Despite the existing potential, there are only a few local musicians and bands that make the jump to international success. It takes something really special and extraordinary to arouse enthusiasm among music fans outside of Austria. A group that has met all the requirements from the outset in order to make this successful step, is the Lower Austrian vocal troupe Bauchklang. The quintet can boast of single-handedly reviving and saving the genre of “a capella” over into the new millennium.
With their mix of virtuosic vocal mastery, mouth percussion and human beatbox, the five vocal artists Andi Fraenzl, Alex Böck, Gerald Huber, Christian Birawsky and Philipp Sageder generate a unique overall sound, which has also become very popular with thousands of music fans beyond local borders.
The band started about fifteen years ago, when five guys began to implement their own musical vision in the Lower Austrian capital St. Pölten. This was put into practice as an a capella group with the power of the own voice, the abdomen and diaphragm.
This was actually quite a risky venture, since this genre was practically extinct at the time. All too often this style of music was associated with groups like the Comedian Harmonists and was therefore at first rather ridiculed rather than taken seriously. But the guys from Bauchklang could not be diverted from their initial drive and kept working on the idea to add a new and modern interpretation to the term a capella.
The quintet started to produce first tracks in which they connected various style elements from the fields of electronic music (electronic, dub, hip hop, reggae and drum’n’bass) with extremely complex groove-oriented sound images. The music of Bauchklang was so unique, because no other band compared to them in the mid-nineties. This gave the group a pioneering role, which they have kept to this day.
In October 2001 the much anticipated debut album “Jamzero” was finally released . The single “Do not Ask Me” was played on the radio station FM 4 on heavy rotation for weeks. The path to the European stage was paved by a concert at the festival Transmusical in France. At one blow, this legendary performance made the combo a welcome guest everywhere. Only a year later, Bauchklang harvested the first fruits of their, at that time, very unconventional musical approach.
In Austria, Bauchklang was awarded the Amadeus Music Award in the categories “FM4 Alternative Act of the Year” and “Band Rock/Pop national”. Since then, the group has been an irreplaceable factor in the local music scene. The band now enjoys a high reputation worldwide, with appearances at the renowned Jazz Festival in Montreal and in the “Blue Frog Club” in Mumbai, India (to be heard on last years album “Live in Mumbai”).
Last March, the third studio album “Signs” was released. Again, Bauchklang have successfully refined and enhanced their style and expanded it with additional facets. This was done mainly in collaboration with a number of guest musicians (ua. the U.S. “Spoken Word” icon Ursula Rucker, or the French rap poet Rouda), giving each song its own distinctive atmosphere. Altogether “Signs” is not more complex than previous albums.
This year the band Bauchklang has received the special honor to be invited as a representative of the local pop scene to the EXPO 2010 in Shanghai and to play three concerts (17th, 18th & 19th of June) in the Austrian Pavilion.
Photocredit 1: Ingo Pertramer
Photocredit 2: konflozius