once more with feeling

In case you didn’t notice it yet: I am from Austria. It’s that tiny country in the middle of Europe, the one without kangaroos. We are famous for: Mozart, The Sound of Music, Hitler, yodeling in leather trousers, Falco, allowing extremely right wing parties in the government, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Swarovski, Freud, Schnitzel, not knowing how to play football and recently also Ernst Strasser.
Even though we had our (classical) musical peaks in the past, we didn’t manage to keep up with… well, everybody else. However, that little country of ours is not giving in. In the past couple of years, especially the indie music scene has seen the popping up of new bands, competing for recognition inside and outside the country’s frontiers. I have already presented many of them here – not because of my national pride, but because I truly believe in them. They might not be the next Arcade Fire or Kings of Leon or Bright Eyes, but they keep the hope alive that music in Austria didn’t die after Out of the Dark, that copying Germany with their casting shows isn’t everything and that playing music you love is more important than commercialization (did anybody of you read that interview with Christl Stürmer years ago, where she said her music is not the type of music she’d actually listen to? Sad but true.).

Well, enough with praising Austria’s indie bands. It’s time for some music. Today, I have two videos for you:

The first one is from Francis International Airport. It’s quite a hipstery kind of video, one of those kinds where you can’t really see the story behind it, but the colours and the shots are all so pretty that you just wish life would really have a bit of that beau teint. Also, put some animal masks and a cute little princess in a video, and you’ll win.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eObTfOQ7GxA

The second video is not just a music video – it’s a short story by Sebastian Kraner for and with destroy, munich. Some parts of it are in German, but even if you don’t understand it, you should still keep watching.
Some trivia:
- I love that the one guy has “Friday I’m in love” as his ringtone.
- Did you realize that they’re watching Californication? It’s one of my most favorite shows at the moment.
- The place where they meet at minute 7 is just some hundred meters away from my flat.
- That lovely girl singing with them on stage is Anna Kohlweis aka Paper Bird.
- The other girl, the one playing the guitar, quit the band a while ago and is working in the office where I’m doing my internship.
- There should be more gorillas handing out bananas at concerts.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILNlw63Q5pI

Napster. Do you remember it? Napster was the first program I had for downloading music. Illegally. I stopped buying CDs, because (nearly) everything I wanted was available for free, and only one click away from me having it. In my hometown Kufstein, the only record store we had closed in my early teenager-years. There was no Saturn or Media Markt, and I was still quite suspicious of ordering records via the Internet.
However, I always wanted to also have every record physically. This is why I burned everything, and even created the cover exactly like the “real” record looked like.
Then, I moved to Vienna. I started going to concerts, and I started to buy CDs again. I realized that buying music gives you a good feeling, because you know that you’re supporting the artists, because it tells the artists that you appreciate their music, that they should keep going.
What makes me happy is when artists take their records as serious as I do. When they put hard work in the creation, when the whole thing is more than a 2-sided leaflet with some “Thank you” notes and a disk with a couple of songs on it. When you have the feeling that it’s worth every cent. Austrian bands are quite good in that. Just think about Toph Taylor‘s amazing CD-book or Destroy, Munich‘s latest release full of pictures and the images of handwritten lyrics. And on Wednesday, I found another piece of music no one should be missing in his record collection.

It’s the first EP of diver. Remember? Yes, it’s the band I’ve been enthusing about since last summer. I promised you to be hearing more of them. And I was right. After having played as support for Trouble Over Tokyo, they now opened for Francis International Airport. I was standing in the second row (as usual) and overheard some girls talking about how amazing they are, that the cute singer is Wolf from Deckchair Orange, and they even knew some song lines. Yes, diver are on their way to Austria’s indie-elite.

Their EP is a masterpiece of self-made artwork. A retro-style cover that has been sewed together by a friend of the band and a CD in the look of a vinyl disc. The 20 copies they brought to the concert on Wednesday were sold out in about 5 minutes, but they are already producing the next edition. So you can either write them an e-mail (wearediver (at) gmail (dot) com) saying that you really really have to have the record as soon as possible or you come to one of their next gigs (28.2. Scherbe/Graz, 14.3. rhiz/Wien, 20.3. Flex Café/Wien) and get it there. And until that, you can always listen to the songs on their Facebook page and take a look at the amazing pictures of the gig on Wednesday at the gap.