We So Horny - Serious Pleasure Riddims Hey-ø-Hansen

Originally released as a limited vinyl edition in 2010 which had quickly sold out, this much sought after longplayer by the Austrian duo Hey-ø-Hansen now sees the light of day as a CD. On “We so horny”, Hey-ø-Hansen strip down dub rhythms mostly from the fifties and make them up freshly in the guise of contemporary club sound. All hooklines have been recorded from a real-live horn section which animates the vividness of the ten tracks. Dub at the interface between digital and analog. With its monolithic consolidation of drums, bass, grat- ing 80s synths, winds and echoes, the album soars above the Berlin plains like an alpine rock face. The roots of Hey-ø-Hansen’s music reach deeply into Tyro- lian folk music and its peculiar off-beat, but it’s their studios in Berlin where it un-folds its power. You need to know that one half of the band is the extreme climber Michael Wolf. A long time ago, he quit free climbing for the music, which probably saved his life. At the same time, Wolf is a painter, replete with artistic cross-grainedness. david thomas fred frith mark steward brian eno captain beefheart sonic youth the residents rhys chatham snakefinger john zorn - as well as countless other bands Wolf has experienced live in their early days - that’s his musical background. The second half of the band is Helmut Erler. At least one generation younger than Wolf. His cosmos is more contemporary; he’s been working for many years as a sound engineer for Dubplates & Mastering. As far as dub and techno are concerned, this puts him in the tradition of Basic Channel and Chain Reaction, as he makes the sound for Dial Records, Ostgut-ton, Applepips, Sub:stance, Hotflush, Soloaction - just naming a few of the labels. So when you put Wolf and Erler together in a band, relocate them from Tyrol to Berlin, give them a good shaking and wait for fifteen years (yep - that’s how long Hey-ø-Hansen have been around) - it’s hardly surprising when the result renders you speechless. They call it “Austrodub” - that’s the white dub of the next generation. Condensed, fo- cused, and beautifully precise.