On Monday, on that rainy nineteenth of September at 7:30 p.m., the Viennese band “woschdog” performed at the ORF Radiokulturhaus on Argentinierstraße in the fourth district of Vienna. It was a cell phone-free seated concert – very pleasant, so I only have mental images of the concert, but that’s how it should be.
The experimental, trip-hop-like, but genre-breaking Viennese collective woschdog writes songs that are intended to have a cathartic effect on the listener, as singer Ingrid Lang explains even before the first note is heard. There are important songs that woschdog write.
The basis of their art is an open understanding of music. Woschdog are the best example of the possibilities that open up when a band doesn’t stick to classic line-up ideas and instruments, but breaks up the conventional, thinks openly and combines them in new ways. Her instruments are vocals (Ingrid Lang), zither (Karl Stirner), Rhodes piano, synth, electric bass (Sebastian Seidl) drums (Johannes Wakolbinger) and since this concert at the RKH, as Ingrid Lang proudly announces, they are also a permanent fixture in the line-up the amplified cello (Lukas Lauermann). Your music is “Viennese Trip-Hop”, maybe. Or the “Vienna-Bristol-Sound”, “Bristol-Vienna-Sound” if such a flight connection exists.
The first song is a cover by the Fine Young Cannibals – Johnny Come Home; dialected in by Karl Stirner it says: Which one. On the left in the background Karl Stirner acts on his initiative the band was founded. Over the course of the concert he often plays jazzy lines on his zither and here and there a solo with which he moves from the background left to the foreground. The four instrumentalists sit in a kind of elliptical arch, with vocal instrumentalist Ingrid Lang standing in the middle. Coming from the theater, she dominates the stage personality, which gives woschdog a strong identity and a strong connection to the audience.
Ingrid Lang will moderate between the songs. She introduces the band members and announces the first woschdog song: waggle dog, the first original composition of the evening. The songs on the Foin album will not be played in the same order as on the album, explains Ingrid Lang. The sequence of day and night is also not cemented into the concrete on which it hits you. “As if the short time between Nocht and Tog gor was never over,” sings Ingrid Lang. […] “When your face hits concrete.” She sings about the conveyor belt and the Danube Canal and the faces swimming by and the boom, contours and the architecture of each one.
Ingrid Lang comes closest to the unembellished truth in her dialect. The dialect gives her the greatest possible access to the expression that leaves an impression. Her lyrics are twofold: direct and metaphorical. Where directness encourages expression, they are direct; where visual language opens up greater expression and space for the listener’s own interpretation and imagination, there they are visual language.
Except for two song texts, the texts were penned by Ingrid Lang. Lyrically, Ingrid lang names hc artmann as an inspiration. Two lyrics etc All the best were written by Karl Stirner. In All the best drummer Johannes Wakolbinger switches from his drumsticks to the jazzy brush accompaniment.
Johannes Wakolbinger supports woschdog on his drums in the song huach only with the most necessary beats – so that the trip-hop beat is still recognizable as a trip-hop beat. In other words, in such a way that the beat still “breaks up” and it gets up again and again. But he doesn’t take too many steps in between like an electrified trip-hop beat. Rather a minimalist played acoustic drums, woschdog thought when Wakolbinger joined the band. And thus more space for the other instruments in between.
Sebastian Seidl operates the synths and – replacing a bassist – covers the low frequency spectrum of the sound by sending urgent downtempo synth basses swaying through the hall. for the song Shit! he pulls out an e-bass from behind the mountain of synth instruments, with which he deeply relaxes a slow, descending trip-hop-typical bass line and exchanges looks with drummer Wakolbinger, who is absorbed in his foundational drumming grooves.
The stage of the ORF Radiokulturhaus shines in bluish and reddish light. Lukas Lauermann’s magnificent cello also seems chestnut reddish. As on his solo albums, Lukas Lauermann expands the sound possibilities of his (amplified) cello through his playing style – which understands the instrument and its possibilities of expression holistically – his effect pedals do the rest to support the pedaling into the musically untrodden.
The audience tries to spy how the inventive spirits of woschdog distill the sound from their instruments. Of course, they wouldn’t reveal the acoustic formulas. Because it is precisely in that mystery that lies the magic. In between, the music woschdogs is created. They work with an accuracy and careful approach and sophistication that never overloads the songs and lets the in-between work. Not a note, not a note too many. woschdog’s music draws its strength from the fragile.
Personal Jesus a Depeche Mode cover can also be heard Personala Jesus. Hay is the last song of the evening. Overflowing applause. There is a standing ovation. Gratitude of the witnesses of this convincing performance. All numbers of the album Foin have been played.
As an encore and world premiere, the important and poignant song Sister Sleep played. A song from the upcoming second album that woschdog is already working on and an album that will also have an effect. My eyes were watering. Then the light went on in the RKH hall. Applause again. Full of gratitude for the concert, the audience stepped out of the hall and building into the darkness of Argentinierstrasse. During the transcending woschdog concert, the catharsis in the Kulturhaus, night had already fallen outside. It rained over Wieden.
It was as if the time between woschdog and night was never over.
Guitar music and concert sketches