once more with feeling

The first time I saw Robert Stadlober was when he played the main character of Crazy. That was 12 years ago. However, my “encounters” with Robert were few: there was Sonnenallee (yes I’m one of those who watched Crazy before Sonnenallee), Engel & Joe (my favourite, since it came out right at the time when I started sliding into my punk-phase) and Verschwende deine Jugend (a principle after which I’ve lived to the maximum).
It was only in 2010 when I learned that Robert was making music. And surprisingly for an actor-gone-musician, it’s even good music. The first time I heard “Leave Me”, I immediately fell in love with the harmony and polyphony, with the feeling of intimacy and of lightness. But it’s not only Robert himself – it’s Gary, the band he has together with Astrid Noventa, Rasmus Engler and Daniel Moheit. Gary released their first album already in 2002 and their 3rd album “Hey Turtle – Stop Running!” will be released on March 9th (including an incredibly cute album cover).

A couple of days ago, Gary released the first single of the upcoming album – and since it has the “love” theme in it, what day would be better to post it than Valentine’s? Yes, right – any other day, because love shouldn’t be limited to a single day of the year. However, I chose today, so you gotta live with it. Oh, by the way: you can also download the song for free on their Facebook page!

But today I fell for you.

Do you still buy CDs?
In the modern world full of Spotify, Torrents and Bandcamp, this question has become quite pressing to the music industry. I still remember buying my first CDs as a teenager – Emilia, Tic Tac Toe, Bravo Hits 13, Spice Girls, Mariah Carey. But as soon as I discovered Napster, I quickly went from buying to downloading, limiting the act of purchase to special occasions such as concerts. Many years later, this hasn’t really changed – Soundcloud, Bandcamp and Spotify have become my best friends and looking through my CD rack, the newest ones in there are all by smaller (and mainly Austrian) bands which I still want to support through paying for their music because they really do need this support.
Being aware of the problem all those apps and websites have posed to the sales statistics (and let’s be honest, it is a problem when you regard the money an average musician can actually get from streams on Spotify), arists and labels have come up with very creative ways to sell their music. They combine it with USB sticks, with clothes, they make super-special and ultra-limited editions and packages, they try to get the Vinyl-hipsters on their side and turn the boring round silver CD into a very exciting and fun thing. And well – it works. Because it’s that feeling of being special that will always attract us to buying things.
You might remember my enthusiasm about diver’s EP, which was actually sewed together by a friend of the band. And today, I found out about another great idea from an Austrian band: the PapiersackerlEP large. The band is called VIECH (which is a colloquial expression for critter). VIECH are Paul and Andreas from Graz, making Austrian-folk-electro-pop-rock with raspy voices, accordion and in Lederhosen. Their lyrics seem sometimes on the verge of sarcasm and irony, while at other times random every-day situations are put in weird contexts and expressed with even weirder linguistic comparisons. In their songs you can find cavity in the incisor, heart thrombosis and big ring-tailed pigs.

Their latest release, the Papiersackerl EP large (the paper bag EP, following the small and medium edition) is a collection of 7 songs, 5 acoustic versions, 4 remixes, a B-side and a 16 pages booklet, all covered by handmade packagings from different artists – aka the paper bags. You can find an overview about all designs and layouts here. It’s a pretty amazing idea and all I can say is kudos to all the artists who contributed turning something simple as a CD into a real work of art.
VIECH will be playing in Graz on February 2nd, and hopefully soon in Vienna too. You can find the whole stream of the EP below – but this time I really, really want to encourage you to order the CD.

Interviews. I love and hate them. I didn’t do that many yet, mainly because I’m often too scared to mess them up, too scared to ask questions that seem stupid to the artist, too scared to find out that my favourite artists are actually assholes when talking to them. And yet until now, I was extremely lucky – probably because I only picked artists where I was quite sure before that it should all go well and because I always spent a whole day preparing (yes, seriously!).
My most favourite interview is the one I did with Cherilyn MacNeil, the woman behind Dear Reader, last September when she visited Vienna for a day. Cherilyn was incredibly honest and yet totally funny and relaxed, she seemd interested in telling her story and open about every kind of question. If you haven’t read it yet – you should.
On Monday, Cherilyn is coming back to Vienna – and she’ll perform at B72 to present her latest record “Idealistic Animals” for the second time here after having been at Blue Bird Festival in November. A day later she’ll perform in Graz at Forum Stadtpark. I can only highly recommend you to go watch her and get blown away by this amazing woman and her incredible music.

