FM4 Soundpark is a web-platform, community, and radio show for Austrian musicians. Every month, one act is selected to be highlighted both online and on air: The FM4 Soundpark Act of the Month. FLIRTMACHINE recently released its second album and is the FM4 Soundpark Act in September with its excellent LoFi-Pop.
Robert Gerstendorfer walks into the FM4 studio and looks a bit perplexed. With a hand gesture to his left ear, he explains that he must have suffered a hearing loss at a past gig but has now recovered after a rehearsal. Does that already suffice as a hint to visualize the music of Flirtmachine? When Robert says “hardcore”, he means the “hardcore” guitar approach of his new songs. And he says about the sound of his band – there we are again with the offended eardrums – “loud, cool, very cool”.
The members of the band Flirtmachine have found each other in Salzburg, one of them is Robert’s brother, Arthur Gerstendorfer. The rest is done by the writer, singer, guitarist, and producer himself. “Really honest laptop rock music” one reads on social media about Flirtmachine. Good description and good intention: In recent years, the addition of “DIY” has reached a new dimension. Whoever wants to, builds a home studio, and doesn’t even need that. Programs like Ableton & Co on the computer and a relatively quiet (children’s) room are quite enough, and that is not meant in a derogatory way. “Do it yourself” means in the best case handmade and in the very best case made with passion.
Flirtmachine was first featured on FM4 a good two and a half years ago, back then with the little, lazy-hazy summer hit “Cats In the Park”. Likeably cozy and naturally life-affirming, a song for people who aren’t good at winning, but don’t care too much about it either. Slackerpop doesn’t live from content, but from feeling, as we know at the latest since Mac DeMarco.
At the time of the Flirtmachine discovery (on FM4’s part), there was already a first album called “Prime Time” (release year 2019), which still roamed colorfully through musical shenanigans and good nonsense and set German and English lyrics to music. The song titles are for example “Ich verkaufe Style” (“I sell style”), “Tap Water” or “Mexalen” (a drug containing paracetamol). By now, the second album “Flirtmachine Forever” is out, and Robert Gerstendorfer is already 22 years old. He has just moved to Vienna, where he will study “a bit of music business” after completing his civilian service. Salzburg is still the music homebase with a rehearsal room/studio, from which you can look at the Salzburg fortress.
So what is so good about this band?
There is the album opener of “Flirtmachine Forever”, it’s called “Lovers”, and was one of the best homegrown songs of 2020. This is what being young sounds like. This is what the young The Cure used to sound like. Scrappy pop, screaming, and impressively spacious at that: if you listen closely, you’ll notice the four walls in which the song was recorded in the first few seconds of the song. This is also very good about the band Flirtmachine: it works on the constant impression of the here and now. As if every take had been recorded live just in the second for the person who wants to hear it right now.
Then there is the single “Whisper”. This is psychedelic music for the moment when the train leaves the tunnel, based on five notes, because that’s all it needs to be. Flirtmachine operates under the most beautiful musical understatement but writes the overstatement in bold letters: “Flirtmachine Forever” is cocky and rightly chosen as an album title.
There is the immediacy and with it the Coming Of Age spirit. An often-talked-about topic in the pop world, but one may still assume that we are all individuals and therefore every coming-of-age story wears a different color. “Yes,” Robert nods in the FM4 interview, “I think I sing the word ‘love’ about ten times on the album, so you can already figure out what direction the content is going.”
He sings it – with variations like “Lovers” – even 17 times on these total nine songs. We just might be in love.
There’s the fact that “Flirtmachine Forever” has become an excellent lo-fi indie rock album. Robert doesn’t care about genres any more than any other good musician, and yet it’s remarkable. What is this kind of music, if not the skirting around the mainstream, the ultimate statement that there is something else felt, recorded and processed, the shelter for the outsiders or those who feel that way. But you don’t have to think about it so romantically: “Writing songs on the guitar is just the easiest thing in the world,” says Robert Gerstendorfer.
There’s the beautiful reference pool, which you don’t often get the chance to enjoy in the current Austrian music world. If you like the music of Alex G or Current Joys, for example, then you will also like that of Flirtmachine. And even if the Donna Summers and “Lou Weeds” are on the album, the musical citations happen more on an emotional basis. Drifting into adulthood without much of a plan, sorrowful heartbreak and being quite sure that you’re not sure.
There is also the fact that Flirtmachine is a good live band, consisting of Robert Gerstendorfer as singer and guitarist, Arthur Gerstendorfer as the other guitarist and backing vocalist (who also plays the support with his solo project Alexander Massiv), Camillo Mainque Jenny on drums and Simon Ploier on bass.
Check it out on October 8 at the 10-VOLT Festival in Hallein.
Lisa Schneider
Translation from the German original by Itta Francesca Ivellio-Vellin.