S'NIX

Goisern reloaded

Long awaited, surprisingly loud and diverse: on the new album S'Nix Hubert von Goisern reveals unknown sides, sounds and tones.

When a Goisern album is called S'Nix one could easily draw the wrong conclusion. One could think that the Goiserer is concerning himself in quiet ways with his inner life, religious themes, vibrations from the Far East or the silence of the salt mountains. The opposite is the case. Goisern has done nothing other than bring out another veritable Goisern album after a long period of creative digression (live, soundtrack and concept albums).

The style of development was certainly unusual. Goisern invited the band from the Danube tour (Severin Trogbacher, David Lackner, Helmut Schartlmüller, Alex Pohn, Marlene and Elisabeth Schuen, Maria Moling, Darinka Tsekova) to his studio in Salzburg. Then the door was closed and they played. The result: an unusually alive album, varied and never tied to just one style, just one subject.

Certainly Goisern brought along a couple of set pieces that were to develop into songs: the recording of a legendary football World Cup radio broadcast and the anthem he wrote for the Red Bull Salzburg football club. From these came very different songs, very different instrumentations, very different atmospheres, meaning that the best way to do justice to the album is to describe it song by song.

1. Showtime
Goisern doesn't take long to get to the point: an unstoppable guitar sets the tone and a heavy metal singer - Goisern! - comes roaring into the song, speech singing, rhyming, drowning out the cheeky choir. Rock 'n' roll is wild and Goisern offers proof that he is on first name terms with not just yodelling, but rock 'n' roll too.

2. Rotz und Wasser
A montage of a historic football broadcast and no, it isn't Edi Finger Senior from Córdoba. It is Heribert Meisel, the famous sports journalist, who commentated for the Austrian radio on the legendary World Cup quarter final in 1954 between Switzerland and Austria. The result was 7:5 to Austria and Goisern underscores the neuralgic passages with rhythm and the sound of his accordion. Wonderful memories of a time when Austria's radio reporters had a Brazilian temperament.

3. Weltuntergang
The first conventional pop song of the album. Goisern as a crooner, reminding you after the first refrain of how well he can yodel. A beautiful, sentimental ballad that even allows itself - and can allow itself - an excursion into the world of gstanzls. Armageddon as a metaphor, as threat, but as a promise too. Goisern the way he is known and loved.

4. Auseinandertreiben
When separation looms. When trust disappears. But when there is still hope that we could still have a future: warm, funky blues frays at the edges into Austrian country music. Goisern's voice is strong, close and present. His muted trumpet a wonderful will-o'-the-wisp.

5. Die Liab
A love song at last. Electronic chirping over the guitar that puts itself in competition with the melody, preventing it from becoming too sweet. Goisern meditates on the eternal theme: "Love, love, it gives no peace / And every day it wants more / And because it does us such good / I can't fight it".

6. Haut & Haar
Fanning the flames: This is Goisern's anthem for passion. A resolute rock song, orchestrating the victory of desire over good sense. It's got to be quick, tonight. The singer is impatient. A powerful, muscular number.

7. Leben
Belief in the here and now and once more rock 'n' roll gives the tempo. Behind heavy guitar Goisern meditates on the meaning of life: "Nothing belongs to us and nothing is free / That's why / Our whole life is for us the greatest trick".

8. Herschaun
The most varied title of the album. A resolute rapping Goisern tips into yodelling and is caught by Balkan fiddling. It could be heard as a resumé of the Danube trip, or as what it is positioned as: a melting pot of numerous musical motifs over the moral imperative of the lyricist: looking, looking here, looking on. But by no means, as Goisern says: looking stupid.

9. Sieger
From the pathos and power of the Red Bull Salzburg stadium anthem Goisern glides into a wonderful contemplative melodrama: the joy of winning meets the pain of losing. An impressive acoustic widescreen cinema.

10. Siagst as
Suddenly there comes the ethereal voice of Xavier Naidoo, who lifts this song from the floor and in duet is an airy complement to Goisern's baritone. The latter alters the function of the words of his Salzburg dialect at a temperate tempo into an into an interesting rhythm instrument: thus Siagst as rises up and sails away, a tear-jerker of high order, and extra long special doing for those dreamers suffering with wanderlust.

11. Regen
"As water is, so am I / I just run and run": and so a fairytale-like ballad comes quickly to the crux of the matter. A beautiful, contemplative song, instrumented like chamber music and Goisern shows how a Salzburger narrator packages stories, while his band demonstrates how complexly intimacy can come across.