Why would you want to be great anyway?

So I finally went to the USA. And although I have been dreaming about New York and San Francisco for many years now, my first trip brought me to Maui, Los Angeles and Lake Tahoe instead.
America. Where everything is bigger, is more. But it was especially that bigger and more of the city of angels that overwhelmed me a bit too much and left me feeling lost. Being back home now for nearly two weeks, I realized that I’m really not gonna miss a few things: hot pants in combination with UGG boots, salads for 7 bucks vs two tacos for 50 cents, people smoking weed while driving, the ugly dollar, the most boring highways of all times, my phone not working there, too many people in too little space, having to add taxes to the prices displayed in the supermarket (i really suck at calculating in my head), the very strange humor, the saddest supermarket of all times aka costco, driving in California, parking in California, the cinema prices, the fact that 10 cents are smaller than 5 cents, busses where the bus driver just steps out of the bus in the middle of nowhere because she’s arguing with a customer, being asked for an ID when you just sit on the bar without even ordering alcohol, and many other tiny things that I just can’t remember right now.
However, there of course is stuff I’m missing: burritos, food that actually really is hot when it says “hot”, diet dr. pepper, the lakers, 25 degrees at the end of December, urban outfitters, cheap gas, Korean BBQ, the ocean, bigass supermarkets openend 24/7, grabbing your Glock and shooting all your anger away at the shooting range, and SiriusXM.
Some of you non-Americans might wonder now – Sirius who? SiriusXM is a satellite radio station with 140+ channels. You have to pay for it, but it definitely more worth than paying for ORF here in Austria. There are tons of music, news, sports and other entertainment channels – I mean hello, they even have a 24/7 Pearl Jam channel. So when we were driving around (and since LA is 8 hours from Lake Tahoe we were driving a fucking lot), we always listened to Alt Nation, the alternative rock channel. And through this channel, I discovered my latest favorite band: Awolnation.
Awolnation is not that new – the electronic rock band fronted by Aaron Bruno already released an EP in 2010 and their first record “Megalithic Symphony” in March 2011 at Red Bull Records. So when coming back home with this new discovery, I quickly realized that I might be a little too late for calling it a “new discovery” – they have actually been booked for a gig at Arena Wien on February 14th, also known as what-can-I-do-to-avoid-Valentine’s-Day day (and what is there better to do to avoid Valentine’s Day than going to a concert, right?).
Now, here’s the latest video from Awolnation, “Not Your Fault”, followed by some pictures of my journey. And after watching the video and going through my pictures, you’ll have to play the “Megalithic Mayhem” videogame – a game for and with Awolnation and an awesome 8-bit version of “Not Your Fault”.

Find my sun in the dark side
of my shadow.

Graz. The second biggest city in Austria. The city of Schloss Eggenberg, of the Mur, of the Schloßberg, of Styria, of Magna, of the springfestival, of the Elevate and the Diagonale, the city of Opus and SK Sturm.

I never really cared about Graz – but that’s not a big deal since I never really cared about any Austrian city except for Vienna. Which is why after a failed afternoon with an exboy there and a 6am walk through the inner city after a crazy night at springten, Graz and me had our first real acquaintance just recently. And what can I say – it’s a lovely little city full of surprises in every corner. Too small for me to live in, but just about right for a weekend to escape from the dull routine of Vienna.

Graz can also offer some pretty amazing music. Many of you probably heard of The Incredible Staggers and maybe also of the second project of their guitarist, The Sado-Maso Guitar Club. But do you already know the German singing VIECH? And have you met Philipp?

Philipp Szalay started to learn the guitar just to become one of the cool kids – and he did. He published his debut EP in 2010 and is working on his first longplayer. Philipp’s music is full of melancholia, full of passion and dreams, full of the contradiction of darkness and light. On stage, Philipp is joined by a couple of very talented musicians, and together they will take your breath, make your heart beat faster and leave you with a goose flesh.
On Christmas eve, I got Philipp’s newsletter with a nice little present inside: links to some live footage, filmed at the concert in Vienna that I’ve been to. So I want to pass two of those videos on, and recommend you to try and catch Philipp live, grab his EP and maybe even one of his selfmade tote bags, which are the absolutely cutest ones I’ve ever seen.

