Perhaps the quietest band in Vienna sits in the quietest place in Vienna. In the middle of the Gurteloase, at the back of the Weidinger, I meet MAX RITTER and RAINHARD SÜSS. They are part of the ROYAL DIVING ACADEMY – a band that released an album on POST OFFICE RECORDS as GLEE last year. In the meantime, not only the name has changed. In addition to ADRIAN WALTHER and ROXANNE SZANKOVICH, the band with CLARA WOLF has grown into a small band. The sound continues like five valerian drops to a cherry pit pillow – a trip sitter for days that feel like weeks. Most recently, the ACADEMY filmed the recording of their live album – “Campcore” will be released in autumn, the first music video is already nostalgic between cassette childhood and HD today.
I saw you guys last year as glee met. Now you call yourself Royal Diving Academy.
Max Ritter: We kept hearing: Ah yes, like the series! I still hoped that it would work because we didn’t want to leave the name up to the series. Glee is such a beautiful word!
Rainhard Shit: It was a battle against windmills. Also, there are even bands in this series. If you google, you will never come across us.
Max Ritter: After our first record as glee a number happened to us called “Royal Diving Academy”. Actually we thought that it would also be a good title for the next album.
Rainhard Shit: And now the band is called that. I’m glad we did. Even if it was initially charming to have a band name with only four letters.
Max Ritter: I often think about it: how wonderful those times must have been, when you just played with your band Love could name. No Google, no lookup, nothing. Love (the band) is basically where we come from.
Speaking of the ideological corner. Your music opposes the Üreleaseover-sound of the present, it rather captures an unexcited spirit.
Max Ritter: That was a tough fight. We recorded the first album “Alrite” with the Beatles in mind. Everything in one room, letting the amps bleed into the drums so that we don’t make it too big, too modern later on. That’s our sound: as little fat as possible. With “Campcore” we have taken access even further to the extreme.
It’s homely, soft. Like the associations to the title of your upcoming album “Campcore”.
Max Ritter: Many people associate the term with the feeling of camping. In our case we mean the adjective “camp” – a term from…
Susan Sontag.
Max Ritter: Yes, exactly! It’s about exaggeration as a stylistic device.
And about the kitsch – in a sense that is anything but derogatory. That suits you perfectly.
Max Ritter: Due to the short lead time for the recording, many things crept in that pushed the sound even further into the kitsch direction. For example, Clara wears [Wolf, solo auch als Almuth] not just the beautiful female voice. It has its own verse or narrative position in almost every song. It was a play on the kitsch that you get automatically when a woman and a man sing at each other and sing about emotions. Everything is allowed cheesy be and we have the greatest joy with it.
Rainhard Shit: Well, that puts us with both feet in the Biedermeier era – that’s why I want the word cheesy don’t try too hard. Our sound aesthetic allows for much more fragility. We show ourselves fragile and vulnerable. So when we sit down in my living room and record an album there, that fragility happens because that’s who we are. Cheesiness would be the opposite, because we desperately wanted to achieve this fragile thing. We didn’t do that.
It doesn’t have to be fragile, but it can.
Max Ritter: It was a long process for us to let the songs be the way they are. Raini and I have spent many years trying to be as loud, fast or complicated as possible. Now we play songs as they come, without saying: It’s too simple or too beautiful. I can see my personal development in it. Away from the urge for individuality towards an acceptance of being-as-one-is. It’s okay how I am or think or speak. I have the music to thank for that.
It may simply be, because feelings don’t have to be difficult, but rather, sorry for the kitsch: honest.
Max Ritter: I recently came across an Italian word: sprezzatura. So making something look like it is ureasy, although it actually takes a lot of practice. With that I draw the bow Royal Diving Academy. As a group, we are each other’s life jackets. Without the others we would perish. Or maybe we can even go under – but with a warm feeling in our hearts and with the appearance that everything is going very easily for us.
It’s not called for nothing diving Academy. Sometimes you can also discover something under water that is beautifulön is
Max Ritter: There’s a lot to get! The Royal Diving Academy is like a world and…
Rainhard Shit: Just the tip of the iceberg.
Max Ritter: The name first made us realize how much water there is in the songs. We go to the water all the time, lie by the water, like going into the water, looking at the water and most of all we like it warm…
There will’s philosophical.
Max Ritter: If you break the talk about love down to a rational level, it’s always about water. We are made of water, we come from water.