12. Hermann
The not very secret "hidden track" of the album. Goisern's quiet trumpet takes command of the conclusion of a varied, intense albums. Thoughtful tempo, blue chords. What else. "Nothingness" could sound very similar to this, but then the sirens call for Hermann and the great riddle remains unsolved.

Nothing can be a great deal

We imagine how someone lets themselves be taken on a ship for a few months, down the Danube towards the delta. At some point the flowing slowness must have been thrown back upon him. What was becomes a pure white that you can call nothingness. Nothingness fell as fresh fertile soil for something that simply began to grow. For Hubert von Goisern it was songs that carry him a little further along the way.

Fingers powerfully play the electric guitar strings, when in Showtime the Pied Piper effect of rock 'n' roll becomes the metaphor of the song. As in general that which unites and brings together is penetrating theme - in Weltuntergang with its changes of style and tempo, as well as the cosmopolitan and sharp Herschaun, which weaves in southeastern European rhythms. The rousing Leben feeds on the power of a whirlpool. In contrast Siagst as in duet with Xavier Naidoo lets itself be driven along in a calm soul shipping channel. The passionate desire in Haut & Haar leaves you tingling. S'Nix is a great deal!

Hubert von Goisern & band - that's what it should be!

From the most fascinating live project to have come from Austria now comes the fitting album of new songs. The intense time on the concert ship from Vienna to the Black Sea in the summer of 2007 was the fertile soil for distinctive album. An album that was composed during studio sessions in collaboration with all the musicians (David Lackner, Alex Pohn, Helmut Schartlmüller and Severin Trogbacher), with the lyrics provided by Hubert von Goisern. After the musically somewhat gentler years from Mr Achleitner he is presenting himself with his old elemental force. Lots of rock 'n' roll, less accordion. An album rich in content that reveals new facets bit by bit.

Hubert von Goisern shows the courage to rock on "S'Nix"

A great success, and a courageous one too: Hubert von Goisern has reinvented himself on his new album S'Nix (Blanko Musik). With the absorbing nine-minuter Siagst as, accompanied by Xavier Naidoo, he has created a small, fascinating pop symphony. Other songs let rebelliousness and zest for life be felt unabated, burning in your ears and on your skin. Real rock numbers, surprisingly intimate ballads, yodelling in soul and yet almost no trad. The band pumps powerfully, a tightly-knit group, and their boss sings so intensely, as never before heard, without renouncing his roots. Another jump forward.

Hubert von Goisern: "S'Nix"

You think you've put on the wrong CD when the first sounds of the new Goisern album are heard. Very unusually for the Austrian the opener on S'Nix is a hard rock number. Those who know Hubert von Goisern know that he needs change and hates well-worn paths like the devil hates holy water. All his life this search for the unknown and the new has always driven him to go further than others. As a result he has had an impressive career as a musician and artist.

So in this way one can also see S'Nix as an excellent example for this curiosity. It is once more a departure for new musical shores. And once more in his music he has processed what he has met in recent years. Traces of collaborations with other musicians for example. On his last tour, on which he travelled the Danube by ship from Regensburg to the Black Sea, he played with many bands from the different regions. It can now be heard that among those bands were some harder bands such as Haydamaky and Zdob și Zdub. But you are far from it if you think that Hubert von Goisern would copy or emulate those bands. It is indisputably "his" music on S'Nix, the way he conceives it at the moment. It is only logical that he would use quotations within it, as on Herschaun: By the way: Herschaun is our high point of the album!

The quieter numbers on the album are in the minority, but they are not of lower quality than the louder numbers. It is here that the Goiserer's gift comes to bear, writing soft, catchy songs, without concocting schmaltzy ballads. But watch out: a good many quiet beginnings prove to be deceptive.

He handles Austrian football history very humorously in Rotz & Wasser, probably knowing to see it as an anthem for the forthcoming European Championship.

In conclusion one can say that with S'Nix Hubert von Goisern has once more released a surprising album. Surprising in the absolutely positive sense.

Hubert von Goisern: "S'Nix"

Hubert von Goisern was born as Hubert Achleitner in 1952 in Bad Goisern, Upper Austria. He took on his name when he founded the Original Alpinkatzen with Wolfgang Staribacher in 1986. On his many travels and during the years he spent abroad he became acquainted with many different musical directions and instruments, which led him to his absolutely open, very own musical style. He is deemed to be simply THE alpine rocker.

