FM4 Soundpark is a web platform, community, and radio show for and with Austrian musicians. In an ongoing collaboration, FM4’s team recommends particular artists of the moment to amplify. Today, the honor goes to: Wallners – dream-pop for a road movie…
Echoing guitars and voices, washed-out sounds and dreamy, hypnotic songs. The debut “End Of Circles” by Viennese band Wallners takes us into a dark but constantly glittering dream-pop world.
“End Of Circles”, the debut album by the band Wallners, starts with a faded piano. Delicate guitars join in, the space is vast and you instantly fall into a deep soundscape – something that the Viennese sibling quartet has created precisely for this purpose. Their music opens up a new world, filled with part melancholy, part lofty harmonies and offers a refuge of slowness in our fast-paced, overstimulated times.
The first single “Easy” already made this clear. A song that makes you want to sit on a small rocky ledge by the sea or near a forest meadow and watch the setting sun on a warm summer evening.
From a rapid start to silence
A good five years ago, Wallners already delivered a hypnotic, delicate indie pop song with “in my mind”, which immediately enchanted us with its very spherical sounds.
The first EP followed in 2021 with “Prolog 1”, which had a mature basic sound with balladesque piano and echoing guitars. Even back then, Anna Wallner’s deep, sonorous voice was fascinating. The instrumentation of Laurenz (piano), Nino (guitar) and Max (bass) is also reduced and makes room for the beautiful melodies.
Things should have really taken off with concerts and then album production, but the pandemic had us in its grip for longer than originally expected. And so the Wallners used the time to work intensively on new songs. In their own studio, no longer in the small “music room” at their parents’ house, where the first songs used to be written in a magical attic room with Beatles record covers on the walls.
The fact that it has nevertheless taken until now for the debut “End Of Circles” to be released is also due to the fact that all four Wallners have to agree when a song is finished. Some tracks are polished longer than others. But the approval is always unanimous. In this respect, a Wallners song is good and ready when there is no more discussion about it. In other words, when there is “silence”, as Max puts it so beautifully.
Images of slowness
A trademark of Wallners’ songs is that the elegiac sound, the reduction of the instruments and the overgrown sound immediately conjure up images in the mind. While the sun sets on a summer evening in “Easy”, “Shadowplay” conjures up the dawn with its beautiful acoustic guitar, slow drums and echoing voice, when the first rays of sunshine warm the skin and the beginning light casts a shadow play on the facades of the houses.
The often solemn songs draw you into a world of slowness. Because while everything around us is screaming for attention, it is precisely the quieter, gentler and more thoughtful sounds that invite us to slow down. This reduction also changes our perception, which, contrary to our often unconscious assumption, becomes more intense. A fast-paced life doesn’t necessarily have to be more intense.
Anna: “Even when we talked about social media, we had the same approach and said that we didn’t want to do things the way they were currently trending. A little less is often more. It’s a balancing act, but the mystical or mysterious – something that remains open – can have just as much weight as if you shout everything out.”
The intensity of “End Of Circles” is created by engaging with this wide sonic space and the dark, glittering world of sound. For example, “Old Fashion” is captivating with its beautiful piano chords and the sometimes shaky, fragile voice. “After All Everything” even begins with unfamiliar sounds in deep space that you can’t place. The eerie atmosphere is soon broken up by an acoustic guitar, until bass and slide guitars join in and turn the song into a shimmering fever dream. With all the images that the Wallners’ songs evoke, we wanted to know which movie “End Of Circles” would be the perfect soundtrack for.
Max: “I actually think the idea of a relaxed road movie is quite cool, because we ourselves often have the feeling that our music goes well with listening to it along the way. In the car, on the train at night or on a flight. In other words, in moments where you are forced to be quiet for once. And then immersing yourself in the music can have something very special.”
Anna: “I could also imagine that this road movie has a very dreamy mood. Something like ‘The Fabulous World of Amélie’ and the feeling of tipping into another world through a movie.”
This clearly applies to the title track “End Of Circles”, which is immediately memorable with its bell-like melody. Despite its dreamy sounds, it is also a song of contradictions. You tip over into this new world, perhaps as an escape from everyday life, as a new experience and curious to see where it will lead. But then comes the feeling of wanting to leave this world too.
The almost five-minute song begins with clear melodies and reduced harmonies, then escalates towards the end into an intoxicating guitar inferno that overlays the slow beat. And even if the title “End Of Circles” suggests that patterns and constantly repeating things are being broken here, the structure of this song is a single, large and hypnotic loop.
Time for games
“End Of Circles” is an exciting and relaxing album, provided you take the time to listen to it. It’s not so much an album to skip through on the side. The songs need time to develop their atmosphere and depth. Wallners don’t produce musical junk food that has to give way to the next hot thing a few days after release and repeated listens in the playlist
The four siblings have also taken the time to create space for themselves and experiment with sounds and their songs. You can hear the joy of playing and producing in the nine tracks. And for all those who need a 30-second outtake of a Wallners song for their TikTok account, we recommend “Games”, perhaps the fastest and poppiest song on the album.
Go see Wallners play their “End of Circles” tour in your European city of choice… For the full tour list go here.
Translated from the German original by Arianna Alfreds.