is ‘District’, which is more ambient than techno. If we want to continue to imagine a film for Pulsinger’s soundtrack, by this point, the gangster’s job is finished, and he is moving to a different place or even a different reality. Finally, the last track on Porno and my favourite, ‘Reflections’, is a downtempo piece with a jazzy feel and a sample of a dialogue from a gangster movie, whose character says, ‘You could step all over that shit and still get 120 a gram . . . 120 a gram . . . 120 a gram’. They can be a recollection of a retired hitman who realises that the life he strives for is not worth the risk attached to his job. One does need to be a gangster to reach a nirvana, ensured by drugs.

Dogmatic Sequences (2007) Pulsinger has continued producing techno tracks till the present day, and many of them were released on three EPs, under the title Dogmatic Sequences. They were also released by Disko B on the album Dogmatic Sequences: The Series 1994– 2006. The title given to these productions betrays stubbornness or a penchant for

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self-irony. ‘Sequences’ are the staple diet of techno fans. They do not enter the dance floor to be surprised by new melody or a change of rhythm every couple of seconds but to enjoy repetition, allowing the mind to switch off. Yet, dealing simultaneously with ‘sequences’ and ‘series’ might be too much even for them, and few music producers specialising in techno admit to being dogmatic. Of course, to be closed to other viewpoints, one has to have an unwavering faith in one’s own ideas. This feeling is transmitted in the tracks and design of the cover of Dogmatic Sequences. There are many small black-and-white photos of different parts of the electronic equipment, such as knobs, keys and cables, most likely the Roland TB-303. They blend into each other, alluding to the idea that the work produced by Pulsinger merits putting it on one record. Some of the photos are taken from a distance and are blurred. What is probably the shiny part of a synthesiser looks like a small window. The general feel is that of old, analogue equipment being put to use, underscoring Pulsinger’s love of old technology. The album begins with ‘Flashback’, announcing that it is as much about the future, as it is about the past. The styles on display are diverse, with some tracks sounding like ‘classical techno’, most important, ‘Construction Tools’, the bestknown track from this record. Its rhythm is so relentless that it is difficult to imagine people dancing to it. It feels more like a soundtrack to robots proving their ability to compete with humans or each other. On the other hand, there are also tracks which show Pulsinger turning to jazz and noise, foretelling his subsequent experiments. Such is the case with ‘City Lights (Pt. 1)’ with its buzzing, ‘dirty’ sound. Listening to this track I thought about the anaemic city lights in Eastern European countries under state socialism, which were flickering due to the permanent shortage of electricity. By contrast, ‘City Lights (Pt. 2)’ offers a cleaner, more organic sound, as if the city lights were shining brightly, perhaps pointing to the improvement brought by capitalism. In common with Porno, the whole record has a very urban feel, not only in the sense of appealing to urban listeners (as is always the case of techno) but in the sense of somebody being chased in a car, as in the 1970s vigilante films, such as Taxi Driver (1976) by Martin Scorsese. Although by this stage Pulsinger was adamant not only to use electronic instruments, but also makes us aware that everything is electronic on his records (with TB-303 dominating some tracks, such as ‘Babylon 17, 15’), the future on this record comes across as that imagined in the 1970s. The record conveys ‘nostalgia for the future’, rather than yearning for a future as we don’t know it yet. Listening to this album, one can better understand Pulsinger’s words: ‘When something dies, it is also rediscovered’. Dogmatic Sequences were compared to Sheet One by Pulsinger’s Canadian contemporary, Plastikman (Raggett) and rightly so, as the work of both musicians reveals a fascination with the artificial world. However, in due course Pulsinger turned his attention to the more natural world.

Impassive Skies (2010) Impassive Skies is a product of this shift. The record contains tracks produced with a number of musicians, each of whom represents a different genre from

Patrick Pulsinger 163 techno. This very choice points to Pulsinger’s wish to avoid the straitjacket of genre classification. The group of his collaborators is varied, but virtually all of them attempted to transcend the borders of a specific genre, such as rock or jazz. The first, dynamic piece, ‘Grey Gardens’, features Franz Hautzinger, one of the most renowned jazz musicians from Austria, regarded as a worthy successor of Franz Koglmann. Yet, in an interview for British music magazine The Wire Hautzinger presented himself as somebody who wanted to move away from (pure) jazz: ‘We wanted to play jazz rock, but with less jazz, to make the music free from jazz. It’s always coming at me from behind, so I have to push it away’ (quoted in Zlabinger 2013). Hautzinger is also known for his unorthodox way of playing the trumpet. As Thomas Zlabinger observes, on his album Gomberg, Hautzinger uses extended techniques like unpitched blowing, inhaling, making pops with his mouthpiece or clicking valves. In addition to ‘long moments of silence and hearing Hautzinger blow directly into the microphone, background noises like crickets, cars honking, police sirens, and other street noise are also heard’ (Zlabinger 2013). Penchant for transcending genre boundaries and extending the limits of instruments is also relevant to ‘late Pulsinger’. One can imagine that ‘Grey Gardens’ is a product of some of the techniques described by Zlabinger, but the result is not, as a ‘mainstream listener’ might fear, noise, but a melodic piece, which can be used for the morning gymnastics. It feels more rock than jazz or techno, although the use of the word grey brings to mind the smoky skies of Detroit, to which techno artists allegedly made reference in their works, as previously mentioned. On the other side of the spectrum, so to speak, are the tracks featuring Fennesz, including the eponymous ‘Impassive Skies’, the last track on the album, which invites meditation rather than action. ‘Future Back’ connects with the idea, espoused in Pulsinger’s earlier productions and interviews, that the future is in the past; we should not discard old things just for the sake of being progressive. Between them we find several techno pieces created with artists such as G Rizo and Teresa Rotschopf. The question arises whether it merits putting such an eclectic range of music on one record. A reviewer writing for Resident Advisor described it as a ‘collaborationheavy album that justifies download culture, encouraging listeners to take what they like and leave the rest’ (Hartner 2010). However, most likely the reason to record Impassive Skies was to showcase Pulsinger’s production skills to the new crop of listeners, including his prospective collaborators.

Experimental music As if aware of the criticism such an eclectic approach encourages, the subsequent three of Pulsinger’s records are marked by a high degree of consistency. They can even be described as concept albums, and the concept behind two of them is to rework compositions of contemporary classics: Morton Feldman, John Cage and Igor Stravinsky. Feldman and Cage are associated with using chance in music. It seems to be a strange choice for the practitioner of techno, a style which feels very methodical and robotic, but chance and order are, in fact,

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closely connected. Paul Griffiths in his old, but still very useful volume Modern Music observes, The electronic music and total serialism of the late forties and early fifties had come as a postwar recall to order, reaching its apogee in 1951, the year of Boulez’s Structures and Stockhausen’s Kreuzspiel. But 1951 also saw the entrance of chance as a powerful force in Cage’s music, in the Music of Changes and Imaginary Landscape no 4, and it was through acceptance of this force that new fields were to be opened to composers in Europe. . . . As Boulez realized, chance had never been abolished in the ramified organization of total serialism; rather the reverse. When so much was given to numerical manipulation the composer lost control of the details of his work. (Griffiths 1990: 171) Chance is also something which Pulsinger has embraced in his music, as reflected in his advice, given to adepts of electronic music: ‘play with the knobs and see what happens’ and ‘let the computer do what it wants’. Although the last statement can be interpreted as an expression of faith in artificial intelligence as being more systematic than the human mind, in my opinion it rather points to allowing an unpredictable element to enter the domain of music. There seem to be several reasons why Pulsinger embarked on a project of reworking the music of these classics. One of them is research, as signalled by using this term (Forschung), to describe his Feldman project. It is a way for an artist from one generation to learn about the ideas and methods of older artists. From this perspective Pulsinger can be regarded as a historian of music, as a historian does not merely collect and display fragments of the past to his or her contemporaries but arranges it in a work which appeals to a new audience. Another, albeit connected, reason is to find out how electronic instruments can update music produced for classical instruments. Finally, the idea is to present electronic music live, in a specific space and in a way that transforms such a space. Such an ambition accompanied Pulsinger some years before he embarked on re-imagining Feldman and Cage, as testified by David Toop. In his Haunted Weather Toop reminisces about meeting Pulsinger in 2000 in Salzburg, when the composer gave him his Easy to Assemble record and their subsequent correspondence, when he confessed to his plan to rework acoustic music electronically, feeding their acoustic sound through Pulsinger’s computer, where it could be shaped and transformed with audio software. The output mixes both acoustic and electronic signals, giving the listener a sense of encounter between two different worlds, one of physical room spaces, real-time and human interactions, the other of virtual space and digital processes. I e-mailed Patrick and he told me about his real ambition, which was to present this concept in concert. Ideally, the jazz ensemble would be on stage in a soundproof glass box. They would play but their sound wouldn’t travel beyond the confines of the enclosure. Pulsinger would be outside the

Patrick Pulsinger 165 box with his laptop, transforming the sounds in real time. He wanted to do it, he said, but there were technical problems. (Toop 2004: 19–20) Clearly, in 2010 these technical problems were overcome. By this time Pulsinger assembled a quartet for ‘Feld(man) Forschung’ for the 2010 Wien Modern festival in homage to Feldman (Deisl 2010). The four musicians, Rozemarie Heggen on double bass, Hilary Jeffrey on trombone, Pamelia Kurstin on Theremin and Pulsinger himself on synthesiser, delivered a performance in Casino Baumgarten in Vienna. As we can read in the record sleeve, the musicians actually did not play Feldman’s music, but ‘drew on his ideas and approaches for inspiration, creating their own acoustic space out of the properties of their instruments, the location and a rudimentary graphic score’ (Mayer 2011). We can also read that originally a castle/residential building, Casino Baumgarten is now home to a legendary recording hall and the Preiser Records Studio. The technology available in the studio has not changed since 1965; the original equipment has been preserved more or less in its original state. Following extensive renovation the hall is now again available for concerts and recordings, as one of the last remaining studios equipped with vintage tube technology worldwide. (ibid.: 32; see also Deisl 2010) In the light of Pulsinger’s enchantment with old technology, it is not difficult to guess that he had been drawn to this place. Indeed, in the context of Besides Feldman he said, The large recording room makes the studio unique. The location is very suitable for acoustic music, which is why the programme of Feldmanforschung comprises 60% acoustic and 40% electronic music. Almost all musicians use the possibility to work with the existing four-channel system. (quoted in Deisl 2010) When giving interviews in relation to the project Pulsinger frequently used the term Zwischenräumen, which can be translated as ‘spaces in between’. The title of one of the tracks is even ‘Being In-between’. Such a term can be taken literally, as a description of places and spaces located between more distinct places, such as corridors. However, on this occasion metaphorical meaning is more important, referring to boundaries between different technologies (analogue and digital), instruments (classical and electronic) and genres (jazz and noise). As I haven’t been a witness to the original performance, I cannot comment on how successful Pulsinger was in creating all these spaces in between in the original setting. However, I can say that the record is remarkable in its obliteration of the difference between electronic and acoustic sound, as well as sounds made by ‘proper’

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musical instruments and other, accidental sounds. If I had not first read which instruments were used in the recordings, I would not have guessed. The metaphorical in-between space between sounds is also filled with silence, which builds suspense. Hence, paradoxically, the record has something in common with Porno, as it feels like a film soundtrack. Again, no doubt this is an idea that Pulsinger wanted to plant in the minds of his listeners by naming one of the tracks ‘Figment Film’. The difference is that in the case of Porno it seemed to be a gangster film; in Besides Feldman, a thriller. That said, as Pulsinger himself admits, Besides Feldman is not for mass audience but for those who put the challenge of witnessing an experiment and dissonance over pleasure of recognition and melody. The next instalment of this series of exploration of earlier electronic music is In Four Parts, which is a product of Pulsinger’s collaboration with Christian Fennesz, who already played a prominent role on Impassive Skies. On this occasion, these two musicians performed together Cage’s String Quartet in Four Parts in Wiener Konzerthaus in 2012, this being, as in case of the work on Feldman, part of Wien Modern festival. The four parts in Cage’s original work from 1949–50 were meant to represent four seasons of the year. This theme reflects Cage’s aesthetic preoccupation at the time, resulting from his study of Indian philosophy of music, as well as the writings of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, the author of The Transformation of Nature in Art and The Dance of Siva. One specific idea taken by Cage is that art should imitate Nature in her manner of operation (Pritchett 1993: 36–7), which is cyclical. This idea is embodied in the quartet’s four-part structure, representing four seasons of the year, although the movement titles do not mention the seasons but, rather, the first three appear to be tempo indications (‘Quietly flowing along’, ‘Slowly rocking’, ‘Nearly stationary’), while the last movement is marked ‘Quodlibet’ (ibid.: 48). As with nature which affects what we do and how we feel at a particular time, the music reflects different moods, from tranquillity and sadness to exuberance. In common with Besides Feldman, the idea behind In Four Parts was not simply to play the old piece of the pioneer of electronic and minimalistic music in a new setting but to also rework it. However, on this occasion the hypertext was meant to be closer to the hypotext, as signalled by using part of the original title of Cage’s composition in Pulsinger and Fennesz’s production, as well as retaining its original, four-part structure. The change pertained to instruments and sound textures. Pulsinger and Fennesz first reduced the quartet to a duo, with Pulsinger’s analogue modular synthesiser standing in for the viola and cello and Fennesz’s electronically treated electric guitar replacing the two violins. In the booklet, inserted in the CD, we can read that the musicians took it apart and adapted it for two players, always bearing in mind the original instrumentation. Rhythmic structures and the play with silence, motifs and repetitions were treated like quotations having undergone a lengthy transmission process, and were then put together and made into an intriguingly contemporary model.

Patrick Pulsinger 167 Such words bring to mind the title of Pulsinger’s earlier record, Easy to Assemble. Hard to Take Apart, by pointing to the work of electronic musicians as working from pre-existing material. Fennesz’s guitar provides most of the harmonic/ melodic material, while Pulsinger’s synthesiser frames it within the context of colours running from unpitched chirps to resonant, bell-like tones to – in an oblique acknowledgement of the cello’s role as the quartet’s lowest voice – an occasional sub bass more felt than heard. Echoes of Cage’s harmonies occasionally arise, and like Cage’s harmonies these are configured as free-standing events populating a texture of progressively thinner density. Until the fourth and final section, which like Cage’s features thicker, more quickly moving sound (Dbarbiero 2015). Pulsinger and Fennesz’s version comes across as slower, allowing more time for contemplation of individual sounds and – to use a term applied to Pulsinger’s earlier record – in-between spaces. Unlike the reworking of classical works by electronic musicians from Vienna, as discussed in Chapter 2, on this occasion we do not get a sense of making classical music easier to access. If anything, in comparison with Cage’s String Quartet in Four Parts, In Four Parts is more difficult to access, although it grows on listener (at least this listener) on multiple listening. As one reviewer put it, ‘Cage’s String Quartet in Four Parts is a beautiful, sublime work. Pulsinger and Fennesz’s In Four Parts is certainly worthy of it’ (ibid.) The last instalment of Pulsinger’s work under the banner of ‘experimental music’ is his collaboration with a contemporary composer from Styria, Bernhard Gander, which led to a record titled Take Death! This record, on which Ensemble Modern from Frankfurt was engaged, was inspired by the work of American black metal band, Cannibal Corpse, and Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. The merging of such sources can be seen as eccentric, but in reality The Rite of Spring and black metal music contain similar tropes: violence, sacrifice, death and resurrection. In an interview given on the occasion of creating this work, Gander mentions these elements, as well as ‘high-brow’ films using violence, such as those by Oliver Stone and Quentin Tarantino (Terz 2015). Pulsinger’s contribution to this work was to make it sound electronic and, in this way, overcome the crudeness of black metal, a genre which admittedly did not develop much since the times of Judas Priest and is often accused of kitsch. This foray demonstrates that for Pulsinger there are no protected spheres in popular and classical music; all are open to electronic treatment, and he is keen to offer them his ‘electronic touch’.

8

Peter Rehberg, Christian Fennesz and the Label Mego Between Glitch and Bécs

Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating. – John Cage

A large proportion of artists considered in this study at some stage of their career veered towards ‘serious’ or experimental music. This also refers to Peter Rehberg and Christian Fennesz. However, they differ from those considered previously, because unlike them, they did not cross the boundary between the popular and academic now and then but made it their personal signature. Their music also challenges our concept of electronic music, as well as studio and stage and even music and non-music. To contextualise their work, it is worth locating it first against the concept of ‘noise music’ or rather ‘noise as music’.