You can steal my faith and steal my pride
but you already know all the demons in my mind.

You say that I should be sorry
but I don’t care anymore.
I’m sorry if I didn’t care enough
for you my dear.

No, I didn’t really write a novel. Although I started one a couple of months ago – but this is a whole different story, one which you’ll hear about soon enough.
“I wrote a novel” is a song by my most favorite and the most talented Australian singer-songwriter: Thomas Calder, also known as The Trouble With Templeton. And some days ago, Thomas released a lovely one-shot video for this song, about which I wanted to tell you even though I’m currently on holidays in paradise (aka Hawai’i, but more on that will also follow later on).
The video is directed by Thomas’ brother Josh and produced by Hannah Gordon. Enjoy.

And I’m so frightened of failure
that I’m scared to even begin.
That irony is not lost on me
I just refuse to let it sink in.

When I started this blog, I just wanted to tell stories about my life. I never cared if anybody read it, and for quite a while I actually didn’t really tell anyone it existed. Since music has always been a part of my everyday life, it soon became an essential part of my writing. And all of a sudden, I received e-mails from musicians and labels, asking me to write about what they do. Now, I get mails from all over the world with people sending me their music – and this fact has become the best aspect of my blogging life. I enjoy listening to new sounds, to stuff that nobody in Austria has probably ever heard of, to spread new songs and hope that others will enjoy them as much as I do.
Recently, I received a mail from a country I never got anything before: Russia. And when I think about it, I hardly know any bands from there – except for t.A.T.u. maybe, which is probably the worst example ever. The guy who sent me his video is called Andrew MAze, and as far as the information goes that I was able to find about him, he’s from Russia and produces electronic music as well as quite poppy one. His first video made is a lyrics video for the song “Knock, Knock”, which is quite a happy, poppy tune where you’d probably more think of it being a US-production than a Russian one. However, I recommend you to head over to his Bandpage and also check out his other stuff too.

Just be awesome instead.

Even when I still had my iPhone, I didn’t really have any games on it. Only TicTacToe, and even that I only played a couple of times. I think I’m just way too impatient for any kind of game where I need to overcome more than one level. However, I’m of course familiar with many of the games from the AppStore, since it’s nowadays pretty impossible not to ever have heart of Angry Birds or Doodle Jump.
Why is why I also know nearly all of the games used for this music video. The video is from the band Hey Geronimo from Australia – five guys from Brisbane. It took them almost a year to make this video, but that was worth it. It’s in the style of OK Go, and also the song itself reminds of the catchy pop-tunes of the US-band. And with more than 400.000 views in the past five days, Hey Geronimo have good chances to join the ranks of the viral-YouTube-phenomenons.
Now, may I present you – “Why don’t we do something?”.

So, have you all listened to Justin Bieber’s “Under the Mistletoe” yet? Yeah, me neither. But a couple of days ago I made the mistake to click on a link that sent me straight to the collaboration he did with Mariah Carey – a new version of “All I want for Christmas”. That was pretty disturbing I gotta say.
Generally, I’m not very much into Christmas songs. I love Christmas itself – the smell, the happy looks, the snow, the colours, the cookies, the warmth you feel. However, the songs that come with the most lovely day of the year tend to be pretty annoying. And with that, I mean the classics such as “Silent Night” as well as current hits of teenage stars, pop divas and rock stars (what the fuck were The Killers thinking?), and of course also the only Christmas song that manages to evoke nausea: “Last Christmas”.
Every now and then, some delightful exceptions to the usual affronts to our ear canals can be found. I’m thinking of the Sex Pistols (Punk Rock Christmas), Chris Garneau (Christmas Song), Julian Casablancas (Christmas Treat) or Jenny O (Get down for the Holidays).
This year, some of my most favorite Norwegians gathered together to make a Christmas album that surely will be on high rotation in my Spotify until December 24th: it’s Einar Stray, Sjur Lyseid, Olla Innset, Simen Herning, Jorgen Nordby and Eivind Almhjell. They come from mylittlepony, Monzano, The Little Hands of Asphalt, Einar Stray, Moddi and Honeytraps and together, they’re called Sunturns. You can listen to their whole CD here or download the 2-songs-EP here. They even made a YouTube Advent calendar – unfortunately I have no idea what it’s really about because I don’t understand a single word Norwegian.

