Vienna’s music scene reinvents itself

With the glory days of 1980s Austropop long gone, and some of its heroes – like Falco, Hansi Lang and Georg Danzer – having passed away already, a new music has emerged in Austria. The current hype surrounding the young generation of Austrian singer/songwriters is a good reason to look at recent developments in the Austrian music scene.

Musicians Mika Vember – her solo album Now or Now came out in 2007 – and Börn, who enjoyed his first solo success with _Schöne Dinge Einfach/21 Songs by Börn” in 2008, recently recorded a joint album, Fame & Success, in just a week and will present it at Bunkerei on 5 June. The two singer/songwriters talked to wieninternational.at about their collaboration, Vienna’s diverse music scene and what makes the city a good place for music and a good stepping stone for an international career.

wieninternational.at: How do you explain the current singer/songwriter hype in Vienna?
Börn: The singer/songwriter scene is not a new phenomenon – other countries have always had their singer/songwriters. The heroes of my youth – Neil Young, Elvis Costello – belonged to this genre. I can only speculate as to why it’s become so popular in Austria right now. In the past ten years the music business has been going through one of its biggest crises since the 1960s. Records are not selling well but playing live has always worked. There has been a desire to focus on the basics again, on the part of both the artists and the audience. After all the technological overkill it’s become interesting again to listen to people who write their own songs.
Mika Vember: Institutions like soundbase (a music project that helps young musicians on their way into a professional career and is funded by the City of Vienna as part of wienXtra – editor’s note) and mica (a communication centre for new music from Austria – editor’s note) show that a good network has emerged in Vienna. No one in the scene is alone. I don’t know when it all began but at some point people just get drawn along. There’s a lot of things happening in Austrian music as a whole, only this genre is attracting particular attention. Things that are hyped by the media so much tend to develop a certain momentum.




wieninternational.at: How can one stand out from all the rest amidst such a hype? Is that the reason for your collaboration, maybe?
Börn: We made a record together because we connect both on the musical and the personal level. Mika has often supported me at my solo concerts, and audiences always like that. I wanted to do a fast, straightforward record, and Mika was the ideal partner for that.
Mika: Because I am fast and straightforward (laughs). There is no concept to stand out behind what we are doing. A certain recognition value will do no harm, of course. We have no fancy stage show – all that matters is the music.
Börn: We had a little hodge-podge of “instruments” lying around. Things like a watering can, a bag of cherry pits and a children’s keyboard.
Mika Vember: Maybe that’s our trademark on our joint album: playfulness. And we like a bit of self-irony. We ironise this mentality of stewing in one’s own juice.
Börn: You can already feel that at the start of the album where you hear a ukulele, a jaw harp and a voice before more elements are added. We even used a choir of dogs once.

wieninternational: What gave you the idea to bring out an album, Fame & Destruction, together?
Börn: I had a very creative phase last November during which I wrote 13 songs that appear on the album. And I specifically asked Mika whether she’d devote one week to me.
Mika Vember: That was the main thing for me – to have a definite time frame. Locking ourselves up for a week to see what comes out of that was a tempting idea.
Börn: The songs are deliberately straightforward. I didn’t want to invent a new kind of songwriting. Quite on the contrary, I enjoyed staying simple and easy.




wieninternational.at: How much of Börn is there on the CD, and how much of Mika Vember?
Börn: The songs are in English, and more of half of them are real duets.
Mika Vember: Our inspiration for the album were Holly Golightly and Billy Childish who made music under the motto “One song, one chord, one story”. It was exciting to create something together and tell a nice story. The duets just happened and were real fun.
Börn: I totally fell in love with singing duets. I always used to hate duets because you only tend to know all those slushy love duets. These I still find rather nauseating but our songs go in a different direction although there is the occasional schmaltzy moment too.

wieninternational.at: Is that a one-off collaboration or will there be follow-ups?
Börn: We have been working together in our music for a long time so I’d say it’s something like a stopover.
Mika Vember: We can’t say yet whether or not we will make another album together but we will certainly continue working together.

wieninternational.at: Mika, with your voice and your texts you stand out from other singer/songwriters. Is that the secret of your success: to make highly varied music with a strong, catchy voice?
Mika Vember: I do not have any recipe or strategy for success. I do what I like and enjoy. That applies to instrumentation too: I might have suitcase drums there sometimes or a xylophone but I don’t do that with the specific intention to be different – I do it because I happen to like it.

wieninternational.at: Together with the music scene new locations have emerged, such as the Bunkerei with its “Songreiterei” series of events. Have such locations been missing in Vienna’s music scene?
Börn: Yes, that’s true. There have always been a couple of places where you could play, but sometimes the conditions for the musicians were just appalling.
Mika Vember: There used to be only two extremes: either locations with a poor sound, where you would receive a drink as a fee for your gig, or those locations where a certain amount of professionalism was required and which were difficult to get into.
Börn: There also used to be locations where musicians had to pay to play. That’s very frustrating. But together some people have emerged, together with the singer/songwriter scene, who support this kind of musicians.
Mika Vember: Charlie Bader from the Medienmanufaktur acts as our manager and booker, that’s very important for us. The “Songreiterei” series is the result of a cooperation between Medienmanufaktur and the cultural associations Narrendattel and Aktionsradius. They have created new room for our genre.