Noise as music When considering the music of Rehberg and Fennesz, one encounters terms such as noise and glitch. Noise is the meta-term here, and it is the most problematic. Perhaps the most quoted book about music, written in the last half century, Jacques Attali’s Noise: The Political Economy of Music, has noise in its title and there are plenty of volumes about noise published in the last two decades or so (Kahn 1999; Kelly 2009; Hegarty 2007; Voegelin 2010; Goddard, Halligan and Spelman 2013). Attali’s book is hardly an exploration of noise as material for music, being rather a short history of music as a mirror of social change. Nevertheless, its importance in relation to noise music lies in putting a positive spin on noise as reflected in this fragment: Our science has always desired to monitor, measure, abstract, and castrate meaning, forgetting that life is full of noise and that death alone is silent: work noise, noise of man, and noise of beast. Noise bought, sold, or prohibited. Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise. (Attali 2014: 3)

Rehberg, Fennesz and the Label Mego 169 Although these words are ambiguous, they point to the development of humankind as a struggle to upgrade noise to a (respectable) music and culture at large. In a similar vein, Goddard, Halligan and Spelman in their introduction to the volume on noise and contemporary music observe, Contemporary histories of popular Western musics may be more usefully read as a series of debates what, sonically and experientially, actually constitutes music in the commonly understood way, and what then constitutes, or can be termed as, and typically dismissed as, non-music. (Goddard, Halligan and Spelman 2013: 1) In this context it is worth mentioning that Peter Rehberg, asked by me whether his work is political, replied, ‘Yes’, arguing that its political dimension consists of disrupting the accepted notions of what constitutes music. Many authors dealing with this topic point to the fact that noise is subjective and cultural. Paul Hegarty begins his Noise/Music: A History stating, ‘Noise is not an objective fact. It occurs in relation to perception – both direct (sensory) and according to presumptions made by an individual. These are going to vary according to historical, geographical and cultural locations’, and ‘noise is cultural and different groups of hearing machines will process sounds differently’ (Hegarty 2007: 3). Guy-Marc Hinant concurs: ‘Noise is essentially our perception of it’ (Hinant 2003: 43). Salomé Voegelin pronounces, along the same lines, that ‘noise is other people’s music: my neighbours’ collection blasting at full volume through the open balcony doors on a hot and sticky summer night’ (Voegelin 2010: 44). Noise has existed for as long as humankind, but as a problem for music it came into focus only in the twentieth century. Since then the crucial question is when noise can be treated as music. That such a problem appeared can be linked to several factors. One is a disappearance of certainty about many categories, previously regarded as stable, paradoxically resulting from development of science and technology. Henri Lefebrve states in relation to this problem: Around 1910 a certain space was shattered. It was the space of common sense, of knowledge, of social practice, of political power . . . Euclidean and perspectivist space have disappeared as systems of reference, along with other former ‘commonplaces’ such as the town, history, paternity, the tonal system in music, traditional morality and so forth. (quoted in Harvey 1991: 425) To build on this assertion we can say that up to the early twentieth century, the problem of music (as of art at large) was that of essence – music was meant to have specific intrinsic qualities to have this status bestowed on it. Since then it shifted towards its context – its relationship with environment. Music, it can be said, is what we want it to be, what we recognise as music. This can include what was previously discarded as noise, the aural equivalent of trash. Hence, it

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is worth referring to the concept of ‘trash aesthetics’, which originated in Walter Benjamin’s writings, especially his Arcade Project. Ben Highmore writes that ‘modernity produces the obsolences as part of the continual demand for the new’ (Highmore 2002: 61). The faster humanity develops, the more trash it produces and the greater the temptation to save some of it for posterity. There are several reasons why the 1910s are important for noise music. One is the work of the Second Viennese school of Schoenberg, Webern and Berg which proposed a break with ‘the traditional tripartite hegemony of harmony, melody and rhythm’ (Tham 2013: 259); the other is some new artistic and philosophical movements, such as Futurism, Dadaism and Surrealism, which – each in its own way – embarked on collecting and edifying the debris of human production and life. Of them the first is most important. For Futurists, the sounds emitted by car engines, factories and telephones provided an ongoing symphony. Kim Cascone notes that [t]he Italian Futurist painter Luigi Russolo was so inspired by a 1913 orchestral performance of a composition by Balilla Pratella that he wrote a manifesto, The Art of Noises, in the form of a letter to Pratella. His manifesto and subsequent experiments with intonarumori (noise intoners), which imitated urban industrial sounds, transmitted a viral message to future generations, resulting in Russolo’s current status as the ‘grandfather’ of contemporary ‘post-digital’ music. The Futurists considered industrial life a source of beauty, and for them it provided an ongoing symphony. Car engines, machines, factories, telephones, and electricity had been in existence for only a short time, and the resulting din was a rich palette for the Futurists to use in their sound experiments. (Cascone 2000: 14) Russolo himself observed that [t]he evolution of music is comparable to the multiplication of machines, which everywhere collaborate with man . . . Today, the machine has created such a variety and contention of noises that pure sound in its slightness and monotony no longer provokes emotion . . . Musical sound is too limited in its variety of timbres . . . . We must break out of this limited circle of sounds and conquer the infinite variety of noise-sounds . . . The variety of noises is infinite. If today, having perhaps a thousand different machines, we are able [to] distinguish a thousand different noises, tomorrow, with the multiplication of new machines, we will be able to distinguish ten, twenty, or thirty thousand different noises, not simply by imitation, but by combining according to our fancy. (Russolo 2004: 11–14) The importance of Pratella’s work and its theorisation by Russolo was manifold. It expanded our understanding of what constitutes music and shifted attention

Rehberg, Fennesz and the Label Mego 171 from a foreground to background sounds, most important to sounds which are produced accidentally and are ‘detritus’ or ‘by-product’ of normal industrial production (Cascone 2000: 13). Russolo was also a creator of the earliest noise machines, the intonarumori, which were used to ‘simulate the sounds of the industrialized urban landscapes and modern military hardware’ (Tham 2013: 259). However, these early noise machines were primitive and difficult to produce. Only in the 1950s did the technology of sound production catch up with the theory of noise as music, thanks to the invention and availability of the tape machine. As a result, many experimental composers of this period, such as Pierre Schaeffer, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, Luc Ferrari, Bernard Parmegiani and John Cage, tried their hand in electronic music (ibid.: 261–2). Cage’s importance lies not only in using electronic instruments but also in challenging our ability to register and process sounds. Such an aim is most conspicuously revealed in his composition 4’33”: At its 1952 debut David Tudor opened the piano keyboard lid and sat for the duration indicated in the title, implicitly inviting the audience to listen to background sounds, only closing and reopening the lid to demarcate three movements. (Cascone 2000: 14) 4’33” pointed to the fact that every environment could be experienced in a completely new way – as music. Cage’s experiment was meant to wake the listeners up from their passivity; create their own versions of 4’33”. In this way, his work reflects the new thinking about art, pertaining to early postmodernism and associated most famously with Roland Barthes’s essay ‘From Work to Text’, in which Barthes states that the reader is the ultimate creator of art, through placing it in a specific context and furnishing it with a new meaning (Barthes 1977). In due course, noise also became an important part of rock music. Simon Reynolds explains the fascination of noise by rock artists with a refusal to see the world as harmonious and benign, either because it does not reflect how the world really is or because such a take on reality leads to banal art: There is a widely held view that beauty and harmony are a lie, presenting a bourgeois vision of nature and society as fundamentally balanced and ordered. And that we have an obligation to listen to noise because it shows us the grim truth of reality. (Reynolds 2004a: 56) All these reasons are relevant to Fennesz and Rehberg, but probably most important is their desire to escape the perceived banality of pop-rock. From what I wrote so far, we can conjecture that noise music comes in different shapes. The one with which the two artists are most often identified (Young 2002: 51), is called ‘glitch’, also known as ‘clicks’ and ‘cuts’. Glitch is typically produced on computers using digital software to splice together small ‘cuts’ (samples)

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of music from previously recorded works. These cuts are then integrated with the signature of glitch music: beats composed of glitches, clicks, scratches and otherwise ‘erroneously’ produced or sounding noise; hence the term ‘the aesthetics of failure’, coined by Cascone (2000). Glitches are often very short and are typically used in place of traditional percussion or instrumentation. Skipping CDs, scratched vinyl records, circuit bending, and other noise-like distortions feed into the creation of rhythm and feeling in glitch; it is from their use that the genre derives its name. An important representative of this technique and resulting style is Yasunao Tone, who is also mentioned by Rehberg as an inspiration. As Hegarty observes, to stay somewhere near the realm of noise in or with sampling is not necessarily about making something totally discordant, or relentlessly changing so there is no pattern at all . . . For noise to occur across sampling, it would have to engage all those strategies, recombine them so that “noise” in its most literal sense was itself disrupted by recognizable elements or moments of musicality, and perhaps to show awareness of its fate of losing its noisiness as it went on, or was listened to on repeated occasions, or the style became familiar. (Hegarty 2007: 186) These words are very important in the context of the work produced by Rehberg and Fennesz, as they do not only try to be subversive in their musical choices but also to produce music which enchants the listener. A sign, if not proof, that they have succeeded is the fact that after listening to their music for several days, I tend to hum it.

Rehberg’s career While all the other protagonists of this book are Austrians or German-speaking nationals who at some point tried to escape Vienna, ideally to an English-speaking country, Peter Rehberg is an Englishman, albeit with Austrian roots, who moved in the opposite direction. He was born in 1968 in Tottenham to a lower-middleclass family and spent his childhood in Hertfordshire. He developed an interest in music as a teenager, not through playing instruments but through collecting records and cataloguing them, as lists fascinated him as much as records themselves. With a trainspotter’s zeal, he always tried to know the content of a given series, most importantly all records from a specific band or label. Rehberg’s emigration had something to do with both England and Austria. Failing his A-level exams, which effectively deprived him of a university education, he went to the land of his ancestors. However, he ended up in Vienna, rather than in Salzburg, where his father came from. It was in 1987, the time when the electronic scene was budding in the Austrian capital city. In Rehberg’s opinion, ‘budding’ might even be too grand a word because there was practically

Rehberg, Fennesz and the Label Mego 173 no scene in Vienna then, just a handful of people wanting to make music in a new way. Being an Englishman, Rehberg had a certain advantage over his Austrian peers, who always looked at England as the trendsetter. At the time rock was still a dominant style, in Austria and elsewhere. ‘Everybody wanted to be in a band and sound like an English band’, says Rehberg. ‘Why on Earth you would like to play like English bands, if they are coming here anyway?’ was his response. The underlying assumption of such a statement was that music from the province cannot compete with that from the centre. The only way to do so is by creating ‘new terms’. This was what effectively Vienna electronica was meant to be – music which did not try to imitate Anglo-American achievements but created them from scratch, even if taking inspiration from English and American music. Making instrumental music seemed like a much better way for ‘provincials’ to achieve success than trying to write lyrics and sing in (bad) English. It is not difficult to notice that a similar attitude permeated krautrock, except that in the case of krautrock it stemmed from a refusal to give in to American colonisation, in the case of music championed by Rehberg and his

Figure 8.1 Peter Rehberg Photo: Ewa Mazierska

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Figure 8.2 Peter Rehberg’s studio Photo: Ewa Mazierska

friend, to create ‘non-British’ works. By the early 1990s, hip-hop and techno displaced rock as the hegemonic style in Vienna. The good thing about techno, in Rehberg’s view, was that there were not many blueprints for its production and much scope for experimentation. The future leader of Mego started his professional life in 1987 by touring small clubs in Vienna, offering to play records he brought from London and which largely reflected on the music fashions in the late 1980s England, such as Cabaret Voltaire and the Human League, as well as those of some krautrock bands, such as Kraftwerk, Neu! and Tangerine Dream. To a large extent, then, Rehberg was in tune with many of his Austrian peers, whose taste was influenced by krautrock and the English synthpop. In Vienna Rehberg visited a club named Chelsea, located on Gürtel (still existing), assuming that in a place with such an English-friendly name he would have more chance to be accepted than elsewhere. By this point, the club played only live music, but he offered his service as a DJ and was accepted. However, after several weeks he was asked to play

Rehberg, Fennesz and the Label Mego 175 different music, in tune with the audience’s more mainstream taste. He refused and was sacked. Luckily, in the meantime he got in contact with different clubs and a handful of like-minded people who were keen to collaborate with him on different projects. Among them was Werner Geier, as well as Ramon Bauer, Andi Pieper and Peter Meininger. Over the next seven years he presented his skills in different venues, such as ambient rooms in techno clubs, and ran a weekly club at Blue Box called Club Duchamp, where he played experimental music using expanded DJ sets with vinyl, CDs and a synthesiser. He was also doing bits of work for the radio and contributed to local fanzines. This period culminated in setting up Mego in 1994. In common with Patrick Pulsinger and Christian Fennesz, the majority of Rehberg’s records are products of collaboration rather than his solo work. By this point, he released over twenty records. In common with fellow electronic musicians, Rehberg uses several aliases, to differentiate between his own work and that with other people, which also means between different styles. Pita is reserved for his own productions, KTL for those with Stephen O’Malley, Fenn O’Berg for collaborations with Christian Fennesz and Jim O’Rourke; the very name Fenn O’Berg is a composite of the names of these three musicians. The successes of Rehberg’s records, as well as his label, led to invitations to play abroad. Rehberg became one of the most most-travelled electronic musicians from Austria, performing in the US, Australia and Japan, as well as becoming a regular feature at Sonar Festival in Barcelona. As I indicated in the introduction to this volume, he also belongs to the few Austrian musicians whose achievements are acknowledged in academic literature, published in English, even though without granting it any detailed analysis. As with practically all musicians discussed in this book, the period after mid2000s was difficult for Rehberg, with revenue from selling records going down and running an independent label verging on being unprofitable. Like most other ‘veterans’ from the 1990s, however, Rehberg survived this period partly because of amassing enough cultural capital in the better times, which allowed him to play concerts, as well as turning to other streams of income, most importantly writing music for theatre. The crisis was partly overcome thanks to the vinyl renewal, as well as the fact that much of Mego’s competitors did not survive bad times.

Mego and Editions Mego Mego came into existence in a similar way to the other labels discussed in this book. It was a child of musicians, who were keen to produce their own music and that which they liked. Two of them, Ramon Bauer and Andi Pieper, already set up the label Mainframe, best known for producing the work of Ilsa Gold, a band consisting of techno artists, Christopher Just and Peter Votava. When Peter Rehberg joined them, Mego was born. As Rehberg explains it, it happened in 1994 when they did a show in U4 Club in Vienna: ‘I was in the club playing with

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stuff and they were in the studio behind, and then we drilled a hole in the wall and we collaborated. That was the first time Mego was actually put on a flyer’ (Rehberg 2014). Its official birth was in 1995, when it released its first record, which was Fridge Trax by the General Magic & Pita. The initial idea of the label was to produce techno records, but more experimental than what was offered at the time by competitors. This might be a reason why Rehberg and his friends decided to do it on their own rather than turn to Cheap, which was offering listeners more mainstream techno. Soon after the label started its operations, Fennesz got in touch with Rehberg, as he was also looking for a home for his music. The fact that there was little competition among firms releasing noise music, not only in Austria but also internationally, ensured that the label received international recognition. There were some additional factors, which helped its success, as its first releases coincided with a time of proliferation of cultural events in Vienna, as well as utilised new communication technologies. Mego was admittedly the first Austrian label which acquired an e-mail address and its own website. This was of great importance to its operations, as it allowed it to have an online shop and sell records abroad. It was the foreign sales which sustained it over the years and practically till now. In due course, Mego put on the market more versatile music, including glitch, for which it gained most renown. Caleb Kelly in his Crack Media describes the productions from Mego as a perfect embodiment of the programme, proposed by Kim Cascone and not only thanks to the music it released but also its artwork by Tina Frank, whose ‘granulated and distorted graphics and text . . . has close links to cracked media’ (Kelly 2009: 316). Mego’s collaborator, Jim O’Rourke claims that Mego has created a brand new punk computer music, a punk aesthetic, like do it yourself, press your own records, get your own distribution going. They achieved this firstly by mutating the real-time sinewave synthesis strategies familiar from academic computer music, and secondly by taking it out of the context of art music, a move that should be recognised just as much as the music. (quoted in Eshun 1999) Mego’s success in broaching the division between popular and academic/ experimental music was recognised by awarding the label a Distinction at the 1999 Ars Electronica Festival, one of the most prestigious events showcasing electronic music. During its existence, Mego changed its location three times. The first was at the outskirts of the city, in an old paint factory, which can be seen as symbolic for its multimedia approach. There was much space there, but the conditions were spartan and for Rehberg it felt like being far from the ‘centre of things’. In the second location, in the twelfth district of Vienna, where Mego dwelled from 1998 to 2005, there was less space, but the facilities were of a higher standard. The office space was shared with Pulsinger and Tunakan’s Cheap, which again can be seen as symbolic of the artistic closeness between the two labels. Finally, during

Rehberg, Fennesz and the Label Mego 177 the time of Editions Mego the home of the label became Rehberg’s spacious and stylish apartment near Danube Canal. In common with Cheap, the label was commercially most successful during the first ten years of its existence. This is understandable, given that, as I wrote earlier, the 1990s was a prosperous time for the record industry. During this period, it released such classics as Fennesz’s Endless Summer (probably the most famous record produced by Mego), Jim O’Rourke’s I’m Happy and I’m Singing and Drumm’s Sheer Hellish Miasma. It was in the 2000s, and especially after 2005, the sales of records went down, hitting the small, independent labels the most. In the case of Mego the downfall was made worse by the bankruptcy of one of its main distributors. Not unlike Patrick Pulsinger, who decided to fold Cheap in 2005, Rehberg’s partners also left about this time. Rehberg decided to carry on, in 2006 changing the record company’s name into Editions Mego. Under this name he released more records than ever before, in part capitalising on the vinyl-mania, as well as the fact that Editions Mego remains one of the few survivors in the (already-small) field of electronic music for more ambitious and experimental, as well as history-oriented, listeners, yet not strictly academic. The label thus focuses on exclusivity, a strategy that entails exploiting the desire of sophisticated consumers to signal their individuality by finding and consuming unique products (Hracs, Jakob and Hauge 2013). One specificity of Editions Mego, which strengthens its status, are sub-labels, curated by artists collaborating with the label. They include Spectrum Spools (curated by John Elliott), Recollection GRM (curated by François Bonnet and Daniel Teruggi), Ideologic Organ (curated by Stephen O’Malley) and Old News (curated by Jim O’Rourke). On Rehberg’s own account, Editions Mego releases music of artists whom he knows in person. Such an approach adds to its reputation of being small and exclusive. Apart from releasing new material, it puts on the market its back catalogue, frequently on vinyl and with new artwork. This might explain the change of the company’s name, from Mego to Editions Mego. The latter signifies a self-conscious take on releasing records. We tend to associate ‘editions’ with ‘second editions’ or ‘luxury editions’. Such editions are for connoisseurs and those too young to witness the birth of some important phenomenon. While Fennesz’s Endless Summer is regarded as the record defining Mego’s style, Rehberg singles out his release of Does It Look Like I’m Here? (2010) of an American project Emeralds, which he describes as ‘US synth underground’, as a turning point in its operations. An important artistic achievement of Mego was also releasing the work of Farmers Manual, a music–visual collective, founded in Vienna in the early 1990s. Its significance lies both in a quality of its music and innovative performances, described as anti-performances and overcoming the division between electronic music, experimental graphics and web design. Mego released not only music production of Farmers Manual but also its multimedia content. Of special interest is RLA (which stands for ‘Recent Live Archive’), a DVD released in 2003, which contains the band’s extensive back catalogue of live concert recordings from 1995 to 2003, compressed in MP3 format – totalling three days and twenty hours of audio content. Comparing Endless Summer with

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Does It Look Like I’m Here? and Farmers Manual’s work demonstrates the versatility of the label. Not surprisingly, in his interviews Rehberg protests against pigeonholing himself and Mego as ‘laptop music’: One of the things we’ve always had around our neck is this whole laptop thing, which wasn’t something anyone sat down and decided, ‘Okay, we can use laptops now’. One of the things I always wanted to do when we started this back in the mid-’90s was that it wouldn’t become a genre-based label, because I used to work in a record store at the time and I remember a lot of the techno distributors would send in faxes of all the new records and the description of the record was always just one of five words . . . It was always a very minimized vocabulary of how to describe music. Everything in this little box. (Rehberg 2014) Indeed, Mego is a broad church. However, as with all churches, one has to be a believer, to enjoy it. Jumping to Mego straight from listening to Justin Bieber might be a leap of faith too far.

