2023-09-22 06:52:00
MATTHIAS STROLZ has done it again – the second album with KURT RAZELLI appears. Both require no introduction, they accompany the political nature of this country (on her own way) long enough to (on her own way) to have burned into the collective memory of the second, third or fourth banana republic (depending on how you count).
Anyone who has followed the flight curve of the former NEOS boss and now the pilot of his life knows: what happened to him Discuss lead leaves, comes between two book covers. What demands higher forms of expression arises from the inherent “birth act” of a “new language.”
“Back To Earth” (October 6th via Söhnesöhne) is the album that STROLZ and RAZELLI had to make – not because they “Lost in Space” the fuel would have run out, but out of “longing for being human”. This is an honest drive, just like a lot of what some people say in conversation about the motives and basic motivation for political co-artistry is honest.
What STROLZ wants to achieve as a “politician” and “word worker” is discussed (“please on a first-name basis”) with Christoph Benkeser alongside RAZELLI. A conversation about self-inflicted attention, 500 senses, snails, BMW drivers, notorious cultural critics, delightful meditations next to Sufi singers and 2000 years of Christianity. But before that, let’s clarify what moves the nation: that Video from Goa.
Matthias, what did you get yourself into in India?
Matthias Strolz: Nothing, nothing at all – just love and fresh air! Of course, I was in a delighted state because I had just returned from a ten-day retreat at the Gandhi Ashram. There we penetrated into deep layers of experience, for example with bending meditations. They knocked the lid off my head.
How can you imagine that?
Matthias Strolz: You throw yourself on the ground. Again and again, for over an hour and a half. After that I was open, I had a direct line to heaven.
Did you keep throwing yourself on the ground?
Matthias Strolz: Not just me, we were a group of Aboriginal elders, Sufi singers, consciousness researchers, Catholic nuns, Vietnamese organic farmers and Silicon Valley billionaires. After ten days I was in a strange mood. At the same time I wrote the last track of the album. So I have completed an act of birth – all doors broken!
Can you understand that, Kurt?
Kurt Razelli: The spiritual was always in Matthias, even back then in politics! But I have nothing to do with throwing or yoga. My meditation is music. No matter whether I’m producing in the studio for a long time or leaving the stage after a live show – afterwards I’m excited, excited, relieved! This has just as little to do with substances as Matthias did in the ashram. But I know that people on the internet didn’t understand that…
Matthias Strolz: I was drunk with love and kneaded with the wild spirit.
Kurt Razelli: And unshaven! The publicity was perfect for that because everyone was asking themselves: What’s going on with Mr. Strolz?
There is no calculation behind it?
Matthias Strolz: No! Since retiring from politics, I have had a tradition: I go on vacation with myself in January. It was then that I realized that my three loves – my wife, family and politics – were no longer compatible. I had to give one up, otherwise I wouldn’t be married today. I also tell you once a year what I’m doing because one of the most common searches for my name is: What does Matthias Strolz do? I go within myself and share the knowledge with the world. It’s like a mental pit stop. This time I wrote an album and made a video.
Thereafter …
Matthias Strolz: I turned off my phone, drank another beer and went to sleep. The next day I see: the video exploded. So I asked myself: Should I shave and take my hair off next time? No, it is what it is – I was honest and authentic. That’s why I took it with humor and made more videos.
Until Yodel.
Matthias Strolz: Then I realized I was messing up the project. So I stopped the videos.
Do you feel like you’re not being taken as seriously as you would like to be taken seriously?
Matthias Strolz: Yes, but it was my fault. This is the logic of the attention economy.
Which you’ve internalized, I assume.
Matthias Strolz: Yes, I played with it and looked for irritation. These are border crossings where I appear vulnerable and could have an accident at any time. Of course I don’t want that. So instead of being offended that people were irritated, I was impressed.
Is it different for you because you can hide behind a mask, Kurt?
Kurt Razelli: I only get positive reactions because I’ve always been perceived as an artist. On the other hand, we first had to make Matthias an artist.
You describe yourself as a political artist, Matthias. Couldn’t you have just stayed in politics for that?
