Sofa Surfers

An album without a name, simply Sofa Surfers. The Red Album, that’s how Wolfgang Schlögl, Markus Kienzl, Michael Holzgruber and Wolfgang Frisch refer to it, somewhat playfully and yet quite full of paternal pride, because of the fire brigade locker that graces the cover. Three and a half years after Encounters, an album of HipHop/Dub-excursions into the dark territories of the soul, full of droning towers of song and recorded with the help of various vocalists, the Viennese quartet releases their 2005 album that largely dispenses with computers and effects devices and that features a single voice. Once again the album will be released by Klein Records, a label the band has been amicably associated with since its early days. The aim for the new album was to stress the band character of the Sofa Surfers and to go back to basics: ''What we were after was a sound that didn’t need any effects to hide behind. We wanted to have the sound sources to be presented in a rather naked manner, so to say.'' Sparsely arranged for guitar, bass, and drums only, the album’s opening might well originate from some dynamic postrock band or, as Wolfgang Schlögl had envisaged the band during recording like a hardcore band after the noise has abated.