Rehberg’s style In relation to Rehberg’s productions, critics use adjectives such as hardcore, difficult, austere, intimidating and morbid. A fellow traveller, Christian Fennesz, describes Rehberg as ‘the first one [in Vienna] to make weird ambient music and industrial music like John Cage’ (Fennesz 2008). For me it is not as intimidating as quirky and whimsical, perhaps reflecting the fact that Rehberg was born in England, where idiosyncrasies are more tolerated than elsewhere, although arguably the same can be said about Austria. Obviously Rehberg creates moods through sound. As with other glitch artists, he is also keen to expand what we can hear, absorb and appreciate as music. I mentioned earlier in this book that many electronic musicians see themselves as librarians and curators, who reorganise acquired sounds. This might be also the case of Rehberg, but his music lacks the ‘found-footage’ quality of stuff placed in quotation marks. Instead, the sounds feel fresh; their ability to startle us relies on this quality. Laptops and synthesisers are, for Rehberg, machines producing new sounds. As I already mentioned, he is considered an important representative of laptop music, although in recent years he abandoned the computer-based synthesis in favour of a hardware modular synthesiser. One thing which differentiates Rehberg’s work from the other artists discussed in this volume is that shifts in volume and intensity are very abrupt. One reviewer warned to keep the volume always low because the sound might become very loud when we least expect it (Leitko 2016). It feels like the artist wants to free the listener of any illusion of security. There is also a remarkable lack of ornamentation; the music comes across as reduced to its basics. Such a description also fits the techno productions of Patrick Pulsinger, as discussed in the previous

Rehberg, Fennesz and the Label Mego 179 chapter, but Pulsinger’s works are based on beat; one can easily dance to them. By contrast, it is not easy to dance to Rehberg’s tune. At the beginning of his career as a DJ, Rehberg was described as an ‘ambient DJ’, a label which he treats with amusement. Initially I was smiling too, as, following Brian Eno, we associate ‘ambient music’ with music for airports and, in a wider sense, a music which brightens the environment. However, it suits a more general description of ambient music as offered by Eno: ‘a place, a feeling, an all-around tint to my sonic environment’ (Eno 2004b: 96). In the case of Rehberg the feeling is usually of an approaching disaster. The disaster can be industrial: machines malfunctioning or their parts getting entangled with their products and emitting agonising noise. Again, one can think about techno. However, while techno producers celebrate or commemorate the well-functioning Fordist factories of Detroit or East Germany, Rehberg’s music ‘could have been seen as the ruins, or maybe the corpse of techno’ (Sasaki 1999). Another type of disaster Rehberg’s music evokes is one caused by cosmic or semi-natural forces – invasions of aliens, collision of planets, in a style typical for technostalgia of the 1990s (Taylor 2001: 96–114). On other occasions we can hear the flapping of wings of some insects which grew unnaturally large or mutated with robots and launched an attack on humans. One can think in this context about Pauline Oliveros’s ‘Bye Bye Butterfly’. Finally, there is a man-made menace: violence and hatred. Menace of this type pertains to Rehberg’s theatrical scores. Titles are purposefully difficult to decipher, typically consisting of numbers, combinations of letters, for example ‘Mfbk’ or descriptions of the place of a given track on the record, such as ’3’ or ‘Track Seven’. Such abstract titles parallel those favoured by some producers of Intelligent Dance Music, such as the English duo Autechre, which bears association with the approach taken by the twentiethcentury avant-garde, who, as Dahlhaus notes, eschewed conventional work titles in favour of more abstract ones such as ‘Constellations’, ‘Figures’ or ‘Prisms’, which suggest a shared aesthetic preoccupation with the ‘idea of absolute music’ (Drott 2013: 5). Behind such choice one can detect a refusal to attribute discursive content to compositions, forcing the listener to consider a given piece as being ‘something’ rather than ‘about something’, to use a famous phrase of Susan Sontag. Of course, music of this type is difficult to describe and examine, unless from merely technical perspective. As to confirm this opinion, Rob Young asks rhetorically, How do you announce the title of Pita’s “~/” out loud? . . . It is a title – and by extension, a music – that can only be typed, not spoken, which explains why so many glitch tracks end up with names that use invented or hybrid words, or signifiers that look like binary code. (Young 2002: 51) And yet, as I argued earlier, the soundscape which Rehberg produces bears witness to the times in which he lives.

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Seven Tons For Free (1996) Rehberg’s first album, Seven Tons For Free, is filled with repetitions of highfrequency digital sounds, resembling clocks ticking, work of factory machines and medical equipment monitoring the activities of human organs. A member of my family who accidently listened to a fragment said that it sounds like a ‘washing machine on its last legs’, quite aptly, given that the genre in which Rehberg was to specialise was described by Cascone as informed by the ‘aesthetic of failure’. There is little there of melody, something to hum when the record is finished. What remains is a dreary mood, a premonition of danger. The sounds are reduced to pulse signals, on occasions extremely high-pitched and ‘scratchy’. However, the music is continuous; there is no sense of samples being unmatched. The musician is reluctant to reveal what the sounds are meant to represent or does not want them to represent anything, as testified by titles of four tracks, which do not include any words, only mathematical symbols, as if signifying the length or the wave or the position of a track in a series (i, ii, iii), pointing to Rehberg’s fascination with lists and orders. The titles of the remaining tracks, ‘Boiler’, ‘Fehler (Error)’ and ‘Seven Tons Revised’, are technical rather than human. That said, ‘Boiler’ might suggest that behind cold machines a hot heart is beating. After all, hospital machinery is meant to save human lives. Naming the album Seven Tons For Free is provocative and humorous, suggesting that Rehberg conceded that few people will be willing to pay for music of this type, hence better to donate it – a rational move, given that a decade or so later almost everybody would give his or her music for free, uploading it on YouTube or Soundcloud. It feels as if Rehberg wanted to explore what can be done with computer as a sonic machine. That last and longest track, ‘Seven Tons Revised’, is the most accessible, as if by this point the composer wanted to reward us for our patience by including more melody while preserving the original idea of exploring textures and dark moods. Listening to Seven Tons For Free I wondered how this music was received in a live setting. Part of the answer was provided by Rehberg himself, who confessed, almost with pride that he was chased out clubs because his stuff was ‘too heavy’. Another answer was given by David Toop, who described his experience of listening to Rehberg (and other noise musicians) in this way: I am standing in a large hall at the Sonar Festival in Barcelona. On stage is the trio of Christian Fennesz, Jim O’Rourke and Peter ‘Pita’ Rehberg. All three are playing laptop computers and the movements of their fingertips on trackpads are projected on screens. The assertion of human presence within the improvised evolution of their performance – a dense layering of musical samples and digital processing – adds to the disorientation of music created in the moment, with minimal physicality and the technology that conceals, rather than reveals. The discomfort of hearing it in a large hall, standing up, surrounded by a halfinterested crowd that mills and chatters, leaves me stranded in a mood of ennui. The music sounds wonderful but this is not how I want to hear it. (Toop 2004: 228)

Rehberg, Fennesz and the Label Mego 181 These words suggest that music of this type needs to be researched first in private before it can be enjoyed in public. This, in my view, results not only from the fact that repeated listening pays dividends but also because the product of Rehberg’s work is not only music but a soundscape as well. It needs a special space to fill it in a right way; in a place whose natural ambience clashes with the mood of his composition, it does not work.

Get Out (1999), Get Down (2002), Get Off (2004) and Get In (2016) The titles of these four records invite us to treat them together. All of them betray a similar attitude to the listener, asking him or her to do something rather than listen passively, not unlike Steve Reich’s 1966 composition, Come Out. They also show a progression. The first title sounds most unwelcoming, revealing the attitude of a young musician, who refuses to flatter his listeners, perhaps due to his awareness that he has little competition in his field, a fact to which Rehberg alluded in our interview. By contrast, Get In asks us to immerse ourselves in his music, with a humility pertaining to older people, as well as artists whose music competes with millions of tracks available on Spotify and iTunes. There are other differences between the records. The first three were created on laptop, the last one using a modular synthesiser. The title Get Out suggests that the record is directed only to hardcore fans of noise music, excluding those with a more mainstream taste. Indeed, of the three records with get in the title, this one eschews melody and harmony most ostentatiously, offering a high-pitched shrill of knives grinding on a malfunctioning machine on the track titled ‘1’ and cosmic noise on the track ‘2’. But after this ear-splitting noise a patient listener is rewarded with a delicate theme which begins ‘3’. After a couple of minutes the melody is attacked by more aggressive noise, and then by even noisier, ear-splitting sounds, but it survives till the very end. For a listener unfamiliar with Rehberg’s work and unsympathetic to noise music, the track feels like a battle between music and noise, whose outcome is uncertain. For those, however, who are able to appreciate the beauty of glitch, the track demonstrates how melody and noise can create a powerful synthesis. Although the track lasts more than eleven minutes, it feels continuous and the transitions between samples are concealed. Not without reason, this remained the most ‘classic’ track among those composed by Rehberg (Owen 2016), and Get Out was described as the cacophonous equivalent of a romantic symphony (Scaruffi 2003) because there is pathos there, and a sense of yearning, characteristic of romantic music. The cover for this record shows triangle-like overlapping shapes, in different shades of blue, against a blue background. Such artwork can be seen as a reflection of a rhizome-like approach applied by Rehberg on practically all his records, but on this especially. This means that there are no leading themes, no leitmotivs, but the tracks are nevertheless connected. The shades of blue also bring to mind icebergs crashing into each other and destroying a ship. In comparison with Get Out, tracks on Get Down come across as more fragmented and, ultimately, noisier. This is announced by the opening track, ‘We

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Don’t Need No Music’, filled with a drone. ‘43353.rf’ was described as ‘freejazz duet between two robots’ (Scaruffi 2003). The remaining tracks also bring to mind robots, perhaps employed on a spaceship, as this is still a place where robots are most common. One can think about science-fiction films from the 1970s and 1980s, which were filled with such noises, such as the Polish Test pilota Pirxa (The Test of Pilot Pirx, 1979), which concerns the ultimate unreliability of robots. ‘Track Seven’ and ‘Fine Swex’, closing the record, confirm such an interpretation, as they sound like a chaotic encounter of angry robots, left to their own devices. Unlike on Get Out, there is nothing melancholic here, maybe because such a sentiment is reserved for humans – admittedly even the most advanced machines lack advanced feelings. The idea that Get Down is a story of robots is alluded to by the cover, which dispenses with abstractions, adorning Rehberg’s earlier albums, and shows a cartoon-like humanoid creature with an angry look on his face. Get In is the work which is marked not so much by innovation as maturity. The pieces on the record can be seen as versions of the tracks produced earlier, but the sounds feel cleaner, as if the artist was more assured about what he wanted to achieve. On this occasion the goal is more important than the road. It begins with ‘cosmic’ sounds of ‘FVO’, resembling soundtracks to old science-fiction films, followed by sounds of the space battle in ‘201506091’. A catchy ‘S200729’ (as catchy as a noise music can be) creates in my mind the image of an all-absorbed musician searching for a lost melody and oblivious to everything which happens around him, At the same time as he comes closer to it, his space is invaded by menacing sounds, whose goal is to destroy the music and the musician, although he manages to hold on. However, the track following it, ‘9U2016’, suggests that the victory was temporary, as this piece is pure noise, with the ending sounding like a victorious alien inspecting the ruins of human civilisation and making sure that nobody survived. The record finishes with ‘MFbk’, one of the most ambient pieces in Rehberg’s career. The longest cut, it requires its ten minutes to expand ambient drift into harmonised organ and low string tones, and for a sense of pulse to emerge from repeat patterns of slow-motion rhythm. And it sounds just gorgeous, with acoustic depth and vibrancy, and becomes almost hymnal at the end. (Owen 2016) It brings to mind a landscape after a nuclear or cosmic disaster. It is a beautiful yet somewhat sterile landscape, making one miss the noise. The records, as on most earlier occasions, features artwork by Tina Frank which, as usual, is abstract. This time it shows colourful shapes against a black background, as if the remnants of a planet float in space.

Work for GV 2004–2008 (2008) Music on this record is a result of Rehberg’s collaboration with French theatre director, choreographer, puppeteer and visual artist Gisèle Vienne. It contains

Rehberg, Fennesz and the Label Mego 183 scores to her three stage productions: I Apologize, Une Belle Enfant Blonde and Jerk. This collaboration can be described as a marriage in heaven if not for the fact that the imagination of both artists is dark. Vienne, by her own account, explores the relationship between natural and artificial bodies and disturbing strangeness, resulting from their encounter (Vienne 2017). Judging by the synopsis of her plays, she is particularly interested in violence inflicted on women by men. The dolls used in her productions do not signify carefree childhood, but innocence destroyed. Rehberg also explores the unknown through creating dark, disturbing soundscapes. In his world nothing is safe; danger is just below the surface, like a gigantic insect or a drone about to attack its victim. However, while on Rehberg’s earlier records the danger remained undefined, on this record it gets a distinctive shape, thanks to using lyrics as well as more explicit titles, such as ‘Murder Version’, ‘Slow Investigation’, ‘Boxes and Angels’ and ‘Final Jerk’. The lyrics appear first in ‘ML3’. Here an American poet and Vienne’s longstanding collaborator, Dennis Cooper, presents a story of domestic violence perpetrated by a husband on his wife and most likely retold to another man, her real or prospective lover. ‘She is my wife, so what?’, asks the man, impersonated by Cooper. In this world, it seems, family ties are no excuse to ‘get rough’; rather, the opposite is true – home is the place where a man can reveal his true face of a rapist and sadist. In ‘Black Holes’ the protagonist admits, ‘My empty sockets feel like evil eyes to you’. Such declarations are made against the buzzing noise of Rehberg’s computer, often punctuated by bursts of much louder noise, sometimes imitating crying, perhaps announcing that the violence is taking place or a sound bringing association with climbing the stairs, an activity rendered uncanny by film noir. Musically, the most accomplished is eleven-minute-long ‘Boxes and Angels’, a piece to which one wants to return, despite its darkness. The sound is buzzing, as if made by a drone or a huge insect. As one reviewer aptly described it, it is based around a repeating, strobing synth riff, morphed, modulated and shattered across an extended period – it’s the kind of strategy we’ve heard before on Pita’s Get Out or the Fenn O’Berg releases. Waves of noise flood in alongside trance-inducing, quasi-orchestral chord sequences, resulting in something that’s at once ear-bending and unnervingly emotive. It’s an exceptional piece, and like so much of the music here, just couldn’t have been made by anyone else. (Boomkat) The cover of the record shows a doll clad in a red hoodie. The doll is very realistic and can be easily mistaken for a teenage girl. The obvious association is with the story of Red Riding Hood, which many contemporary readers interpret as a story of violence inflicted by ‘human wolves’ on young women who dare to venture into an unknown place. Photos inside the CD include a pair of children’s shoes in a transparent plastic bag, with some tag attached to it, suggesting that it is a forensic artefact, collected at a crime scene. The works of Vienne and Rehberg are not meant to entertain, but to challenge us (Wuethrich 2008).

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Christian Fennesz’s career Christian Fennesz was born in 1962, into a middle-class family with Hungarian roots from his father’s side, which explains his non-Germanic name. His father was a professional officer. He spent his childhood and teenage years on the Lake Neusiedl, before moving to Vienna. He went to a music high school and took lessons in classical guitar. Afterwards he studied musicology at the university in Vienna but did not finish the course. In terms of age, Fennesz is closer to Andy Orel than Richard Dorfmeister, Patrick Pulsinger or Peter Rehberg. This means that his formative period was some years before the explosion of electronic music in Europe. Not surprisingly, he prepared himself for the career of a rocker rather than a studio musician. Nevertheless, as with most protagonists in this book and as a model ‘studio musician’, as described by Eno, he was unable to compose music in the traditional way. As he puts it, ‘I’m just playing. It’s more of a gypsy kind of approach’ (Crowell 2014). His guitar skills ensured him a place in the Viennese guitar bands, including Maische, which got some recognition on the local rock scene in the 1980s. Simultaneously, Fennesz was drawn to electronic equipment, as a way to overcome the limitations of rock. Like Rehberg, he welcomed the emergence of techno in Vienna, although he could not fully commit himself to producing techno music, as texture rather than rhythm was his main concern and the atmosphere of a discotheque did not

Figure 8.3 Christian Fennesz Photo Kevin Westenberg

Rehberg, Fennesz and the Label Mego 185 suit his style. Not surprisingly, he was among the first artists to sign up with Mego Records and in 1997 released his first LP, Hotel Paralel.lel. This record was followed with the 1998 single ‘Plays’, which contained near-unrecognisable covers of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Paint It Black’ and the Beach Boys’ ‘Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)’. In 2001, Fennesz released his third studio album Endless Summer, which remained his commercially most successful record to date, hailed as proof that noise music can be charming and palatable by the public. Since his debut, on top of producing solo work, Fennesz collaborated with artists as different as David Sylvian, Keith Rowe, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Patrick Pulsinger, Peter Rehberg and Jim O’Rourke. One advantage of such numerous collaborations is overcoming the limitations of the local and national scene. As I mentioned in the introduction, he is perhaps the most-covered electronic musician from Vienna in English language literature. Fennesz might not sell large numbers of records in one country, but he has fans all over the world, including in my own university. This is also reflected in his numerous travels and participation in music festivals. These collaborations allow him to venture into genres which he might not be able to explore on his own. In part, thanks to his collaborations, Fennesz, in common with Rupert Huber and Patrick Pulsinger, is able to navigate between the two poles of electronic music: popular and experimental, without facing accusations of being either a ‘sell-out’ or too elitist. Needless to add, such an approach allows him to continue as a full-time musician in times when income from recordings is much lower than when he started his career. As with some other artists covered in this book, Fennesz spent part of his life abroad, in Paris. Nevertheless, when I met him in 2015, he was back in Vienna and looking for a new studio. Fennesz’s artistic output is huge and can be divided into several strands. Apart from his single-authored studio albums, there are numerous records of live recordings, collaboration albums, remixes and soundtracks. However, most important for those treating him as an auteur are his single-produced works, and there are only six of them, indicating that the composer takes much time to produce them. Unlike his colleagues working in different genres, Fennesz does not use aliases. However, he has something of a stage name thanks to dropping his first name – he is known as Fennesz rather than Christian Fennesz, not unlike the leader of the Smiths, who is known simply as Morrisey.