Together with Wolfgang Ambros, Joesi Prokopetz and Manfred Tauchen he joined the Watzmann tour in 1991, a stage adaptation of the legendary radio play Der Watzmann ruft. Since 1988 Hubert von Goisern has released albums at regular intervals, which always take up and process the impressions left by the journeys he made. He had his first great success in 1992 with the album Aufgeigen stått niederschiassen, he wrote and performed the soundtrack to the film Schlafes Bruder and was guest on the BAP album Dreimal Zehn Jahre (on the track Rita mir zwei).

There isn't room enough here to do justice to this man's life. And so his new album S'Nix has become a testimony to his boundless curiosity and openness too. Hubert von Goisern rallied together new musicians for his Linz Danube Tour through south east Europe in June 2007, musicians who could not only perform his old pieces, but who could also go in other directions for the new record.

And that was a success. The sounds of his homeland can only be recognised here and there, S'Nix rocks all over, at times pop isn't too far away either. Right away the first song Showtime comes along with crashing guitars and the listener can barely believe that this is Hubert von Goisern. In Leben he then gives a clear statement on his his zest for life, which tolerates no dissent. The songs win on every listen and it is a pure pleasure to let this joy in playing and life energy play to your ears. Hubert von Goisern plays host to special guest Xavier Naidoo (Siagst As).

This man will also be guest at a show on the Linz Europe Tour 2007 - 09. As will other local artists, such as BAP, Konstantin Wecker and Klaus Doldingers Passport for example. On this tour von Goisern will be travelling on board a ship along Europe's longest rivers. His contribution to Linz 2009, European Capital of Culture.

Hubert von Goisern is back with "S'Nix"

Hubert von Goisern is making himself heard again. His new studio album S'Nix will be on the shop shelves from 23rd May. But what you may fear from the title "Nothingness" is not at all the case: the new work, fed with impressions taken from their Danube playing in southeastern Europe, offers a mix of styles and some real pearls - so by no means nothing.

Although: "S'Nix is not nothing. S'Nix is everywhere, even where there is nothing. S'Nix is a condition," Hubert von Goisern explains in the booklet. The Linz 09 ambassador's band for the Linz Danube Tour was newly assembled one more time and he carried them straight from the ship into the studio. Only one "old" friend is part of the lineup again: South Tyrolean Marlene Schuen, who previously cut a fine figure both on the Iwasig disc and particularly on stage.

Rotz & Wasser has turned out to be refreshingly nostalgic and, in view of the approaching EURO 2008, bang up-to-date - a montage of legendary reporter Heribert Meisel's commentary on the World Cup Quarter Final between Austria and Switzerland in 1954, backed with a fuming hypnotic sound and a folksy basic theme. Showtime, Auseinandertreiben and the instrumental finale Hermann reach your heart and mind and on the epic Siagst as Xavier Naidoo contributes vocals. S'Nix is the Goiserer's most exciting work since Fön, although that is by no means to say that there has been nothing in the meantime.

Showtime for Hubert von Goisern

Showtime for Hubert von Goisern. That's not just the opener on S'Nix, the Austrian's new album released in May. The exceptional musician is also setting off on a live tour again this year.

From June he will be continuing his Linz Europe Tour with lots of guests and will be travelling with the ship he field-tested last year upstream along the Danube and via the Rhine Main Canal to the North Sea. Together with his band Hubert von Goisern will be presenting not just the new versions of his best songs from recent years, but also new songs from S'Nix at his live shows. He will be supported by artists such as Konstantin Wecker, BAP and Xavier Naidoo. The latter is also to be heard on one of the songs on the new album (Siagst as).

On both the tour and the album all signs point towards "Amplifiers on!". With his comparatively young band behind him Hubert von Goisern shows himself to be rocky and powerful on the new CD. Rich, full sound, distorted chords and raw vocals as in Showtime stand beside ballads such as Die Liab, catchy pop songs like Haut & Haar, a collage of the moderation during Heribert Meiserl's radio broadcast of the World Cup game between Austria and Switzerland (Rotz & Wasser) and a title such as Herschau'n, which features clear references to the Balkans and its musical traditions. And neither does alpine music get a raw deal, as characteristic dialect singing and yodelling and folk music accents sound time and again.

