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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 a new album that largely dispenses with computers and effects devices and that features a single voice. Sparsely arranged for guitar, bass, and drums only, the album's opening might well originate from some dynamic postrock band. Just when listeners have adapted their expectations to this exciting sonic environment, however, a shift occurs: quite suddenly a voice drifts in, shortly grating against the music, before it beautifully falls in tune with it. It is the voice of singer, dancer, and choreographer Mani Obeya who, after various adventures in London and New York, has recently alighted in Vienna. Not only does his voice lend the new album a soulful warmth, it also helps to give it a clear structure. Sofa Surfers is an extremely compact album. And yet, its combination of a band not entirely disinclined to rock and a voice that, in its broadest sense, recalls R'n'B, makes for music that dares to venture pretty far out. It is music that isn't made for specific places, that is neither club nor home music, that simply is there, that simply is. It is not unlikely that it will create its own rooms, that it will find a space entirely of its own.

Review By Soulseduction



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 a new 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“. Just when listeners have adapted their expectations to this exciting sonic environment, however, a shift occurs: quite suddenly a voice drifts in, shortly grating against the music, before it beautifully falls in tune with it.

It is the voice of singer, dancer, and choreographer Mani Obeya who, after various adventures in London and New York, has recently alighted in Vienna. Not only does his voice lend the new album a soulful warmth, it also helps to give it a clear structure...

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