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Rauch CD


Extraplatte EX 770-2: 2008 / Booster 2008

Harald Friedl
Composition, singing, lyrics.

Thierry Zaboitzeff
Composition, bass, cello, guitars, voice, samplers.

Rythmic and poetic, these Austrian chansons are the product of a collaboration between Harald Friedl and Thierry Zaboitzeff (formerly of Art Zoyd). Friedl’s literary texts and Zaboitzeff’s electro-acoustic arrangements feature elements of contemporary music that give rise to broad musical spectrum: a journey through landscapes of the human psyche and sensibility that appears at once ironic (“Jordan,“ “De valoaranen Söön“ [The Prodigal Son]) and playful (Alloa [Alone]), and then with driving rythms (Geist in der Floschn [Genie in the Bottle]). “Büüda va dahaam” [Pictures from Home] eschews sentimentality while delivering a meaningful look at life, the love song “Mia zwoa” [We Two] a poetic, original, and riveting tribute to individual happiness, and Herzton [Sound of the Heart] swinging rock based on song lyrics that derive from simultantaneous joy of life and rebellion against coercion. All of the texts in Austrian dialect were written by Friedl, all of the music with the exception of „Rauch“ [Smoke] (the title track based on an adaptation of Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie Nr. 1) by Friedl and Zaboitzeff. In “Rauch,“ Friedl and Zaboitzeff have delivered a very personal album--free from the merely fashionable, with a combination of alternately opulent then subtle soundscapes and riveting lyrics--that self-confidently raises the individual up out of the common.