Zabine formerly known as Alpine
Sabine released her debut solo album Transalpin in 2001.
"The best
thing to have come from
Austria in recent years"
Hubert von Goisern
1994 Hubert von Goisern disbands the Alpinkatzen after a brilliant parting tour, in order to concentrate on
solo projects from now on. Not an easy time for Alpine Sabine,
who is all of a sudden Sabine Kapfinger again: "I would
have loved to have worked with the Alpinkatzen for an eternity",
she says wistfully.
Sabine retreats to her homeland, climbs in the mountains
in Tyrol every day, becomes an inspired paraglider. She explains
this phase in her life: "I wanted to be a part of the
place in which I live, I wanted to belong to the community.
I became very extreme in this concern. Nevertheless, the
music never let go fo me over all the years. And also my
vision of the microcosm never left."
Sabine travels to remote areas. "Superficially",
she laughs, "that certainly had to do with recovery.
But actually there were excursions into the cultures of quite
different sets than were familiar to me. I wanted to regain
my voice and at the same time put it into a new, surprising
context. I wanted to go back to my very own vision."
However, Sabine only really regained
her vision when she became a mother in 1998. "The birth of my son",
she knows today, "returned my original confidence in
myself. It was the grounding for the self-confidence to take
my musical career into my own hands. It ensured that I sat
myself down night after night and filed away at lyrics."
From this came the twelve titles of the first
work from Sabine Kapfinger, who recently called herself Zabine,
because "it sounds exciting and sexy somehow," she
says grinning. "A new name was important to mark out
a new horizon."
Actually, the record is the creative sweeping
blow of a musical single combatant, who, in dreamless-cold
times like ours, dares to dream - and carves a singular musical
microcosm from this. Drum & bass is yodelled to, native
folk music is rapped to, an Austrian mantra graces an ambient
beat, Tibetan and African tunes come along in dance beats.
At times you feel reminded of Björk, at times of the
Lapland shaman Mari Boine, at times Lauryn Hill. And always
of Zabine. She constantly surprises the listener with the
new, you feel different and confused in this musical world,
on the other hand immediately happy and familiar. Or, to
let the artist speak: "I want the listeners to go with
me on a trip, I want to take them with me on my very own
journey. You must only listen to me. Then everything will
be good." And: "I will integrate the whole world
into my music, piece by piece. Because I really love all
these different cultures."
In 2002 Zabine won two Amadeus Awards, the
most important Austrian music prize, being named Best National
Female Artist and Best National Newcomer. [Read more about
the Amadeus
Awards]
|
