A characteristic appearance like David Eugene Edwards is a rare sight in Vienna. When we meet up with the Colorado-based 16 Horsepower and Wovenhand frontman on a hot and sunny July-afternoon, it feels as if not only he came from another place, but another world, with his cowboy hat including feather, necklace, wristbands and a 19th-century instrument resembling a banjo or a mandoline. His strong aura even shapes our perception of his surroundings, and suddenly the car lot he sits in front of while playing “Kingdom Of Ice” looks as if it were in a desert village somewhere in the American West, and not in Wien-Simmering. Just earlier he performed “Sinking Hands” in front of a football cage around the residential neighborhood in the streets behind the Szene venue, with a kid kicking the ball in the back...

“Hello. We are the coolest band in the world. Everything you have ever heard about us is true. We are fucking crazy and we are very brave. We booked a 45-country, 3-month world tour by ourselves and we didn’t die, although we almost did a bunch of times. We have played in fucking China, and Serbia, and we are the first American band to play in Belarus in 5 years (the band before us was Cannibal Corpse) and we had to sneak into the countr...

Where can a nine-member ensemble do an offstage session, when they can’t leave the venue and moreover want to avoid playing in public before their show? The roof seems like a decent compromise. The part which is more or less safe to walk is not so big, but the globe-trotting riot jazzers Youngblood Brass Band, who started off in Wisconsin and now hail from all over the United States, still manage to get in formation for a massive performance. ...

We have been tracing The Ruby Suns for a while, more precisely since their Vienna date together with The Dodos in 2008. Both bands wanted to do something together then, but both bands were too exhausted and sick from a long tour on that day (it was the last date before going home) to actually make it happen. Whereas we caught The Dodos in Berlin last summer, we had to wait until late May this year for another meet-up with the New Zealanders Th...