Efterklang, Wien, 08.03.11 + Interview

Konzert: Efterklang (inkl. Film-Screening von "An Island")
Ort: Szene, Wien
Datum: 08.03.2011
Zuschauer: ausverkauft, wohl 500
Dauer: 90 Minuten reine Live-Performance

Es war durchaus nicht abzusehen, dass das Konzert von Efterklang ein Erfolg werden würde. Mit Mogwai (das schmerzt) und den White Lies (schmerzt nicht) hatte man zwei große Konkurrenten an diesem Tag in der Stadt. Eine derartige Ballung von "großen" Konzerten funktioniert wohl in Paris, in Wien ist das eher nicht der Fall. Diesmal schon, Mogwai waren seit zehn Tagen ausverkauft, die White Lies dürften ihre angehenden Stadionambitionen auch vor zahlreich erschienenem Publikum demonstriert haben und das Schönste: Efterklang brachten mit einem großen Finale ihre Hütte auch noch voll.

Völlig zurecht auch noch. Mit einem gewohnten Konzerbericht kann ich zwar diesmal leider nicht aufwarten, ob der Schönheit war ich einfach zu faul bzw. zu andächtig, um die Setlist mitzuschreiben. Dafür gibt es hier ein paar fragmenthafte Erinnerungen und, was mich besonders freut, ein kleines Interview.

Pünktlich um 20:15 (TV-Potatoes auch als Prime-Time bekannt) betrat Casper die Bühne, sprach ein paar Worte zum Film, der anstelle einer Vorband gespielt werden würde und bat um Ruhe. Anders als im Theater, wo immer genau die Leute hingehen, die chronischen Schnupfen haben, funktionierte das auch ganz gut. Und als wäre das noch nicht höflich genug, setzten sich auch alle brav hin, auf dass auch jeder noch so kleine Mensch freien Blick auf die Leinwand habe.

Auf dieser wurde in langen Szenen ohne hektische Schnitte und in der typischen Vincent Moon-Optik An Island gezeigt. Eine Insel - sie nannten sie "Als". Quasi eine Rückkehr zu den Wurzeln der Band, noch schöner als die Idee der Heimkehr ist nur jene des gemeinsamen Performens ihrer Songs mit Nachbarn, Schulkindern und Familie.
An das Standardwerk in der Kategorie "Musik-Film", nämlich an Heima, kommt An Island zwar nicht heran, für gerade mal vier Tage Drehzeit ist allen Beteiligten aber ein erstaunlich dichter Film gelungen, mit beeindruckenden Perspektiven und der nun mal eben tollen Musik der Alser.
Kein Wunder also, dass mit dem Abspann der Applaus losrauschte und nicht zu knapp ausfiel. Wer den Film sehen will kann übrigens ein Screening in seinen eigenen vier Wänden veranstalten, es gibt nur zwei Bedinungen: Es darf kein Eintritt verlangt werden und der Raum muss mindestens fünf Leuten Platz bieten (also vielleicht nicht unbedingt im Kellerabteil). Zahlt sich definitiv aus!

Auszahlen tun sich auch 14€, wenn man sie für Efterklang springen lässt (Gästeliste natürlich noch mehr), dieser Beweis wurde 20 Minuten später angetreten. Siebenköpfig bestreitet die Band die derzeitige Tour, was bedeutet, das vor allem neueres Material gespielt wurde. Mit dem neuen Album schaffte man einen Durchbruch ("fairly small" wie Casper sagen würde) und so kamen Songs wie Harmonics und natürlich Modern Drift besonders gut an.

Mein persönliches Highlight war aber Frida Found A Friend, besonders der Einstieg mit dem Duett von Caspar Clausen und der Keyboarderin Heather Woods Broderick. Tolle Momente hatte auch der durchgeknallte Schlagzeuger zu bieten, der am Bühnengerüst rumkletterte und nach potenziellen Perkussionsobjekten suchte, schlussendlich aber an einem Metallpfosten hängen blieb und dort seiner plötzlichen Leidenschaft zu Industrial nachging. Das sind einfach Momente, die Konzerte unvergesslich machen, für die man lebt, für die man auch mal ein missratenes Konzert in Kauf nimmt.

In Erinnerung bleiben wird auch der Song, den Casper im (zum Glück winzigen- siehe Interview) Bühnengraben pfeifend anstimmte und der in einem den Saal erfüllenden Gezwitschere von Band und Publikum endete.

All das wurde begleitet von einem wirklich erstklassigen Sound. Schade, dass die Szene eigentlich eher ein Metal-Schuppen ist, weil an den Sound hier kommt echt vielleicht gerade mal das WUK ran. Auf der anderen Seite auch wieder gut, weil nach Simmering muss ich jetzt echt nicht jeden Tag... Zeit ist Geld, habe ich mir sagen lassen. Die White Lies dagegen im fünf Minuten entfernten Gasometer haben vermutlich mit der grauenhaft wabernden Akustik dort zu kämpfen gehabt. Naja, früh übt sich, wer später mal das Happel-Stadion bespielen will. Das wäre schließlich auch rund.