Nomads in the belly of the ship

Iron and steel, calmness and patience - these are the elements that characterise Hubert von Goisern's new songs. It is no coincidence that the new album sounds like a journey by ship.

An electric guitar thunders at the start. And that is when the the first people will look at the cover in horror to see if it really is a Hubert von Goisern CD that they've put on. It is. It's loud in some of the songs. Hard rock reigns. It is reminiscent of those blissful Alpinkatzen times, when in the mid-1990s Hubert von Goisern got mercilessly straight to the point in order to conciliate the incompatible, to make folk and the universal language of pop sound in equal measure. Musical universal explorations and alpine sound occur this time too. But they do not form the heartbeat of the 12 new songs. Rather more they sound like the echo of his Danube expedition from last year.

The album is called S'Nix. This "nothingness" alludes to those moments where songs arise from a sea of thoughts and ideas. It's sitting around, he says, waiting, which seems like nothing to those around him, but which for him is a fulfilled condition.

Waiting? Sitting about? Practising patience? That sounds like a journey by ship. "People who have been in a ship accident told me how strangely slowly even something like that takes place. You watch for minutes as two ships float towards each other and you can't do anything about it", says Hubert von Goisern.

The steely strength of the ship and the patience that ship travel provokes form the basis of the new songs.

Weltuntergang, Auseinandertreiben and Siagst As are the songs, that reveal the prevailing mood and sources of this album most clearly. All the other songs seem to spin as if caught in a whirlpool around the calmness with which the world is soulfully considered in Siagst As - in collaboration with Xavier Naidoo.

For nine minutes tense expectation reigns. Stories are told of "nomads on new paths". The banality that "after every long night comes the light again" turns out to be a deep belief that nothing past counts, but everything that can be does, that every imaginable effort is worthwhile - and it is the effort that requires the traveller's infinite patience. From far away the voices meet in a symphonic-seeming instrumentation. And that which begins softly undulating develops to a ferocious storm, reflected in the commotion of the voices. Sound technician Wolfgang Spannberger recorded many vocals in a sports hall. An extremely natural sound arose there, a sound that comes almost forbiddingly close to the listener and at the same time, because you can hear breaths taken between the lines, suggests the pressing urge for progress.

S'Nix becomes a statement for perpetual movement in mind and body. However this statement is not formulated solely with the force and glory of volume and muscles. The strength of Siagst As lies much more in the slowness, that of Weltuntergang lies in the considered tempo and that of Auseinandertreiben is found in the uncertainty of cohabitation.

The fact that the patience experienced on board never becomes boredom in the songs is down the precision and intensity with which the Goiserer's voice allies with his band's power. After returning from the Danube tour the new songs were worked upon in long sessions for about five months. The power, with which they played last summer from the ship's stage to the shore, was taken with them into the studio. Even in the reserved numbers a forwards movement is noticeable, something which has not been so noticeable since the Goiserer made his comeback nine years ago after the era of success with the Alpinkatzen (and which matters as this summer they will be playing from the ship's stage again to huge crowds).

Epic stories are unfurled. Restlessness and uncertainty reign. Sometimes the stories are then hammered out. As though from the belly of a ship they must thunder against the steel walls in order to come free. But more often the great narrations grow from forward movement. On a ship one is forced to watch. You discover slowness as a condition of life. There is a lot of time to think.

Hubert von Goisern has used this space. The compositions were never fuller nor more comprehensive. On no album before were the words better considered.

Hubert von Goisern - S'NIX

In recent years Hubert von Goisern was considered to be a Jack of all trades of our nation. Not enough for him however, the Austrian musician is listed as the inventor of alpine rock, who defines a picture of sound that feeds his variety from many different musical styles. And so his new work S'Nix is also a rock album at home in folk music, at times with great attitude and at times tame, with which the musician knows to assert himself anew as a free thinker. The fact that Hubert von Goisern has worked with Tibetan, African and Arabic musicians can be heard in the twelve new compositions, as this daring approach makes Goisern unique. Songs like Rotz & Wasser, Weltuntergang, Haut & Haar and not least Siagst As, created with help from Xavier Naidoo, arose on a ship journey lasting several months, during which Hubert von Goisern seems to have occupied himself with what was really fundamental and important.

With his new work S'nix Hubert von Goisern combines the traditional and modern, quiet and loud, it is testament to an artist who is following a very clearly defined vision. The twelve songs on S'nix thus become the elaborate sound experiments of a man who is immensely important for the genre and who has become indispensable over the years.