Fennesz’s style Fennesz questions the division of music into electronic and non-electronic and serious/experimental and popular. The former is reflected in his love of guitar, which he uses in his recordings and performances. As he confessed, ‘I wanted to keep using the guitar sound because that’s my main instrument and it’s the sound world I know the best’ (Fennesz 2008). Fennesz also argues that electronic music ceased to be a separate genre, because electronic instruments are used by practically all pop-rock musicians. His sources of inspiration also bear witness to his double heritage: rock and electronic. On one hand, he acknowledges the influence of techno and declares himself a big fan of Brian Eno. On the other hand,

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however, he mentions his love of the music of Neil Young and the Beach Boys, and among his list of collaborators are not only producers of ‘hardcore’ electronic music but also rock musicians experimenting with electronic instruments, such as David Sylvian. Fennesz often performs in places associated with high art, such as museums, galleries and opera houses, yet he also admits that he feels most comfortable on the rock stage. Leaning towards the popular is also reflected in the titles of his records and songs, which evoke places and moods, rather than the technical properties of the medium he uses. Endless Summer, Venice, Hotel Paral.lel, Bécs and Black Sea evoke memories of a holiday, not in a faraway, exotic place but rather closer, more ‘homely’, ‘European Orient’, such as Italy, Spain, Romania or California. Such titles suggest that Fennesz wants his music to represent something, rather than be (autonomous), which is typically the case of modernist, experimental art. In his music we find a quest for a memorable, haunting melody or perhaps music is merely a vehicle to resurrect an old experience. As the artist himself admitted, when he composes, his head is full of visions; there is a ‘cinematographic aspect to it’. Searching for a new sound, experimenting with textures and structures is never a goal in itself. Hence, Fennesz’s records, especially Endless Summer, are described by critics as a perfect way to lure to electronic music those listeners who are unfamiliar with or prejudiced against electronic instruments. As one reviewer put it, ‘with Endless Summer, Fennesz had invested the laptop with a soul hitherto reserved for “real instruments”, and it was just what listeners had been waiting for’ (Meggitt 2007). By ‘listeners’ the author means the part of the audience who listens to music largely for pleasure, as opposed to widening their intellectual horizons. Yet, the subgenre of electronic music with which Fennesz is identified is ‘glitch’. This very term, as I argued earlier, concerns the unmelodic, purposefully irritating pole of electronic music. I will list several reasons for Fennesz’s ‘glitching’. One is his desire to discover what kind of sounds one can get from electronic instruments. For the same reasons and as a sign of appreciation of his avant-garde interests, he was approached by producers of musical instruments and software to test and advise on new electronic devices. The second, although related, reason for using the aesthetic of glitch is breaking the pleasure of listening to soothing music, to which – due to its very soothing quality – we might pay little attention. Its programmatic malfunction saves it from being relegated to the background, as this is how ambient music is frequently perceived, largely because of its functionality (as something creating ambience to a romantic evening), and downgraded as kitsch, because the very act of creating ambience is perceived as inauthentic, because of forcing a meaning on something which should have a meaning by itself. Finally and most important, Fennesz, like Rehberg, finds noise beautiful. Fennesz’s hybrid approach to electronic music is also reflected in his live performances, in which he plays guitar, as well as electronic instruments. Such behaviour can be regarded as a reaction to a criticism that in electronic music the human performer is superfluous; it is enough to programme a computer in the studio and then let it do the job by just pressing the right button. Fennesz himself agrees with this criticism, saying,

Rehberg, Fennesz and the Label Mego 187 When I started making this kind of music in the early 90s, I abandoned guitar for a while and just played laptops live. In the studio, I always used guitar sounds to make my samples: make a bank, an archive of samples I could work with. Later on, when I was playing onstage I felt something was missing. It was just boring. So I started playing guitar onstage live. (quoted in Crowell 2014) Needless to say, this makes him very busy. Fennesz’s stage persona brings to mind Ian Williams from the American band Battles, who on stage seems to struggle to take care of all the instruments needed to create the required effect. Fennesz is perhaps slightly less busy, yet he also gives an impression of improvising rather than merely setting computers in motion. As with Sofa Surfers, his performances are often multi-media spectacles. As with his music, Fennesz’s collaborators betray his cosmopolitan mind-set. Among them are the Italian animator Giuseppe La Spada, English graphic designer Jon Wozencroft (who set up the Touch label), Berlin-based multimedia artist Lillevan and fellow Austrian Tina Frank, who designed covers for many of his records and directed the only video for his track. The collaboration, on Fennesz’s own account, is not limited to these artists providing visuals for his (finished) work; it is an outcome of improvisation.

Hotel Paral.lel (1997) Fennesz’s first solo LP is an odd one in his career because of its heavy and menacing mood, contrasting with the lighter tones of his subsequent records. It sounds more like Peter Rehberg’s record than Fennesz of Endless Summer and Venice, and it feels as if at this stage the musician was testing the possibilities of creating sounds using different pieces of equipment rather than searching for a charming melody, hidden in the depth of his mind. The sources of inspiration for these sounds seem varied: industrial, cosmic and domestic noises (broken or poorly tuned radio and television sets) and even those heard in offices (Xerox machines). The sound on the first track, ‘2’, brings to mind grinding machines in an oldfashioned factory, played against the sounds of approaching tanks. The second track, ‘Nebenraun’, offers a sound of apocalypse, coming from outer space. Yet, the mood lightens up, as if the spaceships did not bring hostile aliens but more friendly creatures. ‘Blok M’ comes across as pure experiment in texture, in which melody does not matter. The middle part of the record includes the most memorable pieces: ‘Santora’, ‘Dheli Pizza’ and ‘Fa’. As one reviewer put it, ‘Santora’ is a ‘simple exercise in slow, subtle noise variation, opening with arrhythmic clicking resembling radio static cast in steel. The sound begins dry but, as the song progresses, it starts to bunch up and scatter unevenly, revealing a low, resonant drone easing in behind. Later, as the clicking sputters out, that resonance is more cleanly revealed; a distant alarm bell, perhaps, ringing alone in the echo-traversed space of a cavernous basement (Dorr 2007). The same reviewer described ‘Dheli Pizza’ as a ghostly presence, followed by a ‘full assembly line of rattling machines that eventually clatter off into the dark again’ (ibid.). ‘Fa’ is a dark techno piece.

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‘Traxdata’, although still brings associations with factory work, because of being dominated by a buzzing sound, is more melodic and acts as a premonition of Fennesz’s later productions. The title of the record is taken from a hotel in Barcelona, where Fennesz was staying shortly before he embarked on making this record. In this sense it begins a series of his records which wear their connection to a specific place on their sleeves, literally and figuratively. It is also symbolic, as it suggests the existence of parallel worlds: internal and external, artificial and natural, human and robotic, cosmic and Earth-like. One can imagine the hotel in Barcelona as a portal to these different worlds, with noisy and mysterious neighbours, hidden rooms and secret passages. This impression is strengthened by the titles of some tracks, such as ‘Nebenraum’, ‘Blok M’, ‘Herbert Missing’ and ‘Aus’. Fennesz mixes here German with English words, bringing to mind Falco’s multilingualism. The difference lies in the fact that the tracks are instrumental; hence, their discursive content is limited to their titles. The monochromatic cover, designed by Tina Frank, a graphic designer and video artist who has collaborated with Mego practically throughout the whole period of the label’s existence, shows the reworking of an original photo, taken by a friend of Fennesz. It shows Lake Neusiedl, on whose shores Fennesz was living in his childhood. However, the greenish image is so abstracted that this information is only available to those who know the background to the cover (as I learnt through correspondence with Tina Frank). When I was looking at the picture I thought that it is a reworking of the photograph of the eponymous hotel. The object on the cover looks like a bridge, although in reality we see wooden pegs planted in the lake. The impression is strengthened by the remaining pictures on the record where we see more bridges, surrounded by anaemic greenery. The idea of a portal or bridge comes to mind again. Frank was also the author of the only video produced for this album, for the track titled ‘Aus’. The video begins as a montage of stills – a variation of the cover image, with its motifs of a bridge, a pier and some bare trees. All landscape photography came from a series of Lake Neusiedl made by Fennesz’s friend. Then proper moving images are introduced in the form of found footage of old amateur 8mm films, taken by Tina Frank’s father when she was a child. They show the family in domestic situations, including an elderly man (Tina’s grandfather) receiving a chair as birthday present, as well as fragments of old animated films. These images are edited in such a way that the viewer is prevented from constructing a coherent narrative, and the video accentuates the materiality and hapticity of the image. This effect is achieved by using footage of low quality, so that the scratches on the print are visible, as well as providing black background to parts of the film and showing the frames in slow motion. At some point it looks like the print is burning. The effect is of watching film projection rather than film. There is a connection between the aesthetics used by Fennesz on the record, including on this track and the aesthetics employed by Frank. Both artists proudly show that they recycle and rework existing material rather than producing their work from scratch. Fennesz comes across as a collector of sounds, Frank as a collector

Rehberg, Fennesz and the Label Mego 189 of images. They also cherish and celebrate scratch, glitch, hiccup, malfunction, dissonance, noise, perhaps because it is an important part of our landscapes and soundscapes or because it allows us to recognise that our aesthetic choices are culture-specific. There are no beautiful and ugly images and sounds per se; we learn to regard them as beautiful or ugly. Artists like Fennesz and Frank want us, if not to change our taste entirely, at least to consider different aesthetic options.

Endless Summer (2001) While the mood of Hotel Paral.lel is gloomy, Endless Summer conveys joy. Its optimism is signaled by the record’s artwork, again designed by Tina Frank. It shows a beach at sunset, in warm colours, with silhouettes of people enjoying good weather, a sky and a palm tree. Yet, as with Hotel Paral.lel, the images are reworked, devoid of detail, so that only contours of photographed objects are visible. The horizontal lines on the photos suggest that they were taken from the other side of the window. Moreover, each image is framed and arranged in a way that gives impression of browsing through a photo album. The message is that the record will not present the experience of being in the sun from dusk till dawn but rather its artistic representation, will not be about holidaying, but about faded memories of summer conveyed through tourist clichés. Such clichés are also immortalised in pop music, and Fennesz makes us aware of them by including his cover of the Beach Boys’ song ‘Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)’. Or, as one review put it, it is ‘kinda’ cover ‘because I can’t hear any direct reference to the original, though I do think Fennesz captured some kind of essence with his version’ (Richard-San 2001). Endless Summer is also the title of a Beach Boys compilation from the 1970s, although according to Fennesz, he was not aware of that when making this record; he got the title from Bruce Brown’s film The Endless Summer (1966). The reference to the Beach Boys reflects well on Fennesz’s take on past music. By reusing old songs he proves that, as with most electronic musicians, he is an archivist and a historian, collecting old stories and putting them in a new context, and that the heritage on which he draws is the high end of pop. This is the place the Beach Boys occupy, a band whose name was provocatively self-depreciative and kitschy, but whose music was innovative, in a large part thanks to using a wide range of instruments, such as organ, Fender bass, bongos, piccolo, cellos and the Theremin and experimenting with textures (Prendergast 2003: 198). Of course, Fennesz’s trick is not merely to quote or imitate but also to rework. This is where the ‘glitch’ aesthetics comes into play. The music at times sounds as if an old record was scratched, spoiling our pleasure of listening to a simple melody and making us aware of the material base of music. According to Joanna Demers, Fennesz ‘touches on the impossibility of returning to the past’ (Demers 2010: 63). Although music comes across as spiritual, it is created by material instruments and reproduced mechanically (or at least this was the case till recently). The scratches and glitches can also be interpreted as a reference to climate change. While ‘endless summer’ might be a tourist’s paradise, it is actually a nightmare for ecologically minded people, who see in it the end

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of humanity and the Earth itself. The tension between a naïve guitar playing and processing sounds on a computer can be regarded as a metaphor for the conflict between a naïve enjoyment of summer in California or Florida and the bashing by green organisations about the approaching apocalypse caused by global warming. How does the synthesis of a simple melody and glitch work in practice? Fennesz is not scared to challenge the listener, as demonstrated by the fact that he begins with ‘Made in Hongkong’, the least melodic track on the record, a kind of continuation of his first LP. Afterwards the quest for melody overpowers or at least balances Fennesz’s drive to experiment with noise. Every song works according to its own logic, although there are also commonalities. Once a theme is presented, it is repeated many times in a track, usually with slight changes in texture. On the title track, it feels like a guitar line tries to break through the sea of noise, which at times brings association with a malfunctioning computer, with its hisses and clicks. One can think about a proponent of ‘aesthetics of failure’, as presented by Cascone, entering into a dialogue with an old-style rocker, with the latter not only holding on but also prevailing in the end. In ‘Caecilia’, again, we have a struggle between melody and noise. However, on this occasion, as one blogger put it eloquently, ‘marimba notes float in and out of the hazy distortion in a manner that belies a certain yearning which is followed up by a simple guitar chord structure that reinforces the feeling evoked in the bell section’ (Zoltar 2010). The longest piece on the record, ‘Happy Audio’, breaks with this rule, as on this occasion the track is organised around a simple pattern, repeated with small variations till the end. There is no struggle between noise and melody – noise is used to produce a ‘happy sound’. True to its title, we can think about some kind of radio transmission; what is of interest to Fennesz on this occasion, again linking him to the ‘aesthetics of failure’ is that he pays attention not to what is transmitted, but to the transmission itself. Another track worthy of attention is ‘Before I Leave’. It is made up of long notes, played on an organ or on a computer simulating an organ sound, enriched by clicks, producing a sense of perfect harmony between the analogue and digital worlds. No doubt the commercial and artistic success of this music lies in perfectly hybridising melody and noise, marrying electronic and traditional instruments, as well as producing a sense of space and mood – something which lies at the core of ambient music. This quality was recognised by David Toop, who wrote apropos this record: This fluctuation between two states, a music that seems in some way familiar and another layer decomposing from that source material, evokes a feeling of nostalgia. Perversely, a desire suggests itself, to holiday for eternity in this endless summer without a place. How to travel there? ‘The beach itself has eroded over time, literally washing away’, wrote Lena Lencek and Gideon Bosker in their book, The Beach: The History of Paradise on Earth. This sense of the inexorable erosion of perfection, sweet dreams fading in the harsh light of mediated emotion, seems to me to be central to Fennesz, and

Rehberg, Fennesz and the Label Mego 191 when he arrests that dissipation, paradise momentarily out of focus as if videopaused, the feeling is bittersweet. (Toop 2004: 231) Finding another perfect match for these different elements informs Fennesz’s subsequent work. This is the reason that he sustained his place among the leading creators of Vienna electronica, but also a source of certain disappointment that he never tried to make something completely different, at least not in his solo work.

Venice (2004) and Black Sea (2008) Venice and Black Sea were released on the Touch label, based in London. The most likely reason that Fennesz moved to Touch was that during this period Mego suffered serious difficulties, broadly reflecting the crisis following ‘online-sation’ of music distribution. However, this is barely reflected in the music made by Fennesz, testifying to the fact that both companies give artists much artistic freedom. The only visible difference pertains to the artwork, which is quite different from that by Tina Frank. Despite its subtle references to global warming, Endless Summer can be enjoyed on the beach without feeling guilty about one’s pleasure. The mood of Venice and Black Sea is considerably darker. This is, again, announced by the titles of these two records. Venice connotes beauty, stagnation and death. Venice is famous for its resistance to change and deadly diseases, of which its carnival is a potent reminder. The city is supposedly sentenced to disappearance because of the rise of the sea level, which eventually will submerge its houses and bridges. It is also metaphorically dying because of the invasion by tourists, which drives the local population out. Some of these connotations are suggested by the cover of Fennesz’s record, with a photograph of an old wooden rowboat marooned in shallow waters and with another one, in the distance, also immobile. As well as pointing to Venice’s immobility and its resistance to change, it suggests that the tourist-artist will approach his topic slowly and with care, respecting its distrust of all things modern. Colin Buttimer, in his review for BBC Music, compared the experience of listening to Venice to viewing from a distance Monet’s weather and light studies: The longer the gaze is maintained, the more the colours vibrate and the forms shimmer between abstraction and figuration. The lack of any form of overt rhythmic instrumentation further underlines this impression, causing the music to float like a mirage on apparition. (Buttimer 2004) These words bring us back to the concept of ‘sonic hauntology’ – looking for something which cannot be properly recollected and has probably never existed, yet colours what we feel and think.