Matthias Strolz: I left politics at the last possible time for my family. And at the earliest possible moment for my party. I see this even more clearly today than I did five years ago. However, I am a political pest – that was and is in my mother’s milk and providence. If I see myself as an artist today, and I do, then I am automatically a political artist. There is no other way and it is like asking a BMW driver to stop seeing BMWs on the road. They are everywhere. For me, politics is everywhere. I am a word worker. My art is that of a vocalist.
You mean: the singer?
Matthias Strolz: It’s a peculiar form of singing, but I can’t do it better.
“I GOT VOUCHERS FOR SINGING LESSONS FOR MY BIRTHDAY.”
Kurt, you talked about your work Austrofred said that you really wanted to record with a real singer.
Matthias Strolz: Horny!
That’s really the one O-Ton.
Kurt Razelli: It’s also true. Since Matthias is no longer in politics, the speeches from which we built songs have been missing. In the meantime, however, he provides his own texts. My job is to make authentic music with Matthias and to use his qualities as best as possible.
Where are his qualities?
Kurt Razelli: Matthias is a speaker, he can speak very well! But I immediately put a vocal melody out of my head and thought about what was spoken in Faithless when I was producing it.
Matthias Strolz: When I turned 50, I received vouchers for singing lessons. Maybe something will happen with singing!
Kurt Razelli: Very good, but we don’t want you as a singer, otherwise people will think that…
Matthias Strolz: I do Hansi Hinterseer.
Kurt Razelli: Or Austropop. But he wouldn’t be. Matthias writes political poetry. Cyberpunk music fits because we come back from space.
Also Flex instead of Musikantenstadl?
Kurt Razelli: Absolutely. We don’t do any Ö3-Music, it’s too hard for that.
Matthias Strolz: In terms of musical direction, it is avant-garde. We never speculated with the mainstream anyway. At the same time I say: Art is always a social act of creation. If the Mona Lisa had been painted and buried, it wouldn’t be. Art needs a qualified public in order to become art. So I hope it touches people, moves them and inspires them.
So-called culture editors have it too “Rammstein from the B train” called.
Kurt Razelli: Luckily we are not Rammstein. If you produce music in that direction, it will immediately be compared. If there is also a harsh German text, we are in the drawer. We do not care. They already have us with them Scooter compared.
Matthias Strolz: I’m just getting to know the cultural journalists. Overall, they’re very pleasant – especially in comparison to domestic politics, where negativity predominates. Nevertheless, some have a tendency to be notorious critics. This is more of a personality question than a question of art.
You want to be an ambassador for peace.
Matthias Strolz: With the first singles we are in the culture section They are B1 landed – we have reached a million people to whom we can convey our message of peace.
Kurt Razelli: The first half of the album is destruction. The other is dedicated to healing.
Let it be a “existential album about the condition of humanity”, you said, Matthias. Isn’t it more of a human album about the state of your existence?
Matthias Strolz: Both are true. As artistic figures returning from galactic space, we see what is happening on Earth – humans are plundering the planet and developing ingenious methods of murder. If that no longer affects me, what still affects me? So I knew that I had to take a stand against the war. I just didn’t know how. I found a new language in music. One that I can only speak with an artist like Kurt Razelli because I lack the skill to speak it alone. The album may be a small but all the more valuable building block for a better world.
You’ve already been to space. Why did it have to go back to Earth anyway?
Kurt Razelli: Maybe we forgot something?
Matthias Strolz: I could have stayed there. As a politician, I have a gravitas towards the earth.
You had to …
Matthias Strolz: Do something else, yes!
Kurt Razelli: Matthias sets the topic, I don’t interfere, that is: if he had only written fun numbers from the galaxy, there would only have been fun numbers from the galaxy. But I’m not angry that we’re showing humanity that there’s more than just news. The political message can also come across in songs.
Matthias Strolz: But it’s less about politics and more about world-weariness.