Nach etwa 70 Minuten machte man, nach bereits erfolgter Zugabe, Anstalten, endgültig von der Bühne zu gehen, als der hintere Gitarrist zum Glück Herrn von und zu Clausen (kein Freiherr, aber mit der Zuneigung der Musikwelt geadelt) sanft, aber bestimmt zurückzog, mit dem Tontechniker per Handzeichen schnell noch ein weiteres Lied aushandelte und dies dann mit seiner Mannschaft in eine Krönung des Abends verwandelte.

"Probably the best evening in Vienna so far", gab Casper alle Komplimente zurück, erntete damit aber zuviel Begeisterung, um sie nochmals zurückgeben zu können. Was blieb ihm also anderes übrig, als sich nach hinten zu verziehen. Man selbst war sich gewiss, das bislang beste Konzert 2011 gerade eben erlebt zu haben. Diese grundglückliche Euphorie, der Einklang mit der Welt, Simmering inklusive... An der Größe dieses Abends bestand kein Zweifel. Was 2011 noch kommt kann sich mal warm anziehen!

Interview mit Casper Clausen:

Casper ist ein wirklich netter Mensch, fröhlich und offen. Wieso er den schönen Pulli, den er beim Interview (und gleichzeitigem Abendessen: Gemüsestrudel) trug, später gegen ein weißes Hemd tauschte, habe ich aber nicht ganz verstanden. Seis drum, viel Spaß beim Lesen! Und lieber Casper: Mahlzeit!
(Auf Wunsch übersetze ich das Interview gerne, da es aber aufgrund der Sprachkenntnisse beider Beteiligten sowieso in Simple English gehalten ist, dürfte es da ja wohl keine Probleme geben? Oder etwa doch?)

Your film „An Island“ shows Efterklang performing their songs with neighbours, relatives, school pupils. What does the term “home” means to you?

Home is where you come from, home is where you have your things.

Ok, so you go along with the dictionary. When you are on tour, do you miss home?

From time to time, yes. I think all of us are part-time missing home, but there are also attempts to find, to explore new homes. Of course we all miss certain people, the familiar environment – and sometimes we miss to stay at the same place for a while. But all in all we are mostly happy with what we do.

This film takes out your island into the big wide world, makes a tiny area famous. How do the inhabitants of Als think about the world outside, how do they think about your success?

Well, our success is fairly small, but I think they’re proud when they see people and bands from their island being recognised outside their local area. Our project was more about what Efterklang was and less about our success. Als is in a way far from the world, you know. There are a few highschools in the island, but generally speaking it often feels like time stands still. It was nice – not only for us – to go back where we once lived. People got kind of in contact with our music, getting to know what we are, what we are doing– people that we didn’t know, as well as people we did know very well – like our parents.

The director Vincent Moon has worked together with quite outstanding bands like Arcade Fire or R.E.M. How was working with him?

We’ve worked with Mathieu (Moon's real name, edited) before, we met him two years ago. He did a Take-Away Show with us in New York and right after we started talking about doing a longer project. We didn’t know then what we wanted to do but we both negotiated each other’s work so it was no question that we really wanted to do that.
In the meantime he had a project in Kopenhagen called Temporary Kopenhagen and he produced an album with our friends from Slaraffenland, so he was the friend of ours and our friends’ friend at the same time. Last time we went out with Magic Chairs and right afterwards we decided that it would be a good idea to shoot the film on the island.

I’m sure you know Sigur Rós’ movie “Heima”. Was it kind of a rolemodel for you?

To be honest, we first saw that comparison after we had finished the movie – although it seems very obvious, both bands coming back to their island. But I think when you watched both films, you see that they are very different films in the way they’re made, they look and so on… Als is besides a much smaller island than Iceland. And of course you can similarities between these two films – musicians going back home, visiting the local people, performing for them… But I think the storyline is quite different.
So it was actually interesting: we tried everything we could to avoid the comparison but at the same time we can’t deny, that we are very pleased about such a compliment, being compared to Sigur Rós. You’re in fact the second person who noticed that. So I think we did pretty well!

Your latest album “Magic Chairs” is less experimental than the records before, what is behind this musical change?

Every time we make a new album, there is a need to change – that’s the idea behind. Efterklang is the only continuum to stay, we as bandmembers put all our energy in changing the music. For instance the album before Magic Chairs – called Parades – took us one and a half years without doing any live gigs, all we did was studio recordings. After that we released Performing Parades just before we started working on Magic Chairs, what was a really exciting job to do with a huge orchestra.
So the least thing we wanted to do was something we already did before. Hence we tried not to be that epic, we wanted to challenge ourselves and in fact it was kind of “try and see”. We tried to do something more simple as well as something based around our live team. This time it was very important for us to do something we could convincingly play with our live band. So we started writing and producing songs, took them with us on our US tour and then tried to play them live before we went to the studio. That was a new way for us although it sounds very conventional.