Yesterday, someone asked me what the first concert was I ever went to. Of course there were a lot of bands I saw that I can’t really remember – especially when my mum took me somewhere, or some tiny band that played at my town’s local festival. However, the first gig where I at least still have some memories is the one of the Backstreet Boys back in 1997, where my mum had to go with me because I was too young to go alone. Already a year later I went to see Die Ärzte (nice change of my taste in music, eh?), but those are pretty much the only two bigger concerts until I started to attend festivals. This shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows that I grew up in a town with 15.000 inhabitants somewhere in Tyrol, because there just is no possibility to see an international band unless you drive for an hour to the next bigger city.

So when I moved to Vienna, a new world opened itself to me. Concerts every day, sometimes leaving me unable to decide which to go to. Especially the autumn and early winter always proved to be the best time of the year for my obsession with live music. And next week is going to be one of those weeks where sleep will be not allowed, where coffee and beer will be my best friends and where you will have to endure one fangirly tweet after another. Why? I can tell you 7 reasons:

1. Einar Stray @ WUK, Monday
Einar Stray from Norway is one of the most talented musicians I know. Everytime I hear him playing the piano, my heartbeat slows down and I have to close my eyes. It’s magical.
Einar will be supporting Hundreds at WUK Foyer.

2. Team Me @ rhiz, Monday
After letting myself be enchanted by Einar, the next Norwegians are waiting to steal my heart: Team Me, who have been supporting the Wombats on their tour for quite a while now and will finally play their first show in Vienna. If you’ve been following my crazy writing here for longer already, you might have come across the name Uno Moller once or twice – he is part of this team together with four other boys and one girl and together, they will bring their indiepop charm to rhiz.

3. destroy, munich @ Chelsea, Tuesday
The loveliest chaos-troop in the world will bring some happy-time with them, to put a smile on our faces and warm our hearts in those pre-wintery days. The band will share the stage with the trio Robotra, who will present their 7” single for the first time.

4. Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs @ Fluc Wanne, Wednesday
After all the cute and happy and lovely music, it’ll be time for some electro-house and dancing on Wednesday. And how to combine this better than with a dinosaur? Yeah right, I couldn’t think of a better combination either. TEED is finally coming to Vienna after he had to cancel his gig at the Waves Festival. He will be supported by the locals Agent Cooper and there will be DJing from Laminat, Moogle and Temporary Secretary.

5. Portugal. The Man @ WUK, Thursday
It’s no secret that I’m totally and madly in love with John Gourley. After the FM4 radio session in April, he is now coming back to present the latest record of his band called “In the Mountain in the Cloud”. As I learned at the past concerts of Portugal. The Man, their psychedelic soul is live even better than on CD, with John’s fragile and tender voice moving and touching you in a way you never expected.

6. Likewise @ B72, Thursday
How good that WUK tends to end its concerts quite early and B72 tends to start its quite late, eh? Because Der Gute Club is inviting the indie-folk quintet Likewise and the singer-songwriter Philipp Szalay for the last date before the end of the year. Likewise is just recording the first album and I’m excited to see and hear in what direction that might go.

7. Antlers & Dry The River @ Szene, Friday
The spectecular finale of this music week will be provided by two bands every indie-lover should have seen live. The Antlers from Brooklyn released their latest album “Burst Apart” earlier this year, which has since then run on heavy rotation on my iTunes. Dry The River from London have been considered as the new Mumford & Sons from day one, even though until now, they didn’t even release a longplayer yet. As the biggest Mumford & Sons fan on this planet (uhm, slightly exaggerating here of course), you can imagine how curious I am to see what this is supposed to mean.

Dear Vienna people: I hope to see you at one or the other concert. You will recognize me as the person with the biggest dark circles around the eyes, holding a coffee in one hand and a beer in the other.