Happy to be angry

Eclectic rock electronica is not the sort of music you would normally associate with Vienna. But bands like the Sofa Surfers know how to make things change.

The core of the group is a quartet of obsessive sound manipulators: Wolfgang Schlögl, Markus Kienzl, Wolfgang Frisch and Michael Holzgruber, all of whom have left their mark with their own individual projects. The band also enlists the services of Manuel Obeya on vocals and "visualist" Timo Novotny.

Comparisons to Massive Attack, Portishead and Tricky are inevitable, but the Sofa Surfers have still managed to forge their own identity.

"Sofa Surfers works as a democratic collective," explains Schlögl, aka I-Wolf. "We make majority decisions. Everyone is free and encouraged to perform and produce solo joints. These experiences bring new dynamics to the group and widen our musical horizons."

The band's 2002 disc Encounters featured an array of diverse guest vocalists, such as On-U-Sound supremo Mark Stewart and reggae king Junior Delgado. And, with tracks like "21st Century Army" and "Can I Get a Witness," the group's innovative use of sound textures showed immense promise.

Stretching their sphere of work to encompass all technological and visual possibilities, Sofa Surfers struck upon their winning formula in 1996 while working on the soundtrack for the cyberpunk movie Wirehead, directed by Novotny and Norbert Pfaffenbichler. Novotny continues to capture the dark side of suburbia with his visuals, which add a sense of impending doom to the group's live sets.

"That's definitely true," admits the Nigerian-born Obeya, who was brought up in East London but now lives in Frankfurt. He also works for the Fabulous Beast Theatre company. "It's not like we sit around all doom and gloom, then switch on the amps," he adds. "There's hope in our music, but you have to look for it. The dark, foreboding soundscape is definitely where the meat is for us, though. Silver linings are brilliant, but the cloud's still bloody dark, isn't it?"

Thus, the comparisons to Massive Attack.

"The darkness of the moods puts both bands in pretty similar worlds," admits Obeya. "I think growing up in less privileged or affluent circumstances gives you a certain slant on life, and that goes some way to linking our sounds a bit."

The abstraction of everyday life captured in Novotny's visuals adds an almost hypnotic, trippy effect that is quite powerful live, according to Obeya. "I think people watching see things they might see all the time, but in a different way," he says. "It's all about taking another look."

That's also true of the Sofa Surfers' latest disc, Blindside, which gives a lot more space to real guitars this time. "The idea of the album is to focus on our live capabilities," Schlögl says. "We composed every song in a live situation, so it wasn't noodling or sampling. We also discussed technology, the need for social responsibility and every form of fundamentalism. While finishing the album, we looked deeper into the lyrics written by our singer, Manuel Obeya, and found that the word 'blindside' best describes our music in the present situation."

In terms of social consciousness, the word also suggests "being hit unawares, as in a natural disaster, or more to the point, something unnatural and all the more unexpected - like the sudden rumble of Janjaweed hooves or a drone aircraft," Schlögl says.

"I think I was dealing with a lot of anger while we were making the album - anger that came from the cynicism with which we are constantly being manipulated, and the consistency with which we accept it all as something unavoidable," he adds. "Even though the title suggests being hit unawares, it's with our eyes wide open. There's more and more clearly a 'them' and an 'us,' and 'us' has taken a pasting of late. For me, Blindside is a shout in the hope that others will shout along."

Prague fans will get their chance at Akropolis Friday night. If nothing else, it should be good scream therapy.

James Scanlon can be reached at
features@praguepost.com