Rainhard Shit: The planet is made of water.
Max Ritter: water is important. through the Royal Diving Academy let’s channel it. Because: We checked that we are all confused in our own way. But: We have learned to like this confusion.
Each confusion leads to a common disentanglement.
Max Ritter: We don’t want to clear up the confusion at all. You can finally harvest it, it has beautiful fruits.
I think your metaphor language schön.
Max Ritter: I always talk like that.
Rainhard Shit: I can confirm that.
Max Ritter: That’s why I have the delays and he has the compressors.
Rainhard Shit: To break it down to everyday things anyway: Maybe we’ll just grow up. A friend of mine summed it up nicely the other day. Until 30 you think you have no dew from the world. From the age of 30 you check: everyone feels the same way. And that’s okay.
“WE HAVE A CERTAIN FREEDOM TO FOOL.”
That’s what you called acceptance of being who you are, Max.
Max Ritter: Of course we know how a drum set should sound in theory, which synths should be used so that it fits in with current listening habits. Still resisting and accepting that there is no need to sound like everyone else is exhausting.
And then I’ll tell you: That’s something unique!
Max Ritter: This is so rare! It’s often older people in the audience who check the references. Then they remember Gentle Giant and Prog Rock in general, because they know: it already existed, this beautiful music that breaks out of convention. Maybe that’s why it sounds like that gesettled. We look less outside than inside – we couldn’t do it any other way.
How do you mean that?
Max Ritter: Oh well. We recorded a record in one day in front of the cameras. It doesn’t matter whether we call it an album, a live album or a session, it doesn’t matter because it’s about 40 minutes of music. We have a certain freedom of fools.
Rainhard Shit: That’s why we can also re-record songs that we already played on the first record with a different line-up.
Max Ritter: Or, like with “Smilefile”, releasing a single that lasts a minute and a half and makes no sense at all within the logic of the music market – but for us it is everything.
Rainhard Shit: You can see that too.
Max Ritter: Yes, throughout the session, as you can already see in the video for “Pillowtalk”, we grin at each other.
Rainhard Shit: The moment the violin begins is magical. I get goosebumps when we play the piece live. There is also a reference to Georg Danzer in the text.
Max Ritter: Ruaf mi ned an!
Rainhard Shit: Your upholstery still smells like your hair!
Max Ritter: So beautiful! We wriggled the Danzer over there. Eventually the song runs out and it drops into a waltz thing. It then feels as if you open the window and Vienna comes in.
Sorry fFor the kitsch again: You think you can feel such a blissful calm in the room through the screen.
Max Ritter: That’s how it was, yes! During the session, I sometimes had the feeling that nobody dared to breathe or move – because they didn’t want to burst the bubble in which we briefly stopped time.
You also capture the time differently, the video switches between VHSÄaesthetics and HD resösung.
Max Ritter: The VHS thing automatically triggers a homely feeling. After all, we all know him from children’s videos. This is nostalgia and very common right now. It’s still amazing how well these two looks go together.
Do you have any idea why it goes together?
Max Ritter: Because the sound is the basis for it. And it’s HD and VHS at the same time. The aspect ratios even change, but…
It is fdoes not stand out, like a magic trick!
Max Ritter: That’s fascinating, yes. In a first version, we even put the VHS version over the HD video. That triggered something stressful, the opposite of what we wanted to achieve. In the final video, the aspect ratios change, you can see glitches or hear the soft creaking of the floor when the cameramen pad through the room. All of this contributes magic at.
Rainhard Shit: The “quiet” creaking is actually very loud, we recorded it in my old apartment. A month later we moved out. This beautiful apartment is now being totally renovated. Therefore, the recording is a beautiful document of the time before this place was destroyed.
Max Ritter: All of this plays into the idea of Royal Diving Academy. Glitches, creaks, bugs. The triumvirate of aesthetics, band names and album titles tells so much. Sometimes I look specifically for this interaction on YouTube.
I found a playlist on YouTube last year that does just that: an analog photo of a lake, the title somewhere in Italy 1983, and then pieces by Debussy and Liszt. This fits perfectly.
Max Ritter: Jesus Christ, I’m there too right now! It plays together perfectly. That’s what we want to achieve.
Thank you for your time!
Christopher Benkeser
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Links:
Royal Diving Academy (Bandcamp)
Royal Diving Academy (Instagram)
Royal Diving Academy (Facebook)
Post Office Records (Homepage)