FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Ryan Dawes
(812) 339-1195
[email protected]
Venue Contact:
Chuck Perkins
504.975.0286
[email protected]
Quirkabilly and Turbopolka:
Attwenger delivers Alpine Austrian Jams to New Orleans
The Austrian duo Attwenger turn Upper Austrian folk music and wry local wisdom into madcap
backbeats and funky, flaring accordion. It’s The Cramps parachuting into a mountain village
street fest for a punk spree, or The Pogues punning in Alpine slang to dancefloor-friendly
samples. It’s folk trip-hop, psychedelic and feral polka.
Part of a cross-genre outbreak of creativity in Austria—where rappers sit in with neo-trad bands
and DJs deconstruct roots music with unabashed glee—Attwenger hear bass lines and funky
beats in salty expressions and rural Alpine wisecracks. They hear defiance and political critique
in traditional dance songs and ballad. They know how Saul Williams and Hank Williams, techno
and Chuck Berry, can find a perfect, unexpected place in the spirited folk flow.
The indie-gone-Alpine party comes to New Orleans for the band’s U.S. debut March 16th, 2012.
They will be performing at Cafe Istanbul (2372 St. Claude Ave./ph. 504.975.0286). The band
will also travel to SXSW and New York.
“This is the amazing thing: All these traditional tunes, polkas, and Alpine country sounds fit with
punk or rock or hip hop drums,” marvels Attwenger drummer Markus Binder. “It works really
well, but it was a surprise. Then we saw that this is the future.”
“We didn’t plan this thing at all,” Binder exclaims. “This combo of punk and hip hop and rock
beats with traditional sounds was unheard of. One evening we had drum set on stage for a show
with our traditional band. I wasn’t really a drummer; I just played for fun. I sat behind the kit and
the others played traditional stuff, and it worked.”
Binder and accordionist Hans-Peter Falkner were both fixtures on the Linz alternative scene in
the 1990s, a wild, highly creative mix of DJ culture, indie rock, and Alpine roots bands. Falkner
had grown up in a musical and roots-minded family, hearing his parents jam on accordion and
guitar. Binder had long been fascinated by traditional songs, with their intriguing habit of
speaking truth to power and finding compelling turns of phrase.
But they both loved punk and rock and American roots music. “I had listened to a lot Cajun and
zydeco music, and realized that we could do the same thing with our traditions,” Binder notes.
And influences from all have stumbled merrily into Attwenger’s eccentric world: Hints of Chuck
Berry (“Shakin My Brain”) two-step with hard-hitting polka and a wry irony that takes
everything with a grain of folksy salt. Straight-up waltzing ballads go electro, as Binder winks at
old-school rap MCs.
After that crazy night when Binder leaped on the drums and found the rocking heart of Alpine
roots music, the duo started playing together regularly. They took their name from a folk song
featuring a goofy character called Attwenger they heard on the radio. They toured Zimbabwe and
Siberia. They played around with cool-sounding sayings in Upper Austrian dialect, crafting
catchy lines and tangled cross-language puns (“Dog,” which translates as “day” but gives
Attwenger a chance to break down a slang phrase that means, roughly, “today was a real bitch.”)
“‘Hintn Umi’ is Upper Austrian slang for ‘don’t go behind my back, tell me what’s really going
on,’” says Binder “I had this little expression in my head, spinning around, and I realized it was a
bass line. The song went from there.”
These little things turn into big, bold sounds. Sometimes ironic and silly, sometimes critical of
Austrian society, Attwenger capture a vibrant, defiant sense of everyday life and its linguist and
sonic pleasures, a savory sense of local culture and its joys.
“It’s all really natural,” Binder muses. “Whether it’s an old folk song or some new tune, it’s all
about reflecting the world and making it into music and lyrics. It works all together. It’s an
organic way of bringing together the things you see outside and things you feel inside.”
See Attwenger Live:
03/16/2012, Fri
Cafe Istanbul
2372 St. Claude Ave
New Orleans, LA
Ph: 504.975.0286
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