Vienna groove unit – RAW [Interview]

Describe your sound in 3 words

Energetic, rough with straight musical attitude, funky and warm hearted

Tell us a few things about your new album ‘RAW’. What is the story behind it?

It is an instrumental band so the main focus is on straight musical parameters like groove, hook lines and themes, voltage curves. Behind that it is a hommage to an artform called “Viennese funk school”, a very laid back based form of playing funk and soul music, influenced by Viennese waltz tradition , so we are doing a combination of so called “black music” and Viennese tradition.
Furthermore you find 3 different types of styles on that album, combined over this specific style I mentioned above: the funky style represented on “Vaccine” or “Song for Charly” (a typical Viennese school funk tune), the bluesy style on “Boogaloo for You” and “The reverent” and the jazzy influence mainly transported by “Mr. Trixler” and “The Travel”.

Which song of the album reflects you the most?

As I mentioned above, it is combination of 3 styles based on the instrumentation (hammond C3 with leslie, guitar with VOX AC30, bass and drums) and a specific way to compose and play. Maybe “Song for Charly” is representing everything,, but I do not want to only mention 1 song. The funky side is represented by “Vaccine”, the bluesy side by “Boogaloo for you” and the jazzy side by “Mr. Trixler” the most. But “Song for Charly” represents the “Viennese funk school” the most and “The reverent” is more straight soul – bluesy than “Boogaloo for you” which is combination of bluesy and funky influences.

What do you enjoy most? Writing music or performing your music live?

Both sides are great, at the moment and also the last 2 years this band was more into writing and recording because of the worldwide pandemic situation. But for sure this music lives through the live performance, the energy and the improvisational part a lot which is transported and reflected the most when playing live.

What is the biggest challenge you have faced as an artist so far?

Doing instrumental stuff and being heard 😉

In which state of mind do you imagine people might listen to your music?

I listen to it a lot when I drive my car or clean my flat (no joke), or when I have to do things where I need energy and some sort of continuity (which would be interrupted by lyrics). Also while doing sports it is great, gives you all sort of moods and grooves. So I can imagine that this happens to others too, by the way we are also part of a big playlist for people that want to listen to music while studying. That is functioning great because of the inherent continuity of this kind of music.

When was the last time you danced?

When ironing my flat listening to “Raw”…before that I guess it was when listening to Cuban and funky music in my fav pub…

Thank you!

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