In a way it’s not conventional at all, because you did something completely else before.

Yeah. from a band’s point of view I think you can truly call Magic Chairs a band’s opus. For the first time I feel and hear every voice, every instrument, every band member on stage. And I think Magic Chairs sums up the music that worked best live. People might see that tonight.
Some of the oldest songs are a bit hard for us to play, because the environment they were made in was such a big, but on stage we don’t have these facilities and have to scale it down. That could be interesting – the new songs however are made for stage.

Scandinavian bands very often seem to relate their music to nature, often lonely landscapes. What influence has nature on your work?

It’s about what we are, what we do together, which locations we own, I think. Actually travelling that much, working and playing together with different people is in fact the biggest inspiration. But in making music you have plenty of inspiring moments, that could be everything from music that you hear to the sound of an escalator.
So all our songs start at a different point out of certain reasons with a small melody that grows into a song, and when you have finished the songs after months you don’t know where the inspiration came from any more. That’s kind of the way we work, rather than writing a specific tune with a given background. That would be a new way for us…

Maybe we talk about this after your next album. Keyword Scandinavian Love: Could you describe the musical scene in the north of Europe, could it be called a big friendship?

I don’t think so. There are lots of musicians and of course many friendships between bands, but it’s also as diverse as the Central Europe musical scene, I would assume. Sweden has a very strong Pop-history, I think their scene is more solid in all respects – the attention they’re giving new bands, there’re a lot of great producers in Sweden – so I think they have an impressing background. In contrast, Denmark is more like a junior in this region. We had success with Aqua and King Diamond, but we never had a strong identity in the alternative pop business within the past ten years. At the moment, that’s changing. There are a lot of smaller bands popping up, going their own way and then being recognised. That means that Denmark gets some new power in its scene, bands are finding new partners in mind and create new friendships, what results in a refreshment and growth of the business. But to say that Danish bands have a lot of connections to Norwegian or Swedish bands would be a lie.
Of course we know some bands from there, but that’s as many as we know from Germany.

Which German musicians do you know?

We mixed the record at the studio of Apparat, so at least we know him. Then there are of course the bands you meet at festivals, many of them inspiring us.

You are said to be a band that always wants to keep a gig familial, so how do you think about big festival performances? And do you prefer playing open air concerts to in-hall concerts?

I think we do better in playing concerts than festivals. Outdoor festivals really challenge our music. The thing is, that there is no certain room you can deal with, you have a lot of people in front of you and often you can’t see the horizon, that makes a outdoor gig often undynamic or at least you have a hard time finding the right ways and means. Generally speaking we have an easier time when the location is kind of a room. But also festivals can have something of a closed room, when I look back, we had some really amazing concerts on festivals. It depends on some certain conditions, but finally I think our music fits best into a room.

I would say Haldern Pop was probably the best festival for bands like you.

Definitely. We played there last year, it was wonderful and it’s actually one of the better examples of festival gigs.
It can be hard sometimes, playing two metres above the festival visitors’ heads, often there is additionally a gap of another three metres between us and the people. Basically we need the audience and of course we try to convince them every show, but it can be really frustrating.
At Haldern we never have these problems, we feel the love from the first minute there.
Another good example was our show at Immergut – so: never say never. Although…

It depends on the conditions…

Yes and first of all it depends on what kind of festival it is. If it is a big rock festival, where you’re just a single rock in the wide ocean…

Speaking of Roskilde?

We have a good reputation there, people really wanted to see us there, that made it easier for us, it was a so-called home game.

There are rumours, that this tour will be the last one for a while…

I can confirm the rumours!

What a pity. Tell us what you do instead and what we should do meanwhile without Efterklang?

Haha, just live your lives, keep on doing and change what you need to change!

And what do you change?

Basically we need some time off touring. Behind us are three and a half years of instant touring and about hundred shows every year. So we need to gain new energy – but not because we are tired of it. Then we focus on a new album. That’s how we started Magic Chairs and that’s what is now again: We need to change. There will definitely be a different approach than last time again.

I’m finished with my questions, do you have some last words to say?

Famous last words?

For your Gravestone maybe!

Well, I just want to say thank you to all the people supporting us. It’s always wonderful to come back to Vienna and see, that there are more and more people at our concerts, more people listening to us – that’s exactly what keeps us doing our thing, that’s what excites us.

Thanks!

Thank you!


Die großartigen Livefotos stammen von Claudia, das Film-Foto von Antje Taiga Jandrig. Vielen Dank!