So the big topics…
Matthias Strolz: Of being human. The album is also in the tradition of my last books, which are about VUCA skills, i.e. the description of the world as volatile, uncertain, complex and ambivalent. I always ask myself, what can one do about world-weariness so as not to slip into cynicism, depression and suicidality. We are already in a crisis. But a spiritual foundation can be part of healing. So we have to ask ourselves where we come from, where we are going and what the human adventure in between means.
“A VINEYARD SNAIL CAN’T EVEN ASK WHY IT HAS A SNAIL SHELL ON ITS HUMPS AND STILL DOES SOMETHING WITH IT.”
Do you see a willingness for this?
Matthias Strolz: As Adorno and Horkheimer wrote in their Dialectic of Enlightenment, we have separated ourselves from nature. At the same time, the need for healing is growing. This can happen in several ways, but it is difficult. After 2,000 years of Christian tradition, it falls into disrepair within two generations. Of course the Catholic Church did a lot of bullshit, but it also gave a lot of people meaning. But we are experiencing a vacuum in which we are looking for support. That’s why people fly to Goa to learn indigenous knowledge that they can weave into their everyday lives.
Here you are talking about the desire for ecstasy, i.e. to go out of yourself.
Matthias Strolz: Absolutely, with “Universe You Are” I’m describing an out-of-body experience because that’s how I look at life. We are extra-temporal beings and come from a non-physical space. Because we have forgotten this view, we turn to Earthlings. So we come into the world with our 500 senses – certainly more – and live the human adventure as an emotional species that can look backwards, forwards and even from above. The problem is: We don’t do anything with it, unlike a snail, which can’t even ask itself why it has a snail shell on its back and still does something with it.
That means?
Matthias Strolz: We have to do something with our feelings, our talents and our very peculiar form of consciousness – that’s why all of these topics on the album are put into the sausage machine.
Where did you sharpen this perspective, in India?
Matthias Strolz: Of course, traveling is important, but my Catholic heritage also shines through. I was an altar boy for ten years; my mother forced me to do it, even though I kept thinking to myself, what am I doing here? 30 years later, I understand some things that were valuable to my ancestors and were hollow rituals for me.
What do you mean?
Matthias Strolz: Humans have a basic spiritual need. We can fulfill this with a daily oven, but it won’t make us happy because it will only lead to escapism.
This explains your return from being lost in space to reality on Earth.
Matthias Strolz: Yes, I have a longing for being human.
“THIS ADVENTURE MAY NOT TAKE US TO MADISON SQUARE GARDEN, BUT IT WILL TAKE US TO SMALLER PEARLS.”
Would India be for you, Kurt?
Kurt Razelli: I never say never.
Maybe in sparring?
Matthias Strolz: With a joint appearance on the beach in Mumbai.
The Indian diplomat hasn’t contacted us yet?
Matthias Strolz: No, I received a lot of comments for this, from India, the USA and also Africa. This has to do with the English texts. We are connected on all continents. This adventure may not take us to Madison Square, but it will take us to smaller gems.
Kurt Razelli: And I’m grounded in that.
Matthias Strolz: You are everywhere anyway, in the field, just as every artist is a field worker.
One more question: Have seminars on pilot life sold better or worse since music?
Matthias Strolz: Worse. But that’s more due to the Goa video than the music. Many people are confused. There is also a lack of understanding from my friends. Some even think I’m destroying everything I’ve built for myself. Although I am at peace with myself, I look closely, which means that the music was not suitable as a promotion for my seminars – but it was not intended either. It is an act of creation that comes from the heart. As such, it will carry because irritation is the mother of innovation. We have to endure it. It’s not that easy because there are always people who write to me telling me that I should buy a motorcycle in my mid-life crisis. I still say well because: My heart didn’t order a motorcycle.
Thank you for the interview!
Christoph Benkeser
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Links:
Matthias Strolz (homepage)
Matthias Strolz (Instagram)
Kurt Razelli (YouTube)
Kurt Razelli (Instagram)
Pre-sale link to the tour:
1695467163
#HEART #DIDNT #ORDER #MOTORCYCLE #MATTHIAS #STROLZ #KURT #RAZELLI #MICA #INTERVIEW #mica