Alpine Punk Anyone? The Genius of Attwenger (and John Peel)

I always struggle when someone asks me what sort of music I like. The honest if facetious sounding answer is good music, of any sort. This seems to run counter to a common expectation that you should instead name a limited number of widely recognised genres, bands or singers. Musical categories are something of a necessary evil; they provide a vocabulary for trying to describe what you hear and feel but can also act more negatively in reverse by creating perceived boundaries beyond which many fear to tread. This can be reinforced by the music media which often operates in a correspondingly compartmentalised fashion, with both media and public hence having to choose which individual “compartments” they are going to engage with, the natural consequence being that all else gets excluded.

I’ve just finished reading the hefty, addictive and cumulatively impressive tome Good Night and Good Riddance by David Cavanagh which documents the late great radio DJ John Peels’ approach to, and profound influence on, new music engagement and taste in Britain. 35 years of subversive and provocative broadcasting that miraculously survived BBC conservatism allowed Peel to encourage large numbers of new unconventional musicians, and steered listeners to the vastly enriched world thus created. However, Peel broadcasts were never easy listening; they were akin to panning for gold: often deeply uncomfortable, patience testing, and with large amounts of crap to get through. Yet you still knew you were in the best possible place to encounter genuinely life-changing nuggets, and so you did – everyone who stuck with it will have their own prizes.

A key part of Peels radio approach was a kind of shock tactic; in addition to being willing to play virtually anything on his shows, however obscure, rough or provocative, and of any genre, as long as it had some sort of (often well disguised to his listeners) merit to his ears, he made a particular point of sequencing tracks in the most jarring way possible. This left the listener all over the place, constantly trying to re-adjust; it was hard work and challenging – but I soon realised that was the point, to (often brutally) challenge his audience, to see if they would “get” yet another music possibility. In so doing they had to constantly question their current preferences and boundaries – mind expanding stuff.

All of which is a rather long-winded introduction to celebrating a rare new release by one of my favourite category-busting bands of the last twenty years. A largely unrecognised duo from Austria about which Peel in typically perfunctory style simply said “I have no idea what it’s all about, but I like the general noise a great deal”.

Attwenger

Attwenger comprise Markus Binder and Hans-Peter Falkner from Linz, Austria who on their emergence in the early 1990s had a highly distinctive, rapid, in-your-face sound, which could be broadly described as manically fast drums and accordion overlaid with inscrutable Germanic lyrics, often spoken rather than sung. It was sufficiently new, raw and engaging that it provoked the (possibly tongue-in-cheek) coining of a new genre – Alpine Punk, recognising its core building blocks lay in the traditional music and instruments of their homeland. Their initial 1991 release Most captures this style best, and is still a fun listen – with even the occasional yodel creeping in. Others such as the notable Bavarian band Hundsbuam Miserablige subsequently joined in and developed the theme further (their leader inspired by an Attwenger concert), and their eponymous first album from 1996 is also well worth a spin.

Early Attwenger were highly influential in firing up a whole Alpine New Wave and enjoyed considerable acclaim, locally at least, to the extent that it all got a bit much and they ceased to exist in 1995 to get a break from it all. Two years later however, they roared back with something very different, and this ability to move on with great originality and panache has proved to be one of their key assets. The 1997 release Song left the punk moniker well behind and hinted at how their longer term evolution would progress, to something far more sophisticated and interesting. Dominated by clubby repetitive trip-hop and jungle beats, centred around the synthesizer with only light-touch folk and traditional elements, Song broke very different ground with its small number of long mesmerising tracks. Yet it in turn was something of a transitional step, marking out new territory of interest, before inventively amalgamating this with the earlier more traditionally based style to arrive at a far more creative, varied, yet balanced and satisfying sound that gelled fully for the first time in 2002 on the album Sun, which took them to a whole new level and remains a firm favourite of mine.

Attwenger largely sing/speak in an Upper Austrian dialect that is beyond even many Bavarians, let alone a wider audience; a situation the duo use to advantage by treating the vocals more as another interesting sound source than an explicit source of meaning. But with each album from Sun onwards it’s got a lot more intriguing than that; wordplay has become a key part of their art, with careful positioning and emphasis of occasional words or phrases that have alternative meanings across several languages they create fascinating ambiguities and pulses of meaning (or possible meaning anyway) that jump out at the careful listener of a particular language in time with the music. It can all get quite beguiling.

 

This complex and absorbing style has developed and matured in unhurried fashion from Sun through the subsequent albums Dog (2005) and Flux (2011), to the very pleasing latest offering a couple of months ago, Spot. The latter is an object lesson in creativity and sophistication, with 23 diverse tracks nearly all under two and half minutes, showcasing a level of entertaining and playful inventiveness that most artists would give an arm for. Seek it or its predecessors out for a rewarding new musical experience ranging from the languid to the frenetic. Oh, and play it loud for greatest appreciation, this really isn’t music for half-measures.

Getting my first Attwenger albums in pre-internet times was a rather mysterious experience; sending cheques off to the sole UK distributers, the splendidly named Klang Records at the Tolkienesque address of Midgehole Road, Hebden Bridge in the deepest darkest Pennines. I had visions of a flea-ridden establishment like something from the slightly disturbing TV black comedy series The League of Gentlemen. They now have a clunky, rarely updated website of exquisitely obscure recordings – are they really still there I sometimes wonder?

Coincidentally I only recently discovered that klang is German for sound – so actually a rather boring name. Sometimes it’s better not to know; although such changes in perception with language are pure Attwenger!

 

Despite nearly 25 years of inspired music making Attwenger are hardly known in Britain and as such they epitomise the great music that is out there in the wider musical world that many would find exciting and rewarding if only they knew about it and could hear it for themselves. John Peel was a special and relatively lonely explorer and champion of new music on the national airwaves in his time, an impressive one-stop shop for those with sufficient open-minded hunger. A few others on the radio have subsequently picked up the baton to varying degrees, and arguably across a wider front, though generally with a lot less appetite for the truly experimental and half-formed. But the key now, in this digital era, is perhaps for each of us to develop that appetite, beyond any simplistic constraints of familiar artists or genres. The internet-enabled means for new musicians to put stuff out-there and for listeners to find it, with or without the help of intermediaries, means exciting and rewarding new music is literally at our fingertips if we want it enough to go looking. Maybe we just need to first hear that one fantastic piece of music that tells us just how good it can be…



The tip of the John Peel tribute iceberg