I Gabat Ois

The band 'Strottern' have become a trade mark in the young viennese music scene. Their efforts of shifting away from clich-ridden viennese song tradition nearly made them call their new album 'Linz' (the capital of Austrian federal state upper Austria)...'but again we noticed, just how undetachable from Vienna the new songs actually turned out', says Klemens Lendl, singer and violinist of the band. Thus the Strottern picked up some different instruments themselves and proceeded to do some recordings with a merry bunch of guest stars including Walther Soyka and Vincenz Wizlsberger as well as Vienna's jazz shooting stars Lorenz Raab and Wolfgang Schiftner, which resulted in an album called 'i gabat ois' ('i'd do everything'). In old Viennese dialect, a Strotter is a tinker. Our Strottern are two young men from Vienna who travel the roads looking for old songs and dance tunes that fell by the wayside and writing new ones as they go. Their bedrock ist Wienerlieder, literally, 'Viennese songs' but also a uniquely Austrian song genre with which many people have a love-hate relationship. What is too frequently forgotten ist that the Wienerlieder genre is still evolving. They are the winners of the Austrian World Music Award 2006.