hey-o-hansen: we so horny serious pleasure riddims

Originally released as a limited vinyl edition in 2010 which quickly sold out, this much sought-after album by Austrian duo Hey-ø-Hansen now sees the light of day as a CD. On We So Horny, Hey-ø-Hansen's strip down dub rhythms mostly from the '50s and recast them in the guise of contemporary club sound. All hook-lines have been recorded from a live horn section which animates the vividness of the 10 tracks. This is dub at the interface between digital and analog. With its monolithic consolidation of drums, bass, grating '80s synths, winds and echoes, the album soars above the Berlin plains like an alpine rock face. The roots of Hey-ø-Hansen's music reach deeply into Tyrolean folk music and its peculiar off-beat, but it's their studios in Berlin where it unfolds its power. One-half of the band is the extreme climber Michael Wolf. A long time ago, he quit free climbing for music, which probably saved his life. David Thomas, Fred Frith, Brian Eno, Captain Beefheart, Sonic Youth, The Residents and Rhys Chatham number among his early influences. The second half of the band is Helmut Erler. His cosmos is more contemporary; he's been working for many years as a sound engineer for Dubplates & Mastering. As far as dub and techno are concerned, this puts him in the tradition of Basic Channel and Chain Reaction, as he makes the sound for Dial Records, Ostgut-Ton, Applepips, Sub:stance, Hotflush, Soloaction, etc. So when you put Wolf and Erler together in a band, relocate them from Tyrol to Berlin, give them a good shaking and wait 15 years, it's hardly surprising when the result renders you speechless. They call it "Austrodub" -- the dub of the next generation. Condensed, focused, and beautifully precise.