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The opening track, aptly titled ‘Rivers of Sand’, comes across as a search of melody through a wave of noise. as if trying to look for a lost piece of jewellery in the ‘rivers of sand’. Like moving through sand can be pleasant, even if frustrating, so the noise on this track is seductive. The outstanding tracks are ‘Circassian’ and ‘Transit’. ‘Circassian’ drowns in loud, slightly out-of-tune power chords, each of which leads a long and happy life after the initial strum. The string reverberations multiply and mutate endlessly, making it possible to imagine cathedrals, a jet airplane passing through billowy clouds at 500mph, or the volatile racket of a tropical storm. (Richardson 2004) ‘Transit’ stands out because it is not an instrumental piece but as a song performed by David Sylvian, with whom Fennesz collaborated on another occasion. Remarkable is not only the fact that one finds a song on a record of an artist who normally shuns this form, but that this song is not in the spirit of electronic music. Sylvian’s voice sounds very clear. It is not processed and completely dominates the clicks and cuts heard in the background, perhaps hinting at the respect in which Fennesz holds his English colleague. What is also remarkable are the lyrics, which can be interpreted as those of a love song, dedicated to a dying, perhaps Christian Europe, even though the title of this track contains less pathos than the lyrics: To wonder why of Europe Say your goodbyes to Europe Swallow the lie of Europe Our shared history dies with Europe (follow me, won’t you follow me?) A future’s hinting at itself Do you fear what I fear? All those names of ancestry Too gentle for the stones they bear The cover of Black Sea shows a shot of an industrial skyline across a filthybottomed straight at low tide. The image and title thus foretell a darker content. This proves right – the music is darker, heavier and less melodic. One thinks about winter rather than summer and, not surprisingly, one of the tracks, ‘Perfume for Winter’, has winter in its title. The sounds last longer, and the tracks are also longer, with the opening, ‘Black Sea’, being over ten minutes long. Moreover, the transitions between tracks are smooth. This affords this record the feel of a symphony or church music, as if the composer managed to hide the whole orchestra in his laptop. The track which stands out is ‘Glide’. As one reviewer noted, it ‘builds up an incredible swell of sound, that buzzes to an orchestral crescendo, until it

Rehberg, Fennesz and the Label Mego 193 breaks into a tidal wave of near silence, which washes off the coast of a Black Sea’ (Headphone Commute 2008). Or, to put it differently, it sounds like church music played in a noisy factory located on the beach. It testifies to Fennesz’s talent that he manages to merge seamlessly these various sources of music, as if to demonstrate that, although we tend to separate nature, culture and spirituality, in our heads or souls, they are united.

Bécs (2014) While much connects Bécs to the two records described previously, it deserves a special section for a number of reasons. First, it is a comeback album for Fennesz, marking his return to Vienna after a period of living in Paris, to the (Editions) Mego, after collaborating with other record companies and, in some measure, to the sound of Endless Summer, which brought him greatest international renown. Through returning to Mego, Fennesz also returned to Tina Frank as designer of the record’s cover. The image created by Frank is quite abstract, showing overlapping triangles of different colours. The effect is of multiple refraction, which can be regarded as a visual metaphor for the music in which Fennesz and Mego specialises. It also brings to mind the Haas House, a commercial building in Vienna opposite St Stephan’s Cathedral, designed by Viennese architect Hans Hollein, one of the leading exponents of postmodern design in Europe, whose form echoed the shape of the Roman fort which once stood on the site. With large mirrored glass sections across the facade, a corner of the building was designed to cantilever out over a subway station, creating an effective divide between two public spaces. It is regularly criticised for jarring with Vienna’s traditional architectural style. (Winston 2014) The very word jarring is suitable to Fennesz’s compositions because – as was mentioned already – he is not afraid to jar. Hence, the cover foretells the work in which tradition will be present but treated through a filter. The title of the record, Bécs, which means ‘Vienna’ in Hungarian, suggests that Vienna will be looked at from a distance. As with all instrumental music, it is difficult to say whether and how the music reflects the place, but the very fact of acknowledging his Austrian heritage is unique among Viennese electronic musicians. The music brings to mind Endless Summer because it is melodic and exuberant. But there are also differences. The pieces on Bécs are longer and the transition between them is smoother, making the record sound like a symphony. While Endless Summer brings to mind exterior, beaches and waves, many of the tracks on Bécs belong to an interior, perhaps a cathedral, with its elevated mood and special acoustic, allowing the sounds to reverberate forever. On some tracks, such as ‘Sav’, we even hear something like church bells, although such bells are most likely conjured by a modular synthesiser. The titular track, ‘Bécs’, offers a perfect synthesis of harmony and glitch. Glitch never breaks the melody; it creates

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it. Mark Richardson noted, ‘Rather than serving as texture, the strummed guitars play changes to accompany melodies. The drones and fractured processing are twinkly and bright, instead of dour and foreboding’ (Richardson 2014b). The record also stands out because it sounds more acoustic – ‘possibly the most naked acoustic playing to appear on a Fennesz record, as processing seems to cling to random notes like a burr before being flicked off with the next note’ (ibid.). While Bécs scores highly on the scale of perfection, it fares less well against the criterion of innovation. Again, to quote Richardson, Fennesz once illuminated the beauty of a digitally scrambled memory, but “Bécs” is a memory of a digitally scrambled memory. So while there’s something appealingly meta about returning to a sound that was so suggestive of experimental electronic music 13 years ago, there’s also just the slightest hint of surrender in the proposition. If electronic music in this vein is generally expected to push things forward, resurrecting a style from over a decade ago makes you wonder about motivation. But that’s an analytical judgement rather than an aesthetic one, because the music on “Bécs” is often gorgeous. (ibid.) Fennesz work on Bécs reminds me of David Hockney, who at some point in his career focused on painting flowers, simply because of their beauty and the pleasure the pictures of flowers give to the people who look at them. Vienna is beautiful too, and this record can be regarded as a monument to its charms.

9

Women in a mixed world Electric Indigo and Sweet Susie

Deep Listening is listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what you are doing. Such intense listening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, or one’s own thoughts as well as musical sounds. Deep Listening represents a heightened state of awareness and connects to all that there is. As a composer I make my music through Deep Listening. – Pauline Oliveros

It is considered unfair to group artists together for reasons other than artistic. However, this often happens when female artists are considered. One such case is a book, which I consulted when writing this chapter, titled The Memory Factory: The Forgotten Women Artists of Vienna c. 1900 (Johnson 2012), which summarises the attitude of authors writing about women who broke into art – they do not receive due attention and are subsequently forgotten. Is this also the case of female electronic musicians? Of course, it is difficult to say what will happen in fifty or a hundred years from now, but the impression I got from meeting Austrian musicians and other people active in the scene is that being a woman was not a huge obstacle to enter the scene in the 1990s and as time has passed, there are more and more women who try their hand on electronic gear. This chapter is devoted to two of them, Electric Indigo and Sweet Susie, whose names cropped up most often in my discussions with men active on the scene. Before I chart their careers and discuss their style, let’s present in broader terms the position of a woman in the world of music.

The status of female musicians The bulk of studies devoted to women in music argue that they are marginalised (Cohen 1991: 201–22; McClary 1991; Halstead 1997; Whiteley 2000; Rodgers 2010; Farrugia 2012; Moy 2015: 22–43). This is reflected especially in their scarcity in certain professions and positions, associated with greater creativity and bestowing financial and cultural privileges. While there are relatively many female singers and dancers (hence women whose principal vehicle of expression are their bodies), there are far fewer music composers, producers and DJs. Jill

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Halstead, in a book titled The Woman Composer, illustrates this trend by mentioning that ‘the 1995 Proms season of concerts included works by only five female composers compared with some 106 male composers; it featured 50 male conductors as opposed to one female; 42 male as against 10 female solo instrumentalists’ (Halstead 1997: vii). Female musicians also complain that even when they achieve recognition, this is often not due to their creativity but their visibility. In this context Freida Abtan mentions that in an interview given in 2015 by Björk, the musician complained that her production work is misattributed to her male collaborators or simply ignored by the media. This prompted Abtan to ask rhetorically: ‘If a rich and famous woman such as Björk can’t get acknowledgement for her technical work as a music producer, what chance do other women in the field have?’ (Abtan 2016: 54). There are additional problems for women to enter the world of music. Sara Cohen, in her book about rock culture in Liverpool of the 1980s, writes, A compilation album of local bands . . . funded by Liverpool City Council was entitled ‘Jobs For the Boys’. When a local female performer tried to raise funding for one entitled ‘Jobs For the Girls’ none was forthcoming, but in any case she had trouble finding enough female artists to fill the album, and when the local community centre decided to stage an event entitled ‘Women and Music’, they too had difficulty finding local all-women groups or even an organizer for the event. (Cohen 1991: 204) Cohen’s example shows that scarcity and marginalisation of female musicians is rarely a matter of specific policies and conscious decisions on the part of overtly misogynistic men. More often this is a question of traditions shaping music cultures, reflected in education and everyday life, as well as different social expectations of men and women, including in marriage and parenthood. It is easier for men than for women to combine the role of a musician and parent, especially if the former requires frequent travel and spending extended periods away from home (Halstead 1997: 67–96). As a result, women often do not take advantage of certain opportunities even when they are presented to them. There is also a tendency to play down the importance of women in the history of music. Many books about genres such as rock, techno or punk do not mention female artists at all. That said, the writing off of women in the last two decades or so led to a backlash, namely to the plethora of academic publications focused specifically on women in pop-rock or their absence. If we add to that journalistic works on this subject we might get the impression that there is, in fact, more written about women in pop-rock than about men, as there are practically no studies taking issue with the over-presence of men in specific music professions, genres or phenomena. Such an upsurge of publications raises the question whether it will eventually bring equal recognition to female musicians or confirm their ghettoisation within particular genres by suggesting that there are composers, on one hand, and ‘women composers’, on the other, or there is (just) punk and ‘female punk’. Some

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authors who write about female musicians show an awareness of this problem. For example, Tara Rodgers, author of Pink Noises: Women on Electronic Music and Sound, quotes some female artists complaining that their work is reductively compared to other women artists simply because they are women (Rodgers 2010: 11). Nevertheless, Rodgers does it herself by choosing female musicians as her subjects and implicitly encouraging readers to make comparisons between them. My own position is that in publications about social and cultural history of specific musical phenomena (such as electronic music in Vienna) singling out women is justified, as their experience tends to be different from their colleagues’ experiences. This is even more the case when considering Electric Indigo and Sweet Susie, as they showed self-awareness of their positions as women artists, by championing female participation in electronic music and cultural production at large. Authors of two book-length studies about women in the world of electronic music, the previously quoted Tara Rodgers and Rebekah Farrugia in Beyond the Dance Floor: Female DJs, Technology and Electronic Music Culture (2012) argue that historically electronic music, even in the context of masculinisation of poprock music at large, is seen as a particularly male genre. Rodgers, for instance, draws attention to the militaristic terminology of electronic music: ‘DJs “battle”; a producer “triggers” a sample with a “controller”, “executes” a programming “command”, types “bang” to send a signal, and tries to prevent a “crash”. The very act of making electronic music thus unfolds with reference to high-tech combat, shot through with symbols of violent confrontation and domination’ (Rodgers 2010: 7). Farrugia states that EDM [electronic dance music] defining characteristics are its predominant reliance on electronic instruments and tools and its very limited inclusion of lyrical content. As an electronically based musical form, by definition it invokes associations with masculinity and men, as technology continues to be discursively and materially framed in masculine terms. (Farrugia 2012: 8) She mentions some additional factors reflected in masculinisation of DJing, such as the significance of record collecting: ‘Because men have typically invested most heavily in collecting music, collecting itself becomes part of the gatekeeping process that can dissuade women from becoming DJs’ (ibid.: 29). Yet, she also observes that since the 1990s the number of women who have moved from the dance floor to secure a place behind the decks has steadily increased. From time to time, popular dance music magazines such as XLR8R, Urb and Mixer have featured female DJs and producers. On occasion, women even graced the covers of these glossy, high profile print magazines. Moreover, some of the women who have broken through DJ culture’s glass ceiling . . . are reluctant to see gender as an issue in EDM and DJ culture. (ibid.: 6)

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Freida Abtan, drawing on her own experience as a composer, DJ and educator, argues that the main reason for scarcity of women in electronic music is social: ‘The necessary skills are passed around closed communities and friendship networks, which are often predominantly male; as a result, solo female artists have more difficulty acquiring them’ (Abtan 2016: 55). Hence, the best chance for a woman to break into such a network is by becoming a girlfriend of a musician who is its member (ibid.: 55). While taking on board the arguments why women have a difficult entrance to electronic music, we can also list some reasons why this genre is women-friendly. DJing can be learnt relatively fast, and the equipment used by producers and DJs is getting lighter as the time goes by, a factor of particular importance for the physically weaker sex; in contrast to classical instruments, such as pianos and cellos, which do not get less bulky. Moreover, female DJs can work and mostly do work as solo artists, therefore they do not face the problem encountered by their counterparts trying to set up an all-girl rock band, namely a shortage of women playing rock instruments, especially bass guitars and drums. As Mavis Bayton observed in 1988, ‘[m]ale musicians are usually drawn together to play a certain style of music. This is not necessarily true for female musicians . . . . The small size of the “pool” is a determining factor here’ (Bayton 1990: 239). In electronic music this is not a problem, as sounds of these instruments can be simulated by computers. With more female artists entering the electronic scene, it is arguably easier for female DJs to find work. At the same time, these women who ‘made it’ early on received a special status. This fact is confirmed by my research. Whenever I asked Austrian musicians who else, in their opinion, should be included in my project, practically all listed Electric Indigo and many mentioned Sweet Susie, who are the protagonists of this chapter. They also, together with Tina 303 (Tina Grünsteidl) feature in the book Wien Pop in multiple roles, as DJs, music producers and animators of the electronic scenes (Grőbchen et al. 2013: 324–53). Electric Indigo, together with some other female DJs, operating in the Vienna’s techno scene, again Tina 303 and Cassy, gets a small section entitled ‘Frauen in der Vienna Electronica’ in the previously mentioned study by Robert Harauer (Harauer 2001: 41–2). The female artists themselves, while sharing many concerns related to the marginal status of women in music, avoid a typical narrative of being pushed out or bossed around by the ‘boys’. Instead, they emphasise the advantages of their position of being among the few women in the male world and the support they received from their male colleagues and partners, as well as other women. Hence, rather than presenting them as women in a male world, it is better to see them as operating in a ‘mixed world’, in which men and women are keener to collaborate with each other than the adherents of gender-based ‘identity politics’ want us to believe.

Electric Indigo’s career Electric Indigo (true name Susanne Kirchmayr, b. 1965) shares many similarities with other artists active on the Viennese electronic scene in the 1990s. Yet, at the

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time she was only one of a few women in Vienna who managed to make inroads into electronic music. In a world dominated by men, she not only carved space for herself but also became one of the most important musicians to come from Vienna and a source of inspiration for other female artists, in her own country and abroad. She is mentioned, for example, in the previously quoted article by Abtan, in the context of female activism within the field of electronic music. Moreover, while the majority of her peers, whose career after 2000 slowed down, Electric Indigo, only in her early fifties, achieved a status appropriate to the quality of her work. Kirchmayr came from a middle-class family from Vienna. As a child, she got piano lessons. Later she indulged in her passion for music as a fan and collector of records, but she collected hip-hop and soul records rather than electronic music. Her peaceful existence was violently disrupted by the deaths of her parents in a car accident when she was eighteen. Since then she and her two brothers had to start living independently, as well as to deal with the trauma following such a tragic incident. This was helped by the compensation and insurance money they received, which, however, made her somewhat disoriented and possibly less inclined to pursue an ordinary nine-to-five work than if her parents were still alive. During this period she discovered electronic music. As she put it herself, I incidentally came across Brian Eno and some pretty strange Japanese electronica. I went to a couple of acid house parties in Vienna and one in London in 1988 and I think I already knew LFO and some other Warp stuff by 1990, but it took me until 1991 to really get into electronic dance music. A Viennese DJ, Gebel, who worked at Black Market Vienna, introduced me to DJ Rush on Saber Records. That was it. My initiation to techno happened in a record store with headphones on. I couldn’t believe what I heard. It was kind of the essence of what I had always liked in music. Right after that experience I also got to know Underground Resistance and then it was completely clear: This is where I want to go! (Electric Indigo Interview) In 1989 Kirchmayr began working as a DJ in a pub, presenting funk, jazz, hiphop and occasionally some indie stuff from the 1980s. Meaningfully, when, after two years, she started to play techno, she was dismissed from her job on account of the fact that the audience wants something different – in a nutshell, lighter. She is not the only musician covered in this book who told me about such a beginning of his or her career. This was also the story of Peter Rehberg (see Chapter 8), who was kicked out from the club where he was DJing because the music he played was not approved of by the audience. The difference lies in the fact that for Rehberg it was not a major setback – by this point he was a member of a network of boys interested in ‘weird stuff’. Susanne was not so lucky because her circle of professional friends was smaller, and by this point she did not know how to mix music; she did not have enough credibility on the small Viennese techno scene. Another gate through which Electric Indigo entered into the world of electronic music was working as an editor of the Musicbox in 1989–90, the previously mentioned radio programme, produced and fronted by Werner Geier. In common with

Figure 9.1 Electric Indigo and Angelina Yershova in Rome in 2014 Photo: Ilya Shamuratov

Figure 9.2 Electric Indigo Screenshot from the television documentary Out of Vienna (2016)

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a number of other artists, whom I interviewed, Kirchmayr praised Geier for his enthusiasm and encouragement of young talent, such as herself. Given that in the early 1990s Berlin became the European capital of techno, Kirchmayr’s ambition was to work and live there. She succeeded; from 1993 to 1996, she lived in this city and worked at Hard Wax, one of the leading institutions, promoting EDM in Europe, set up by Mark Emestus in 1989. Hard Wax consisted of a shop in the Kreuzberg District of Berlin and a distribution company. Needless to say, thanks to being in charge of sales, Kirchmayr became well connected with artists of similar interests. In this way, she overcame the main problem negatively affecting women’s participation in electronic music, namely being excluded from the ‘boys clubs’ of those noodling on electronic instruments. For example, among employees of Hard Wax was DJ Hell, with whom Kirchmayr subsequently collaborated. During her Berlin years Electric Indigo produced her first compositions, some of which were released on Disko B, a label which also released Patrick Pulsinger’s productions. However, as with other electronic musicians from Vienna, Electric Indigo returned to her hometown, in part, because in Berlin she felt alienated. Although there was no language barrier, the contact with people living there was superficial. Furthermore, as with all creative people, at some stage she wanted to move on. Back in Vienna, Kirchmayr continued to compose and perform. She also became recognised as a feminist activist, thanks to launching in 1998 ‘Female Pressure’, an international platform for female DJs, producers and activists involved in electronic music. It is a web-based database for female talent created to promote mutual support and communication and to provide a source of information about female electronic musicians: It comprises a database in which female DJs, music producers and event organizers can register, an online music sharing platform and the two mailing lists: “Female Pressure” and “Female Pressure Vienna”, for virtual socializing, skill sharing and announcing local events. Additionally, radio shows are currently broadcast at community radio stations in Vienna and Hamburg under the Female Pressure banner and Female Pressure club nights are organized in cities across Europe with flourishing EDM scenes. (Reitsamer 2012: 399) Nowadays, Electric Indigo is probably as well known for being involved in the careers of her ‘electronic sisters’, as for her own music. Over the years Kirchmayr’s activities became more varied. Nowadays they include production of music, playing live and composing for theatre and video art, as well as engaging in multi-media spectacles. Such multitasking, on one hand, can be seen as a distraction from her main passion, producing music, but in reality, it helps her to develop her composing skills. As she herself explains, ‘[A]lmost every time I’ve made music for theatre I’ve used the material for other projects later on, developed it further and put it in new contexts’ (quoted in Darton-Moore 2015). Electric Indigo is also well travelled; during her artistic life she has performed in nearly forty countries, including in the US, Asia and many countries in Europe.

