Not far behind the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna Boys Choir, Wolfram has taken his place as the most important Austrian folk-musical-export to date. This year, the nominee for an Amadeus Award in the category best “Disco/Dance” song, the “Disco-Wolf” has a good chance of taking home one of the most coveted national honors. Taking home this trophy would be filling in one last detail of an already picture-perfect career, and now your MICA team would like to tell you a story out of the pages from this fairytale, with Wolfram Eckert as the main character!
Since his debut Album simply titled, “Wolfram”, Wolfram Eckert has been a fixture in the eyes and ears of many. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he first had to leave Austria in order to reach a level of acceptance and success that propelled him to a star within his own home country, bringing back with him a pimped up Euro-Dance sound that caused a rage within the Austrian electronic music scene. But first, before we get ahead of ourselves, the beginning of the story: Wolfgang Eckert was born in St. Veit an der Glan in the canton of Carinthia, and received his first musical education there, and it is no surprise that the proximity to the Italian border, and the Italian electronic-disco sound made its impression on him from a young age. His father helped him procure his first records and record player, and his interest in sound fidelity and music production lead him to the synthesizer-laden Kraftwerk and Jean-Michel Jarre, which made the first lasting impression on him and his formative musical inspiration. The son of a sculpture and a fashion-clothing saleswoman, an outstanding creative and aesthetic sense, was, at it were, backed into the cake. At 19 and after having finished high school, he wandered out of the southern region of Austria and towards Vienna to began his technical training as a sound engineer. Not long after, the youngling was made as a successful model, which worked with a slew of other perfect encounters in tandem with the perfect moment in time to procure the essential network and social foundation, which would be the jumping-off point of his career.
The start of his DJ career began with a guest appearance for the radio show “La Boum de Luxe am Plan” for the radio station FM4, which found such a resonance in the audience, as well as Patrick Pulsinger, a well known Producer, who immediately whisked Wolfram to the Big Apple on his next visit there. It was Wolfram’s set there that lead to a six month stint as resident DJ in New York, which was the stage for making the right contacts and tending the right friendships, that eventually he could count Moby as one of his good friends. Ina n interview with Moby he said, “Wolfram is much cooler that I’ve ever been or will ever be”. This coolness was infectious and wooed such talents as Princess Superstar and James Murphy to work along side him, as well as superstars like Lad Gaga, who he has shared a stage with.
After initial releases under the pseudonyms Diskokaine and Marflow, he returned with his debut album “Wolfram”, for the world to acknowledge his true official arrival. The album was self-produced in his living room and through DIY promotion and word of mouth found its way a year after production into the light of day, and into the ears of an international audience. Along with the pure “hit” sound of many tracks, which filled the dance floors of discos around the world with dancing, sweating bodies, were also dreamy electronic experiments in sound and electro-acoustics. Alone the fact that stars such as the Euro-dance legend Haddaway, as well as the 80’s disco-boy Paul Parker had features on the album, makes it difficult to classify the album as anything other than pompous or retro-kitsch; and along with this, artists such as Andrew Butler and the head of the Neo-Disco-Stars Hercules & Love Affair make those classifications impossible.
All in all, Wolfram knew what he was doing and why. His feeling for what worked, both musically and sonically was assured in that from Moskau to Tokyo, from Warsaw to Berlin and New York when he laid a set down, the clubs were filled and the dance floors cooking. It borders on being a mystery how Wolfram can always pick the most beautiful musical gemstones out of the endless bounty of Electro-Trash repertoire. Whether his resemblance to Jesus plays a role in it or not, Wolfram has maintained the gift of appearing at more than one place at a time, in order that he may, with his ostentatious and extravagant electronic compositions, continue to bless an unending audience.
Fotos © Elsa Okazaki und Nikolas Kern
translated by: Austin Settle
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