So you’ve got some good friends in Hamburg who are publishing the new record. And another one in Berlin who’s taking care of getting the news out. Not only are they fans, they’re taking money for it. You’d think that they could come up with something to say about it? You’d think wrong.
There’s nothing to it really, is there? Label: pingipung Artist: hey-ø-hansen Album title: we so horny - serious pleasure riddims. File under: Austrodub.
Done. That’s it. End of story. But no, that won’t do. The journalists would break out in a cold sweat. Simply nothing - blank space - that doesn’t work. No magazine would offer a spot in the review section for the gorgeous cover and a few blank lines underneath. No station would broadcast a minute’s silence before playing the most extraordinary dub record that’s reached the world’s ears in a long time.
Well then. What’s the news? On “We so horny”, hey-ø-hansen strip down dub rhythms ranging from the fifties up to electronic dancehall and make them up freshly in the guise of dubstep. Dub at the interface between digital and analog
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With its monolithic consolidation of drums, bass, grating 80s synths, winds and echoes, the album soars above the Berlin plains like an alpine rock face. The roots of hey-ø-hansen’s music reach deeply into Tyrolian folk music and its peculiar off-beat, but it’s their studios in Berlin where it un- folds its power.
You need to know that one half of the band is the extreme climber Michael Wolf. A long time ago, he quit free climbing for the music, which probably saved his life. At the same time, Wolf is a painter, replete with artistic cross-grainedness. david thomas fred frith mark steward brian eno captain beefheart sonic youth the residents rhys chatham snakefinger john zorn - as well as count- less other bands Wolf has experienced live in their early days - that’s his musical background. The second half of the band is Helmut Erler. At least one generation younger than Wolf. His cosmos is more contemporary; he’s been working for many years as a sound engineer for Dubplates & Mastering. As far as dub and techno are concerned, this puts him in the tradition of Basic Channel and Chain Reaction, as he makes the sound for dial, ostgut-ton, applepips, sub:stance, hotflush, soloaction - just naming a few of the labels.
So when you put Wolf and Erler together in a band, relocate them from Tyrol to Berlin, give them a good shaking and wait for fifteen years (yep - that’s how long hey-ø-hansen have been around) - it’s hardly surprising when the result renders you speechless. Austrodub - that’s the white dub of the next generation. Condensed, focussed, and precise. It’s for all those who are still getting teary- eyed over ‘roots’, who are about to consider ‘dubstep’ done and over, and yet who know that the road always continues, that bass holds the world together.