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Amongst the highlights of her career is playing the main stage at the Detroit Electronic Music Festival in 2002. In 2003, Kirchmayr founded her own label, indigo:inc recordings, on which she releases her compositions because, as she admitted with modesty, few labels wanted to release her music, largely because of its status of being in between experimental and popular music. She also curated various musical and cultural events, including PopFest in Vienna, in 2015. In 2012, Kirchmayr was awarded the Outstanding Artist Award for Music by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education and Women. Asked about the longevity of her career, Electric Indigo listed several factors, which are also mentioned by Jill Halstead in her book about women musicians, namely a relative lack of household responsibilities and financial independence. As she put it herself, I’m really not the best address for keys to economic success. I have an optimistic nature and relatively little responsibilities. I don’t have kids, my rent is rather low, I am an expert in downgrading and, above all, I have brothers and friends and my partner who can help me out in the worst case. This combination makes me feel free and integrated at the same time which I consider a huge privilege. I can’t but stay authentic in artistic regards, I couldn’t sell out because I don’t have the means to do so. And, naturally, I am not looking for such means either. (Electric Indigo Interview) Of all the artists I interviewed for this project, Electric Indigo was also the most positive about changes brought by the development of digital technologies. She mentioned the increased opportunities for producing new sounds and reduction of the weight and bulkiness of the equipment musicians have to carry to perform all over the world. At the same time, the loss of revenue resulting from the decline in records sales due to music moving to the ‘cloud’ did not affect her in a major way because her earnings hardly ever depended on this source of revenue.

Electric Indigo’s style Indigo is a type of blue. It is an ultimate cool colour. This is also what characterises Kirchmayr’s music. It is not music which attracts the listener because of its melody or lyricism, but rather its rhythm and texture. It affects not only one’s body, as is the case with most electronic music and especially techno, a genre which is her favourite (although techno does not exhaust her interests), but also one’s mind. As important for her as composing in a traditional sense is researching sounds. She confessed that in common with many techno producers, she loves to indulge in the search for sounds. Have you ever heard of anybody who sat in the studio and listened to variations of a pure kick drum the whole night long? I have heard such stories repeatedly. I love to change one parameter after the other and listen to the results holding down one key for an hour. (Electric Indigo Interview)

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The vast majority of her compositions are instrumental, and in those where we hear human voice, it is sampled or distorted. On such occasions the raw material of her investigation are usually recordings of spoken language. She uses a technique known as granular synthesis, consisting of using tiny snippets of sound that can be manipulated individually and recombined to generate the final output (Price 2005). The main reason to use the human voice is to treat it as another sound which can be dismantled, deconstructed and re-assembled: to dehumanise it, although it also helps to identify what cannot be replicated or mutilated by the machine. She concurs with such a reading, claiming, ‘My interest in granular synthesis came from the idea of transforming spoken word recordings in various languages into increasingly abstract sounds’ (quoted in Darton-Moore 2015). When I commented that, given her feminist preoccupations, Electric Indigo’s music comes across as surprisingly free of political message, she confirmed my reading, adding that she envisages no circumstances in which she will agree to produce ‘political music’. For this reason, as well as because of textual characteristics of her work, it is worth evoking here the concept of ‘reduced listening’, as coined by Pierre Schaeffer, in which a sound is considered exclusively in terms of its intrinsic acoustic properties and with a deliberate disregard for its origin and the circumstances of its production . . . The twofold goal of reduced listening is to focus the listener on the aurality of the song and to finally divorce the sound from its associated image. And, although reduced listening may be difficult, it is not impossible. A group of words spoken aloud repeatedly can become a nonreferential sound in the listener’s mind, divorced from the semantic meaning of the phrase, in a psychological effect known as “semantic satiation”. (Lyon 2013: 625) Admittedly, ‘reduced listening’ is an important objective of most techno music, as such listening allows to ‘forget oneself’, in a way drug users ‘forget themselves’ when under the influence of substances. In the case of Electric Indigo, however, the project of ‘reduced listening’, as with Schaeffer, is mostly aesthetic. Behind it there is a desire to discover new aural experiences and have an intimate relationship with sounds – sounds which were never before invented or actualised. Such a project links Kirchmayr to experimental music and she is happy to embrace such labelling. One can also think about ‘deep listening’, as conveyed by Pauline Oliveros, whose words I used as a motto for this chapter, because of a large number of sources which inspire Electric Indigo. On the other hand, Kirchmayr emphasises the danceability of her productions, confirmed by her long career as a DJ, including playing for the dancing crowds at events such as Love Parade in Berlin. Electric Indigo’s dual interest in rhythm and pure sound/texture situates her inside, as well as in between, techno, ambient and noise music. This division is reflected in titles of her productions. Some are completely abstract, such as ‘109.47 B’ or ‘Dissonanze 15’, which look like numbers in a catalogue. They can also be regarded as a reflection of her search for and research of different sounds – ‘109.47 B’, which is a follow-up of ‘109.47 degrees’ suggests that the composer

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went through 109 stages and forty-seven mini-stages before she reached the intended result and after that created its mutation or B versions. Other tracks take their titles from places, often exotic, such as ‘Orkhon’, which refers to a place in Mongolia, or ‘Gorodok’ (her most-streamed piece on Spotify), which means ‘little town’ in Russian – presumably a memory from another trip. When the style of female performers is examined, their physical appearance is frequently considered. Tani Gadir mentions that in order to increase their marketability, the promoters of female DJs foreground their femininity and sexuality, by using pink and purple colour schemes and web space dominated by ‘sexy’ photographs. Moreover, competitions for female DJs play up their ‘skills in displaying an idealised hyperfemininity through fashion presentations’ (Gadir 2016: 118). Was and is this also the case with Kirchmayr? Certainly her artistic pseudonym signals her hostility towards ‘warm femininity’ because indigo can be seen as the opposite of pink. Googling her photos one also usually finds a woman dressed in black with her head partially shaved and a stern expression on her face. However, this is not to say that Electric Indigo shuns femininity but, rather, that she projects an image of a woman who is happy with herself and engages in relationships on her own terms, in the way associated with feminists.

‘Gorodok’ (2008), ‘Siberia’ (2009) and ‘Mongolia’ (2011) While with other artists I focused on the LPs they produced, in the case of Electric Indigo it will not do justice to her productions. On one hand, there are relatively few single-authored LPs in her portfolio. A large proportion of her work is a product of her collaboration with fellow musicians and visual artists, and they function as individual tracks, scattered in different places: on compilations, on Soundcloud, YouTube and Vimeo. What follows is a discussion of a selection of her productions, which reflects both the quality of her work and the different artistic ‘hats’ she wears: as a composer of techno and ambient music, DJ/remixer and sound-artist. I decided to begin my analysis with arguably her most accessible works. ‘Gorodok’, which means a ‘little town’ (we can presume that it lies somewhere in the depth of Russia), ‘Siberia’ and ‘Mongolia’ refer to the farthest and least-known parts of the old Eastern Bloc. By giving her work such titles, Electric Indigo acknowledges her nomadic lifestyle and subtly refers to her worldwide recognition. She performed in Novosibirsk (the clip can be seen on YouTube), which is regarded as a major centre of techno and club culture in the old Soviet Union. Such titles also bring to mind the work of Fennesz, who tends to name his records after places he visited and holds dear in his heart. However, Fennesz chooses warm places; Kirchmayr, true to her pseudonym, casts her eye on colder regions. ‘Gorodok’ was released in 2008 on a compilation EP, Transformers, by the Berlin-based Athletikk label. It is described as minimal techno, but such a description is not entirely accurate, as the piece is versatile, with several layers of different textures, including clicking and buzzing noises, against dynamic beats and catchy melody. It comes across as a rhythmic, danceable and elegant piece. Despite being

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six-and-a-half minutes long, it feels concise, having a distinct beginning and end, rendering it perhaps the most song-like track Electric Indigo ever created. Siberia includes three tracks: ‘Selenga’, ‘Angara’ and ‘Phoca Siberica’. ‘Selenga’ took its name from a long river which passes through Mongolia and Russia, finishing its journey in Lake Baikal. Most likely this track was inspired by Kirchmayr’s travel to this part of the world, and – compared with ‘ordinary’ techno – it is less technological and more ‘organic’. It starts with a long sound, which gives the impression of a vast space, through which a man-made object is moving – a drone perhaps. It pulsates with beats, but under them there is a nostalgic melody, as if its composer was yearning for a life amongst wild nature she had no chance and probably no real desire to live, but which nevertheless held an attraction for a ‘townie’ like herself. Although it lasts over seven minutes, it feels concise and danceable. The following ‘Angara’ feels more like a journey through a vast space, perhaps travelling by the trans-Siberian train.

Remixes of ‘Winter’ by Joseph Haydn (2009) and ‘Et Stykke Mindre’ by Heidi Mortenson (2012) It might seem surprising to put together these two pieces, given that one is a reworking of a classical piece and one is a contemporary work. However, they both represent what I describe as ‘deep remix’, namely creating a work whose purpose is not to improve on the hypotext (which is the case of Kruder and Dorfmeister’s remixes) but, rather, to analyse it, break it into pieces, reassemble it and put it in a framework of a different musical genre. Moreover, both engage with the question of the place of a human voice and language in electronic music, reflecting Electric Indigo’s belief that the voice should be treated like any other instrument in the mix, a conviction, which nevertheless she is prepared to put to the test. ‘Winter’ was included as a bonus track on the record Re: Haydn, released in 2009 by Universal Music Austria, to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Joseph Haydn’s death (see Chapter 2). The original piece is part of The Seasons oratorio, first performed in 1801. It was meant to be a bi-lingual piece, capitalising on Haydn’s popularity in England. The libretto was written by Austrian nobleman Baron Gottfried van Swieten (mentioned in Chapter 1), who based it on extracts from the long English poem The Seasons by James Thomson. To make Thomson’s poem usable, van Swieten had to abbreviate the original text to such an extent that it practically got lost in translation. Increasingly during the course of the oratorio, the words are van Swieten’s own or even imported from foreign sources. It could thus be suggested that Haydn’s Oratorio fits well the idea of ‘deep remix’ – remix in which the hypotext is changed so much that is almost unrecognisable. Although Electric Indigo’s ‘Winter’ belongs to the boldest reinterpretations of Haydn’s works included on the Re: Haydn record, it preserves the melody and classical style of singing. However, it sounds as if the same piece is played from two tape recorders switched on at different times and on occasions the first recorder is stopped to allow for the delayed one to catch up. Moreover, one of

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them is malfunctioning and the noise (as in the case of noise music) is not hidden but amplified. There is extra buzzing and hissing, obscuring understanding of the libretto. One can imagine listening to Haydn during a nuclear war, among the buzzing of helicopters and drones. This experiment emphasises both the multilingual character of the original and the temporal disjuncture between the two versions. Rather than trying to prove that Haydn is ‘our contemporary’, Electric Indigo shows that he is not. However, this does not mean that his music cannot be used as material for a new work. As on many occasions in her work, the title, ‘Flachs Dub’, captures well Electric Indigo’s approach and technique. Flachs refers to the part of ‘Winter’ titled Abgesponnen ist der Flachs (Spun is he flax); dub is added to reflect on delay effects used in the piece. The material used in ‘Et Stykke Mindre’ is produced by Kirchmayr’s contemporary, a female composer from Denmark, Heidi Mortenson, whom Electric Indigo met many years previously. It can thus be regarded as an example of ‘sisterly cooperation’. It is a melancholic song, sung by the author in a sultry, ‘Scandinavian’ way, which the lay audience might associate with Björk. The title translates as ‘One piece less’, and the song concerns the gradual losing of a beloved one, most likely because of the break-up of a romantic relationship. This loss amounts to losing something of oneself and being unable to face reality. ‘One piece less of you’ is equated with ‘one piece less of me’. Remixing of ‘Et Stykke Mindre’ led to creating a dynamic, techno piece, to which one wants to dance. The original melancholy is there, but so is joy, perhaps reflecting the lightness people feel when they start to lead a solitary life. Another characteristic is breaking down Mortenson’s singing into short snippets and overlaying them, so that the meaning of the original lyrics gets lost, even for those who know Danish. The ‘Scandinavian’ voice also loses some of its ethnic characteristics and sounds somewhat French. Moreover, what sounded like a monologue changes into a dialogue or even a multi-conversation, yet one in which the singers pay no attention to what their interlocutors are saying or mock their words. Such a reaction can be regarded as an allegory of electronic music at large, whose response to a discussion about the advantages and perils of multilingualism and multiculturalism is to ‘dissolve language’. It is also worth mentioning the irony of creating a remix of ‘Et Stykke Mindre’, given that et stykke mindre means ‘one piece less’. On this occasion, however, dissolving language was not to the taste of the producer of the hypotext, who objected about the lyrics being ‘senselessly destroyed’.

‘Morpheme’ (2015) Electric Indigo composed ‘Morpheme’ for the Heroines of Sound Festival in Berlin, a yearly event showcasing the work of the leading European female sound artists. The final result was a video produced jointly by Kirchmayr and an Austrian video artist Thomas Wagensommerer. In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of language. By giving such a title to her work, its author alludes to her passion for breaking sound into the smallest possible units, researching them, manipulating them and putting them together. Her art can thus be compared

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to the subfield of linguistics known as morphology, although it does not exhaust everything which she is doing. On this occasion, the genesis of the piece was a nine-second audio recording of a phrase from a talk by cultural theorist Sadie Plant: ‘To let noise into the system is a kind of fine art in both cybernetic terms and in terms of making music too.’ The music was fully created from processing the audio recording of the above-mentioned sentence, which suggests that through analysing noise we can learn something of importance regarding human communication and music. However, watching the video one thinks first about the creation of the universe rather than the birth of human language. It begins with silence and darkness, which is broken by the sound of crackles and appearance of small dots against a dark screen, as if they were cosmic particles floating in the space following the Big Bang. One reviewer compared the sounds and their images to ‘atoms dancing’ (Anonymous 2014). They do not move in a completely random way or at any rate, they move against some pattern, filling the background. Gradually the music changes into pounding beats and the dots become less sparse and connected by lines, as if it was a map of the travels of cosmic objects. However, the new dots keep appearing and moving aimlessly, and the rhythm-based music is shadowed by less structured, seemingly random, ‘floating’ sounds. Such a movement from chaos to structure, which is, however, always haunted by chaos, can be regarded as a metaphor for creating music and

Figure 9.3 Electric Indigo at Heroines of Sound Festival 2017 Photo: Udo Siegfriedt

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art at large and especially the type which suits Electric Indigo, who enjoys long periods of unstructured exploration of sounds till a certain structure emerges. Yet, even this is never an ultimate goal because once it happens, the temptation appears to break ‘sentences’ into smaller units, morphemes and phonemes and start again. The way ‘Morpheme’ works brings to mind the concept of synaesthesia, as used by Nicholas Cook and, in particular, the type described by him as ‘conformance’, namely relations of similarity (Cook 1998: 100). Allan Cameron, drawing on this concept, uses as an example Ryoichi Kurokawa’s video for Aoki Takamasa’s track ‘Mirabeau’ (2006), in which the glitchy rhythms are ‘mirrored by Kurakowa’s abstract black and red shapes, which pulse and contort in time to the music’ (Cameron 2013: 757). Cameron argues that such videos show how sound and image converge as data (ibid.: 758). This is also the case on this occasion; the visual part was created from three-dimensional representations of each character of the same sentence by Plant which was used by Electric Indigo. Behind such a project is the desire to capture and describe the world: the project which is as much scientific as it is artistic.

Sweet Susie’s career Susi Rogenhofer (b. 1971) came from a family with interests in art and music. Both her parents were painters; her brother is also a DJ and a passionate record collector. She started to DJ herself in 1993, when she was in a relationship with Sugar B, a DJ, singer and music producer well known on the electronic music scene in Vienna from the late 1980s. In the 1990s he collaborated with Kruder and Dorfmeister and is active in the music business till now. Sugar B had then a radio show, Silly Solid Swound System, which introduced the Viennese audience to electronic music. The name ‘Sweet Susie’ was meant to match ‘Sugar B’. Consciously or not, it conveyed the friendliness of their approach, which was at odds with the colder and more aloof attitude of the remaining actors of the electronic scene. This part of the story fits well the dominant narrative of a woman in the electronic world, as described by previously quoted Freida Abtan, who breaks into the scene by becoming the girlfriend of a male ‘insider’. In 1995, Sugar B was asked by the club Flex to host a themed night. In this way the Dub Club was born, with the couple’s friend, DJ Gümix, also being a part of it. Gümix and Sugar B brought to the club the spirit of reggae and especially dub. At this time dub culture was flourishing in the UK but was barely established in Vienna. Their idea was to present reggae music produced abroad, as well as showcase local talent. Consequently, the night contributed to what was later described as the Vienna Sound, both in the sense of bringing a different sound to Vienna clubs and in the sense of influencing the work of local artists. One notable example was the work of Sofa Surfers, whose member Wolfgang Schloegl acknowledged Dub Club’s influence on the band’s style. Over the years it presented productions of, among others, Kruder and Dorfmeister, Pulsinger and Tunakan, Africa Bambaataa, Matthew Herbert, Mad Professor, Roots Manuva, Pan Sonic, Gangstar, The Bug, Basement Jaxx, Mouse on Mars, Adrian Sherwood, which have been supported from the organisers on the turntables.