wieninternational.at: Which other locations in Vienna promote young Austrian musicians?
Mika Vember: The Vienna Songwriting Association promotes Austrian as well as international bands at the Vorstadt club and restaurant.
Börn: Many Austrian musicians also play at the various locations in the reconverted vaults along the Gürtel arterial road. And at various summer events in the WUK (an autonomous cultural centre in the 9th district – editor’s note) or on Karlsplatz square, of course.

wieninternational.at: What is more important for young musicians generally – live gigs or airplay?
Börn and Mika Vember (in unison): Live gigs.
Börn: Today, getting airplay on the radio is not a guarantee for success anymore. It would be great if that went hand in hand: you have a new album out, it’s played on the radio, this attracts media attention, and then the crowds come to see you (laughs). Unfortunately, that’s not how it is.
Mika Vember: Naturally, you’ll be more widely known if your songs get played on the radio but I think word of mouth is just as important. But of course a media hype like the one currently surrounding the young Austrian singer Anja Plaschg, aka Soap&Skin, does have a certain effect.




wieninternational.at: What makes Vienna the right place to make music? How do you experience the contemporary music scene?
Mika Vember: Vienna is not big – which has its upsides and downsides for the music scene. On the one hand, all these little families are emerging within the music scene that support one another. That’s a very good feeling. On the other hand, in a city of limited size the level of recognition you can reach will also tend to be limited.

wieninternational.at: What distinguishes Vienna’s music scene from that of neighbouring cities?
Mika Vember: There’s a lot happening in Vienna when it comes to bands as well, i.e., beyond the classic singer/songwriter scene. I’m thinking of groups such as “Ja, Panik” or “Velojet”. You primarily perceive what’s in the media so that’s a subjective view of the music scene, of course.
Börn: There is certainly everything in Vienna, a hip-hop scene as well as an electronic music scene. In the 1990s everyone was talking about Kruder and Dorfmeister. They are still around today, only the papers aren’t writing about them at the moment. That fact is that it is still very difficult to become really big in Austria. That hasn’t changed over the past 20 years.

wieninternational.at: What does that mean for the two of you?
Börn: It means to just keep going. If you get the opportunity to go abroad you should definitely grasp it. As for me, I have a family so it’s not as easy for me to just leave Austria as it was when I was twenty.
Mika Vember: I could imagine living somewhere else for a time. Just to see what the same thing feels like in Barcelona or Berlin.

wieninternational.at: You often get the feeling that musicians who have been living in the USA for a while automatically seem to be held in higher esteem…
Mika Vember: That’s true. I would not do it only for the sake of success. During my studies I spent a term abroad in Ottawa, Canada, and got into contact with the local singer/songwriter scene there. I’m not ruling out living abroad again for a while but for me it would be Canada, I suppose.

wieninternational.at: Vienna is renowned as a so-called capital of music. Does the city’s great musical past tend to be encouraging, or is it intimidating?
Mika Vember: You primarily notice that in bands from other countries. They are often very proud to have played in Vienna once. That reminds you that Vienna is a good place to make music. It’s probably not where most innovations take place but things are happening here and you can make a career for yourself.

wieninternational.at: How often do you get international gigs as a Vienna-based musician?
Mika Vember: I’ve been on tours in Germany where I accompanied my fellow musician Clara Luzia. You look for a local booking agent who knows the scene and the clubs. Of course you’ll only get smaller gigs at first and that only improves over time. I would definitely like to go beyond Austria with my next solo album that is scheduled to come out in spring 2010.

wieninternational.at: And what about your joint album Fame & Success?
Börn: As it was such a from-the-hip shot there is no special marketing strategy. The idea was to make music spontaneously. This is something we try to do in front of an audience as often as possible. Until July we will be playing five gigs between Vienna and Upper Austria. That’s what makes sense today: to play live and sell as many CDs there as possible.
Mika Vember: I’d call it “work in progress” in order to raise awareness of our album.




wieninternational.at: Börn, on your solo album you are singing partly in German and partly in English. Do you intend to retain this bilingual approach?
Börn: Yes, definitely. After all, German is my mother tongue and I find it easiest to express myself in it.

wieninternational.at: Do English-language concerts in Vienna attract a more international audience?
Mika Vember: I’m thinking of a concert at Bunkerei that was a tribute to Johnny Cash. There were some English people among the guests who were very taken with the music. It usually depends on the location a lot. Last summer we played in front of St Charles’ Church, and in settings like this you tend to get a more international audience.