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Presentation of black culture in Vienna was primarily aesthetically motivated, reflecting the interest of the hosts in exotic sounds and cultures. It was not consciously inspired by any identity politics, but in practice the night was a magnet for many immigrants from Africa, who thanks to Dub Club had a place to hang out where their music was played and appreciated by a wider audience. By the same token, Dub Club became a place where people of different ethnic backgrounds could mix. From this perspective it could be compared to the situation in Coventry and Birmingham in the late 1970s, when black and white people came together to create and listen to Two-Tone Ska. On both occasions these meetings reflected the changing demography of the respective cities, namely the increase in migrant workers. The Dub Club lasted till 2007. Apart from memories of the participants, it produced more tangible results – two Dub Club compilation albums, released on Kruder and Dorfmeister’s label, G-Stone Records: 2000 and One Love and Picked from the Floor. Around 2000 Rogenhofer started to produce her own music using electronic instruments, first on her own and later collaborating with her partner in private life, Manni Montana. Montana was previously a member of various Viennese punk bands before becoming half of a successful electronic

Figure 9.4 Sweet Susie in 2009 Photo: Mirjana Rukavina, edited to a collage by Susi Rogenhofer

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Figure 9.5 Sweet Susie and Manni Montana Photo Maria Rogenhofer, edited by Susi Rogenhofer

duo BASK and producing an album The Return of the Punk Monk (2003–2004) with American singer and songwriter Dolli Melaine and Wolfgang Schloegl. In 2006, Sweet Susie and Montana released their co-produced album Inspired by Mozart. Since then they often work together both on music production and various social and community projects, which they originate, organise or curate. They set up their own label, Private Pleasure Recordings, which released, among other things, the work of a famous Lebanese composer and oud player, Marcel Khalifé. In 2009 they curated ‘Asian Village’; this being part of the festival ‘Wiener Festwochen’. For this occasion over twenty artists from Asia were invited to perform in several public spaces, such as a street in the centre of Vienna and the Academy of Fine Arts. In 2010 Rogenhofer founded ‘femous’, a platform for presenting work of female artists. In 2011, 100 performances of female artists took place in Austria under ‘femous’ banner, at festivals such as Ars Electronica, Donaufestival and Jazz Festival Vienna. Among the invited artists were Peaches, Nailah Porter, Chra, Pia Palme and, as one might expect, Electric Indigo. Increasingly, Rogenhofer combines her music work with projects in plastic arts, chiefly photography and filmmaking, in part reflecting her studies at the

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Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna as a mature student. Her photographs and sound works have been displayed in numerous art galleries in Austria.

Sweet Susie’s style As the preceding description demonstrates, Sweet Susie’s career has followed a trajectory which is typical for electronic musicians, including Electric Indigo. It started with DJing, went through producing and composing music, to projects which are intermedial and either require a wider variety of skills or collaboration with artists who possess such skills. What differentiates her endeavours is that they are community-oriented. In this sense, Sweet Susie is the opposite to the stereotype of an electronic musician as locked in his/her studio and immersed in moving knobs on synthesisers or a mouse on a computer screen. In her case it is also particularly difficult to separate the style from the (private) person, as the two are so intermeshed. This is something which she herself expressed, saying, ‘[F]or me music is like normal life’. This means that music is part of normal life; musicians should integrate art into their other endeavours and behave like normal people. Furthermore, music should serve other aims; not be art for art’s sake. In other words, music should be political. This approach, which contrasts with the position appropriated by Electric Indigo, explains the fact that her taste appears to be more eclectic than that of the majority of musicians covered in this book. The choices she made during her time as a host of Dub Club reflect it. As her old partner, Sugar B said, initially the idea was to play dub and reggae, but quickly the club moved into other directions. The mission was to play music the visitors never heard: ‘fight the [musical] monoculture’ (quoted in Grőbchen et al. 2013: 351). Another characteristic of Rogenhofer’s work is self-reflexivity and intertextuality, which surfaced when she moved from music to plastic arts. In her photographs and film animations she draws on her experience as a DJ and observer of people visiting clubs. She tries to demonstrate that clubbers, particularly those going to clubs playing repetitive, electronic music, follow specific rituals, not unlike believers visiting places of worship. This results from the fact that they treat techno parties and raves as a means to achieve transcendence. Accordingly, the DJ plays a role of a secular priest, promising his/her followers that they reach spirituality. Such arrangement is also reflected in the architecture of the club, where the DJ desk can be compared to the altar and the flickering lights substitute religious illumination. The club itself stands for heterotopia, as defined by Foucault – a place located outside the normal social order.

KV 2006 – Inspired by Mozart (2006) As I mentioned in first chapter, despite a certain grudge towards Vienna’s image as a city of classical music, when the opportunity presented itself, the electronic

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musicians demonstrated their allegiance, affinity to or at least interest in Vienna’s classical past by taking part in commemorations of the lives and works of the music masters. Sweet Susie and Manni Montana are no exception. They participated in the lavish ‘Mozart’s year’ in 2006, commemorating the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, by releasing a record KV 2006 – Inspired by Mozart on the Viennese jazz label Quinton. The recording was done in cooperation with musicians from the Nouvelle Cuisine Big Band, who contributed their improvisations. KV is a reference to the Köchelverzeichnis: the most respected catalogue of Mozart’s works, finished in 1862 by Ludwig von Köchel. By giving their work a title KV 2006 the musicians suggest that their work should sit along the original works of Mozart. This might be seen a joke or a sign of certain arrogance. Still, it tells us something of the couple’s approach of Mozart, which is different from Electric Indigo’s take on Haydn. This approach is marked by a desire to render Mozart as our contemporary, as opposed to emphasising the gap between his times and the present day. The short quotations from the musicians included in the booklet confirm such a reading. We find there statements such as ‘The crux was: How can I take certain elements in Mozart’s works and transfer them to the 21st century?’ or ‘For “Papageno” I focused on the easygoing spirit of the character. The result is a funky track with elements of Hip Hop’. These statements are placed against numerous pictures, some of which are blurry, which show the artists in movement, on the street, in contemporary, punk(ish) attire, against walls covered in graffiti. These and the titles of the tracks, such as ‘Street Style Symphony’, and ‘Sonata in A dub’, suggest two ideas. First, that there is a need to ‘rework’ Mozart, to put his music in motion, and electronic instruments are a perfect tool to achieve this goal. Second, Sweet Susie and Manni Montana draw on a certain interpretation of Mozart – ‘Mozart as popular’, promoted by Peter Sellars, who oversaw the festival New Crowned Hope, which was part of the 2006 celebrations. For Sellars, Mozart was a ‘cultural worker, a political radical and an economic migrant belonging to a socially conscious, enlightened circle, committed to creating a just, post-absolutist society’ (quoted in Usner 2011: 430). Such reading of the classics as preoccupied with problems of great importance for people living in contemporary times strikes me as a bit forced. Nevertheless, it is in tune with Sweet Susie and Manni Montana’s political approach to music. As we can read in the notes added to the record: Admittedly we are not talking about original works of W. A. Mozart here. Rather you will find him blinking around the corner now and then, shimmering through a melody. But he is there, after all. Humorous, subtle, serious, carrying us away in his rhythmically as well as melodically intuitive way! Enchanting but never shallow! The tracks are very catchy, testifying to Mozart’s position as the ‘Presley of classical music’, especially ‘Street Style Symphony’, ‘Satin Sonata’ and ‘Lacrimosa in Space – ambient mix’. The instruments and sound effects are contemporary and obviously, mainly electronic. Their role is dual – not only to update Mozart,

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making him palatable to contemporary ears (even though probably is, given that millions of listeners every month tune to his music on YouTube and Spotify), but also to create a sense of space, of urban environment, in which sounds surround and bombard us. An exception is ‘Papageno Superstar’, which brings to mind walking through a jungle or a zoo while listening to Mozart.

Gemeindebautöne (2016) Having Dub Club in Flex was Susie’s first community project, as its purpose was to create a community of people who had no chance to listen to ‘their’ music. However, still Dub Club positioned the audience as passive listeners, invited to listen to their favourite music. In recent years, Sweet Susie in collaboration with Manni Montana moved a step or two further, by organising events, in which the division between performers and the audience is obliterated. One such project, titled Gemeindebautöne, which can be translated as ‘Sounds of the communal building’ or ‘Sounds of the local community’, started in 2015 and culminated in an event which took place on 30 April 2016 in August Fürst Hof, a communal building in Vienna’s 12th Bezirk (District). The rationale behind this project was to involve inhabitants of the estate in the production of a performance about neoliberalism, together with professional musicians. According to Susie, the bit proved very difficult because ordinary people were reluctant to perform in front of the audience, perhaps indicating an erosion of communal spirit or a suspicion to show it in events which are not spontaneous but organised for the members of the said community. And yet, Susie and Manni succeeded, by the sheer power of persuasion and persistence. It involved putting adverts in the blocks, inviting its inhabitants to participate in rehearsals, visiting them in homes to explain the goals of the project and encouraging to test their skills as scriptwriters, singers and actors. The result was a transformation of August Fürst Hof into a scene, on which professional artists and ordinary people performed a play of sorts, whose purpose was to protest against the ideology and politics of neoliberalism – a system which is less rampant in Austria than in some other European countries, nevertheless successful by being naturalised and met with little resistance. Gemeindebautöne was meant to break this invisibility by showing its effect on human lives, as well as embedding it in the history of the working class. The latter was achieved by choosing as the date of performance 30th of April, an eve of May Day, the holiday of the working class. Moreover, the event began with the performance of The Internationale by a trumpet player Bernhard Rabitsch (the brother of Thomas Rabitsch, the leader of Falco’s band). The rest of the event was filled with a speech from the balcony, delivered by Manni Montana, and songs sung by professionals and a choir of amateurs. The topic of them was money – hence the inclusion of a cover version of Abba’s ‘Money, Money, Money’, performed by a choir supported by a hip-hop artist. These were juxtaposed with testimonies of people who shared their experiences of living under neoliberalism, which includes suffering from diminished income and reduced provision and access to social services. One

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purpose of the Gemeindebautöne was to counter the trend which divorces the issue of class from those of other markers of identity, such as gender, race, age and sexuality, which in the last thirty or so years were rendered as more important than class. This was achieved by bringing to it people from different walks of life, including representatives of ethnic minorities, living in Vienna and music of different origin. The question arises if and how electronic music was employed in this project. It clearly was not used to such an extent as it happens in clubs, but the sound system was placed on the street, allowing a kind of street party to take place. Borrowing a title from Sweet Susie and Montana’s previous work, we can say that this is again ‘Street Style Symphony’.

Conclusion To conclude this chapter, I would like to emphasise what Electric Indigo and Sweet Susie have in common and what differentiates them from their male counterparts. Their difference consists of a deeper engagement in problems not affecting directly their careers, and ability to locate their own music in a wider, social, political and even a religious, context. For me, they are both ‘deep listeners’, as defined by Oliveros: their ears are literally and figuratively open to all sorts of influences, and these influences are boldly revealed in their productions, as testimonies to their own ‘deep living’.

Conclusions

The main purpose of this book was to present Vienna Electronica, a little-known phenomenon in the history of popular music, whose heyday was in the 1990s. I considered it from several perspectives. Firstly, I located it in the long tradition of music produced and consumed in Vienna, including classical music from this city, composed by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, which is probably the most revered music in the world, as well as music of Strauss, Mahler, Schoenberg and popular music produced after the Second World War. I did this to gauge whether living and working in the shadow of such musical giants as Haydn and Mozart, is conducive to gaining national and international recognition by contemporary musicians from Vienna or rather condemns them to an inferior status. Secondly, I tried to account for how factors pertaining to some wider trends in the production and dissemination of music, such as the lowering of the costs of production and dissemination of music, resulting from convergent digitisation and the expansion of the global music business, affected the successes of (then) young musicians who chose to produce music using electronic instruments. This investigation filled two chapters opening this study. My research was also prompted by a desire to demonstrate the richness and beauty of music produced by these artists. I presented it in seven remaining chapters, devoted to the most renowned musicians, working in this city, beginning with Sin and finishing with Electric Indigo and Sweet Susie, and including also discussion of the work of Kruder and Dorfmeister, Tosca, Sofa Surfers, Patrick Pulsinger, Peter Rehberg and Christian Fennesz. I argued that their work lends itself to analysis from multiple perspectives, such as the use of remix, ambience, techno, dub, post-rock, noise, feminism and queer, as well as the dialectic of a closed and open work. I also considered some of their work as a manifestation of postmodern art, in which the division between art and science becomes blurred and the concept of originality is thrown into crisis, and investigated their links with Afrofuturism and surrealism. In contrast to the majority of studies of electronic music, which foreground the electronic instruments and technical properties of the work which uses them, my research was prompted more by a desire to account for the meaning of music – the stories these artists tell; the ideas they research; the physical sensations they awaken in their listeners, and the cultural and to some extent political significance

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of their work. I have done so by describing in detail the records these artists released, including their design, and, whenever possible, their videos. I tried to show that these artists were not merely imitators and self-colonisers, recycling music produced in the Anglo-American centre of popular music and adjusting it to local needs, but trend-setters, embracing opportunities brought about by technological changes and contributing to them in significant ways. I argued that their work puts into crisis the very idea of colonisation as self-colonisation, as their relationship to the Anglo-American centre of popular music is typically complex. For example, the best known artists from this cohort, Kruder and Dorfmeister, in the 1990s specialised in remixing the work of other musicians, including those operating in the centre. Such activity could be seen as an acknowledgement of the hegemony of the centre or a sign that the periphery can penetrate it on its own terms. I also drew attention to the varied sources of the inspiration of their work, such as western classical and experimental music, non-western genres and styles, for example Latino popular music and natural and industrial sounds. Viennese electronic artists also threw into crisis the division between popular and serious/academic/experimental music by dividing their energy between different types of music and performing spaces and creating music which engages with questions attributed to serious music, yet trying not to lose connection with ‘popular audiences’, most importantly club and festival goers. I argued that the music of the majority of my protagonists conform to the dominant idea of ‘electronic musicians’ by, for example, displaying technophilia, eschewing lyrics and privileging instruments over human voice. However, not all artists included in this study fit the bill – the work of some of them, such as Sin and Sofa Surfers, can be considered as borderline electronic. Although the primary focus of my research was music itself, I also looked at the careers of the musicians, asking them the question what prompted them to become electronic musicians, how they sustained themselves over more than twenty years since they started dabbing in music (or why they had to leave this path), how global trends affected their economic situation. Many expressed their great optimism about the music market in the 1990s and subsequent disappointment caused by the crisis of the record industry in the 2000s, especially in the second half of this decade, prompted by the widespread piracy and the availability of ‘free music’ on the internet. I also asked them why they ultimately decided to make Vienna their home. The usual answer was that, despite their cosmopolitan outlook, they appreciated the ‘cosiness’ of Vienna and the advantages the city offers to its inhabitants, most importantly affordable housing, which not only reduces the cost of living, but also allows them to produce their music in ‘proper’ studios. It became obvious to me that the key to survival in the harsher climate for music was moving from recording into increased touring, DJ-ing, writing music for film and theatre, servicing younger musicians, seeking commissions from state and other institutions, curating music events and education. Many of these strategies can be summarised as ‘escaping from the market’, which is seen as more volatile now than in the 1990s. Indirectly, my research pointed to the great importance of state patronage of music produced at the periphery. This idea gained more traction

Conclusions

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in Austria in the last two decades or so, when institutions such as MICA and the Austrian Music Fund were set up to support local talent, but this patronage is still relatively modest. My study also covered music scenes, namely music clubs, record companies, festivals, music shops, the media and fandom, trying to account for the link between these different elements. I showed that many musicians were also heading their own music labels, producing the work of their peers, curating festivals and working in music shops. Such a multiplicity of roles testifies to the times when they started their careers: that of the 1990s, when following the changes brought by punk, the do-it-yourself ethos was very strong and the technological changes resulting from digitisation allowed artists to be more self-sufficient. It also reflects on their position of working at the periphery of popular music business, in a place which attracted little attention from the major record labels and music promoters and who treated Austria as a market to exploit rather than invest in, to nourish local talent, according to the largely rejected but still valid, in my opinion, thesis of cultural imperialism. Their success in part was based on the fact that they belonged to the first wave of musicians who embraced the new technology, setting up websites of their record labels and using e-mail to communicate with their customers and collaborators. In this way, their cosmopolitan outlook merged with the increasing opportunities for international collaboration and distribution of music, brought about by the internet. Some years later, these opportunities were recognised by practically everybody in the music business, hence stopped favouring the newcomers. Moreover, they benefitted from the expansion of the record industry in the 1990s, which opened the window for outsiders. These conditions were conducive to experimentation and a certain disregard for promotion, which resulted in them being focused on music and, one can say, playful. This is confirmed by my contacts with the musicians; virtually all of them came across as shunning celebrity, down-to-earth and idealistic. By contrast, the subsequent generations of Austrian musicians had to put more effort in making oneself visible and become ‘brands’ worth investing in. A wider purpose in this book was to convince the readers that there is a need to pay more attention to the regions of the world which are neglected in popular music studies because they do not conform to the idea of ‘music from the centre’, yet equally do not fit the concept of ‘exotic’ or ‘world music’. I believe that music produced in such ‘semi-peripheries’ deserve attention because often it is not inferior from music produced in the centre. Moreover, such music and the culture developed around it, is a good place, from which to rethink music produced and consumed both in the Anglo-American centre and in the further peripheries, because they show characteristics of both these phenomena and yet have to compete with both of them. There is the question how to move this research forward? It will be useful to conduct similar projects on electronic music in the 1990s in other European countries, to be able to identify how factors such as specific musical traditions, the size of the national market, the economic situation of a given country, and the unprecedented flourishing of the global record industry in this period, affected

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those working at the periphery of the music business. In particular, were electronic musicians in countries such as Belgium, Poland or Hungary as lucky in this period as their Austrian counterparts? Did they show interest in similar genres and develop similar ideas? Equally, it will be worthwhile to examine how the crisis, which engulfed the record industry in the 2000s and which is still not resolved, affected musicians and other workers operating in the popular music sector. Who survived the crisis and why? For this purpose, it will be interesting to collect the voices of those who did not fare well in this harsh climate for music. Unfortunately, such testimonies are difficult to collect. This is because the history of music (as of any art discipline) tends to be written from the perspective of winners. I noticed it myself when conducting this research – the successful musicians were happy to meet me and tell their stories; those who disappeared from the scene typically ignored my e-mails or replied to them saying that they had nothing to say. However, if we would like to get a more rounded history of popular music, such testimonies will be worth gathering and examining carefully.

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Index

Abba 40, 213 Absinth 76, 85, 87–8, 93–4 Abuse Industries 57, 65, 83 Adorno, Theodor 29, 31, 126 Africa Bambaataa 208 Afrofuturism 139–40, 142, 145, 148, 215 ambient 9, 108, 116, 120, 128, 161, 175, 178–9, 186, 190, 203, 215 Ambros, Wolfgang 35, 39, 69 Anderson, Laurie 7 Aphex Twin 7, 52, 121 Aphrodelics 114 Appel, Roland 100 Ars Electronica 53, 118, 176, 210 Artificial Intelligence 156, 160 Art of Noise 103 Atrium 36 Austrian Apparel 79 Austropop 34–6, 69, 72–3, 109 Autechre 179 Aquasky 113 Aznavour, Charles 86 Bach, Johann Sebastian 119 Badham, John 155 Bambaataa, Afrika 140 Bartz, Edek 34, 36 Battles 187 Baudrillard, Jean 126 Beach Boys, the 5, 185, 189 Beatles, the 39, 80 Bécs 41, 68, 168, 186, 193–4 Beethoven, Ludwig van 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 119, 215 Benjamin, Walter 125–6, 128, 170 Berg, Alban 28, 31, 170 Berry, Chuck 35 Besides Feldman 160 Biedermeier 25 Björk 196, 206

Black Market (shop) 59, 199 Black Sea 186, 191–3 Blade Runner 134, 139 Blindside 146–9 Bomb the Bass 108, 114 Boney M 38 Boulevards, On 87 Boulez, Pierre 164, 171 Bookends 111 Brahms, Johannes 27 Brando, Marlon 35 Brel, Jacques 86 Burgtheater, the 20 Butler, Octavia 139 Cabaret Voltaire 103, 174 Café Hawelka 35–6, 39 Cage, John 3, 163–4, 166, 168, 171, 178 Cahill, Thaddeus 2 Camo and Krooked 77–9 Can 38, 53, 105–6, 108, 110, 132, 138, 143 Cargo 142–3 Caribou 106, 115 Cassy 198 Cavani, Liliana 37, 39 Cave, Nick 87 Charles VI 19 Cheap Records 57, 61, 65–6, 74, 84, 99–100, 151, 159, 176–7 Chelsea (club) 57, 174 Chopin 45 Cocteau Twins 85–6 Coffey, Cath 125, 131 Coldcut 52 col legno 152 Conchita Wurst (Thomas Neuwirth) 17, 41, 51, 137 cosmic rock 38, 41, 138 Count Basic 65, 105, 114 Cronenberg, David 134, 139

Index Curd Duca 52, 56, 65 Czukay, Holger 105 ‘Da Hofa’, 35 Danzer, Georg 35–6, 39, 69 Davis, Miles 36 Dehli9 117, 123, 125, 127, 129 Deisl, Heinrich 61–2 Depeche Mode 98 ‘Der Kommissar’, 40 digital shift 10 Disko B 151–2, 160–1, 201 DJ DSL 56, 64 DJ Gümix 208 DJ Hell (Helmut Josef Geier) 151, 201 D-J-Kicks: Kruder and Dorfmeister 99, 109, 113–14 Dodd, Clement 102 Does It Look Like I’m Here? 177–8 DÖF 38 Dogmatic Sequences 68, 161–2 Dorfmeister, Richard 41, 52, 57, 66, 83–4, 98–115, 117–32, 135, 137, 152, 184 Dorian Concept 55 downtempo (trip-hop) 57–8, 65, 69, 85, 92, 108, 110, 113, 120–1 Drahdiwaberl 35, 38–9 Drake 137 dream pop 85 Dr. Moreau’s Creatures 41, 56–7, 98 drum‘n’bass 57–8, 61, 69, 108, 113–14 Dub Club 208–9, 211, 213 dub/dubbing 9, 58, 102, 107, 112–13, 127, 131, 139, 144, 148, 208 Duck Squad 57 Dum Dum (music shop) 59 Duque, Abe 96, 152 Dylan, Bob 36, 39, 112 Earth, Wind and Fire 139 Easy to Assemble, Hard to Take Apart 150, 160, 164, 167 Edelweiss 40 Edison, Thomas 27 Electric Indigo (Susanne Kirchmayr) 3, 9, 10, 12, 52, 55, 68, 76, 195, 198–208, 210–12, 214 Electronic Dance Music (EDM) 8, 73, 197, 201 Elektro Guzzi 77, 79, 152 Eller, Tom 57 Emeralds 177 Encounters 134, 143–4 Endless Summer 177, 185–7, 189–91, 193

235

Eno, Brian 3, 4, 7, 104–6, 110, 119–20, 179, 184–5, 199 ‘Es lebe der Zentralfriedhof’ 36 Essl, Karlheinz 9 Europop 38 Eurovision Song Contest 41–2, 94 Falco 9, 24, 37, 39–41, 51, 57, 64, 69, 84, 99, 108, 110–11, 114, 117, 124, 151, 186, 213 Farmers Manual 62, 177–8 Faust 38, 53, 138 Feedback Studio 152 Feldman, Morton 163–6 ‘Female Pressure’ 201 Fennesz, Christian 5, 9, 12, 13, 41, 52, 56, 58, 62, 65–6, 68, 76–6, 80, 106, 152, 158, 160, 163, 166–8, 171–2, 175–8, 180, 184–94, 204, 215 Ferdinand III 19 Ferrari, Luc 171 Ferry, Brian 110 Fijuka 152 Filous 77, 79 First Viennese School, the/Viennese Classicism 10, 11, 19–25 Fitzke, Fritz 100 Flex 57–8, 73, 208, 213 Forst, Willi 31, 33 Foucault, Michel 40, 130, 211 In Four Parts 160, 166 Fowley, Kim 93 Frank, Tina 176, 182, 186, 188–9, 191, 193 Frankie Goes to Hollywood 4 Freud, Sigmund 27, 86 Fridge Trax 176 Frisch, Wolfgang 134–5 Gallagher, Rob (Earl Zinger) 125, 128–9, 131 Gander, Bernhard 167 Ganymed 38–9 ‘Ganz Wien’ 39, 42 Gasometer 58, 73 Geier, Werner 57, 61, 65, 71–2, 83–4, 97, 175, 199, 201 Gemeindebautöne 213–14 General Magic & Pita 176 Gesang der Jünglinge 117 Get Down 181–2 Get In 181–2 Get Off 181–2 Get Out 181–3 GiG 64, 84, 99

236

Index

Glass, Philip 123, 128 Glassworks 128 Glawogger, Michael 135 glitch 168, 171–2, 178–81, 186, 189–90, 193 Godard, Jean-Luc 103 Graf Hadik 120 G-Stone 57, 64–6, 99–100, 106–7, 152, 209 G-Stoned 99, 111–13 Haider, Jörg 40, 140 Hallucination Company 35, 38–9 Hancock, Herbie 139 Hard Wax 53, 201 Hauer, Josef Matthias 153 Hautzinger, Franz 163 Haydn, Joseph 11, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 44, 55–6, 205–6, 212, 215 Hendrix, Jimi 139 Herbalizer 113 Hergovich, Franz 61 hip-hop 9, 39, 56–7, 68, 71, 85, 108, 131, 140, 143, 157, 174, 199, 212–13 Hirschenhauser, Alexander 59 Hitchcock, Alfred 31 Hitler 31, 34, 67 Hollein, Hans 193 Holmes, David 98 Holzgruber, Michael 134 Hood, Robert 151, 154 Horn, Trevor 4 Hotel Paralel.lel 185–9 Huber, Alois 52, 57 Huber, Rupert 52, 68, 99, 117–32, 160, 185 Human League, the 174 Hunter, Rodney 41, 56, 64–5, 68, 71, 98–100 HVOB 77–9, 97 Il portiere di notte (The Night Porter) 37, 39 Ilsa Gold 175 Impassive Skies 160, 162–3, 166 Insinuation 85, 88–92 Inspired by Mozart 55, 210–13 I-Wolf 137 I-Wolf Presents Soul Strata 137 J.A.C 123, 125, 128–9 Jamie xx 106 Jarre, Jean-Michel 121, 132 Jay-Z 140 Jelinek, Robert 57 Jesus and Mary Chain, the 85 Jones, Grace 152 Judas Priest 167

Jugendstil 28 jungle (type of music) 58 Jürgens, Udo 87, 99 Just, Christopher 52, 65, 151, 175 !K7 Studio 100, 113, 120, 135 Karas, Anton 32 Kienzl, Markus 134–5 King Tubby 112 Kissing 85, 88, 92–4 Klangkarussell 77 klein 65–6, 135 Klimt, Gustav 27, 28 Koglmann, Franz 36, 163 Koletzki, Oliver 78 Krafft-Ebing, Richard von 87 Kraftwerk 13, 38, 101, 126, 140, 153, 156, 174 Kraus, Peter 35 krautrock 45, 53, 106, 132, 160, 173–4 Kreisky 42 Kruder, Peter 52, 56–7, 59, 66, 69, 76, 98–115, 150 Kruder and Dorfmeister 9, 12, 41, 52, 59, 62, 64–6, 69–70, 74, 77, 79–80, 83, 98–115, 118, 121–2, 134, 140, 152, 158, 205, 208–9, 215–16 Kruder and Dorfmeister the K&D Sessions 99–100, 105, 108, 114, 135 Lang, Bernhard 9 Lang, Fritz 34, 39 Lanner, Joseph 25, 30 Laton 57 Lauda, Niki 37 Leandros, Vicky 94 Lear, Amanda 85 Led Zeppelin 13 Lee ‘Scratch Perry’ 102, 112 Lefebrve, Henri 169 Leyya 77–8, 97 Life in Loops 135 Ligeti, György 153 Lisberger, Steven 134 Loop Records 57 Loos, Adolf 27, 87 Lynch, David 114 Madchester 51 Madonna 98 Madrid de los Austrias 105 Magritte, René 125 Mahler, Gustav 27, 31, 56, 215 Mahler Remixed 56

Index Mainframe 57, 175 Makossa 99–100 Maria Theresa 19 Massive Attack 51, 85, 121, 143 Matrix 139 Mauriat, Paul 94 Megablast 100 Megacities 135 Mego/Editions Mego 12, 57, 65, 67, 76, 151, 168, 174–8, 185, 188, 191, 193 Meierei 58 Merseybeat 50 Mezzanine 143 MICA 43, 217 Mills, Jeff 139 Molko, Brian 97 Montana, Manni 55, 63, 209, 212–14 Moore, Mona 62, 78, 83–97, 99, 109, 117 Moroder, Giorgio 103 Mortenson, Heidi 205–6 Moto, Clara 55, 69, 77, 106 Moulton, Tom 103 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 11, 17, 19–25, 33, 37, 42, 44, 55–6, 73, 115, 119, 212–13, 215 Muddy Waters 117 Mühl, Otto 34 Müller, Anna 78 Mumford & Sons 78 Music for the Gift 124 Muzak 120, 123 Mynth 79 Neu! 38, 53, 138, 174 Neuwirth, Roland 120, 130 Neuwirth, Thomas (Conchita Wurst) 17, 41–2 Night Porter, the (Il portiere di notte) 37, 39 Nine Inch Nails 103 Nino aus Wien 42 Nitsch, Hermann 34 No Hassle 116, 124–5 noise (type of music) 10, 57, 61, 65, 69, 162, 168, 181, 182, 185–6, 190, 203–4, 206, 215 Nouvelle Cuisine Big Band, the 212 Novotny, Timo 135, 141 Obeya, Manni 134, 139–40, 144–6, 148–9 Odeon 123, 125, 129–30 ‘Ode to Joy’ 23 Oliveros, Pauline 179, 195, 203 O’Malley, Stephen 175, 177 Ono, Yoko 127–8

237

Opera 122, 124–8 Orb, the 121, 154 Orel, Andy 41, 57, 65, 83–97, 99, 117, 151, 160, 184 O’Rourke, Jim 175–7, 180, 185 Ostermayer, Fritz 71 Outta Here 124–5, 130 Pablo, Augustus 112 Parmegiani, Bernard 171 Parov Stelar (Marcus Füreder) 77, 79 Peace Orchestra 100 Pet Shop Boys 85, 109 Peyfuss, Constantin 57, 83 phonoTAKTIK’95 62 phonoTAKTIK’99 62 Piaf, Edith 86 Pink Floyd 104, 156 Placebo 97 Plastikman 3, 162 Plöckinger, Fritz 59 Pomassl, Franz 57 Porno 151, 160–1, 166 Portishead 51, 85, 121, 144 post-rock 7, 133, 137–8, 143, 146, 215, 229 Potuznik, Gerhard 62, 65, 151–2 Pratella, Balilla 170 Pratersauna 58 Presley, Elvis 35, 112, 122, 126, 134, 212 Prokopetz, Joesie 35, 38 Prommer, Christian 100 Puccini, Giaccomo 122 Pulsinger, Patrick 13, 52, 55, 57, 61–2, 65, 68–9, 75–7, 84, 99, 106, 113, 150–67, 175–9, 184–5, 201, 208, 215 Rabitsch, Bernhard 213 Rabitsch, Thomas 99, 213 Radian 58, 68 Rave Up Records (shop) 61 Reed, Carol 32 Reed, Lou 93 Re: Haydn 55, 153, 205 Rehberg, Peter 12, 13, 45, 52, 57–9, 61–2, 65, 67–8, 76, 90, 168, 171–85, 187, 199, 215 Reich, Steve 3, 123, 154, 181 remix/remixing 4, 9, 10, 22, 101–15, 204–6, 215 Reprazent 51 rhiz 58, 99 Riley, Terry 123–4 Ringstrasse, the 27 ‘Rock Me Amadeus’ 39, 115

238

Index

Rolling Stones, the 36–7, 111, 185 Rossellini, Roberto 32 Rowe, Keith 185 Roxy Music 110 Russolo, Luigi 3, 170 Sabotage 57 Sacher-Masoch, Leopold von 27, 87, 93 Sage Francis 144 Sakamoto, Ryuichi 185 Salieri, Antonio 22, 23 Santtana, Lucas 129 Saturday Night Fever 155 Scanner 3 Schaeffer, Pierre 171, 203 Schiller, Friedrich von 23 Schloegl, Wolfgang 76, 134, 137, 149, 208, 210 Schneider, Romy 33 Schoenberg, Arnold 27–9, 31, 34, 67, 170, 215 Schubert, Franz 19, 22, 215 Schulze, Klaus 53, 121 Schwarzkogler, Rudolf 34 Scott, Ridley 134 Scrambles, Anthems and Odysseys 135 Second Viennese School, the 28, 30 Sellars, Peter 212 Seven Tons for Free 68, 180–1 Sex and the City 120 Sherman, Cindy 91 shoegazing rock 85 Simon & Garfunkel 111–12, 115 Sin 12, 64–5, 68, 70, 76, 78, 83–97, 99, 107–9, 113, 116, 151, 215–16 Sixteen Fucking Years of G-Stone Recordings 100 Soap&Skin 77, 97 Sofa Surfers 12, 52, 58, 68, 76, 107, 114, 133–49, 187, 208, 215–16 Sofa Surfers 144–6, 148 Soft Cell 85 Spiegel, Markus 84, 99 Steely Dan 39 Stereo MCs 131 Stockhausen, Karlheinz 3, 38, 116–17, 119, 122–4, 164, 171 Strauss, Johann I 25, 26–7, 30, 39, 42, 44, 56, 77, 215 Strauss, Johann II 25, 26 Stravinsky, Igor 163, 167 Strobl, Wolfgang 59 studio musician 4

Sugar B (Martin Forster) 56, 65, 69, 98–100, 208, 211 Sun Ra 139, 148 Superluminal 148–9 Supermax 38 Suzuki 68, 117, 125–7, 137 Suzuki, Shunryu 126 Swan Lake 55, 152 Sweet Susie (Susi Rogenhofer) 10, 12, 52, 55, 63, 195, 198, 208–15 Swieten, Gottfried van 20, 205 Switched-on Wagner 56 Swound Vibes 56 Sylvian, David 185–6, 192 synthpop 85, 174 Take Death! 167 Take Death! 160 Tangerine Dream 121, 132, 174 Taxi Driver 162 Tchaikovsky 55 techno 9, 57–8, 61, 63–5, 69, 74, 79, 85, 94, 113, 123, 126, 148, 153–7, 159–63, 174, 176, 179, 184–5, 199, 201–6, 211, 215 Techno: The Dance Sound of Detroit 153 Telharmonium 2 Tennant, Neil 109 Theseustempel 36 Thievery Corporation 117 Third Man, The 32, 39 Tina 303 (Tina Grünsteidl) 198 Tomita, Isao 121 Tone, Yasunao 172 Tosca 68, 74, 76, 83, 99–100, 116–32, 134–5, 138, 141, 215 Toxic Lounge 58 Trammps, the 103 Transit 134, 141–2 Tresor 52, 155, 157 Tricky 120–1 TRON 134 Tunakan, Erdem 41, 52, 55, 57, 59, 61–2, 65, 68, 74, 84, 99–100, 113, 151–2, 159–60, 176, 208 Tzara, Tristan 124 U4 (Club) 39, 57, 59, 73, 175 Uptight 65, 71 Vangelis 121 Vangemann, Theo 27 Velvet Underground, the 111

Index Velvet Underground & Nico, The 93 Venice 68, 186–7, 191–3 Videodrome 134 Vienna State Opera, the (Staatsoper) 27, 30, 33, 124 Vienne, Gisèle 182–3 Viennese Actionism 34 Viennese Waltz, the 26 Vormärz, the (pre-March) 25 Votava, Peter (DJ Pure) 52, 57–8, 175

Weininger, Otto 27 Wells, H. G. 41, 98–9 West, Kanye 140 Wildner, Stefan 120 Wilson, Brian 5 Wilson, Tony 51, 70–1 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 27 Work for GV 2004–2008 182–3 Wu-Tang 120 xx, the 78

Wagner, Otto 27, 28 Wagner, Richard 22, 56 Waldeck 65 Wandl 152 Warp 156, 199 Webern, Anton 28, 31, 170 Weingartner, Katharina 71

Yello 103 Yonderboi 69 Zappa, Frank 37 Zawinul, Joe 36 ZTT 4

239