MMXX
Concept
MMXX is the second album of the Austrian band NO HEAD ON MY SHOULDERS. It is a concept album that is set in Vienna in the near future of the year 2020 where it tells a parable on the current socio-political situation.
The songs are captivating short stories out of the lives of different people, whose conflicts an problems result out of social structures and political context.
The music of NO HEAD ON MY SHOULDERS effortlessly overcomes genre limits and takes the listeners on a roller coaster ride through amazingly varied and sophisticated arrangements. Quotes in music and lyrics link the plots to current political and cultural events and loosen up the graveness of the stories with ironic and satiric elements.
Setting
The story is set in Vienna of the year 2020. After a big crisis the city is deeply divided. Facing each other are the conservatives, which had political and financial power before the crisis and want back their authority and the so called Glorious Nine (G9), a group of independently and autonomously thinking Individuals that want to bring about real change.
The story is told in the nine core-songs of MMXX. They deal with the great topics of the 21st century like surveillance society (Operation Toothbrush), migration policy (Persian Beauty) or the manipulation of the masses by the media (The Pill). Keywords like social exclusion, propaganda or the Fortress Europe are being looked at concerning their impact on the different protagonists. A bleak image of the near future emerges. Instead of a technologically advanced environment we encounter an end time vision of Vienna.
Production
The album was produced by GURU, Martin Schiske and Florian Fennes. We aimed for the highest possible quality in each production-process. The music was recorded and mixed mainly analogue and no Samples were used. Everything you hear, from Saz to tubular bells was recorded in the studio. So additionally to the nine band members ten guest musicians can be heard on MMXX. The four single-edits were made by Wolfgang Schlögl (I-Wolf, Sofa Surfers). The 50page booklet in the format 21x21cm was designed by Jörg Vogeltanz and contains nine comics by nine different Austrian comic artists to add a visual dimension to the nine core-songs of MMXX.
WEB - ~einewelle.net
~einewelle.net is a young company offering services in the fields web, IT, multimedia.
The company focusses on personal support in all stages of a project, i.e. a website: concept, design, development, hosting, administration, servicing, updating/upgrading, etc. For every project, there's a dedicated single person responsible and known to the client. ~einewelle.net works (among others) for small companies, institutions and artists
Interested?
email_@einewelle.net
Prison Break - Jörg Vogeltanz
Born 1963. Stage designer, illustrator and drawer. Publisher of the comic-edition "Prequel" with missionary character. Writes for the online-magazine Outfit.
Opinions on MMXX
Christian Kolonovits
„In my opinion NO HEAD ON MY SHOULDERS‘ MMXX is great, musically pleasingly new, yet fully developed and mature. A real pleasure for the ears!!!”
Günther Wildner (wildner # music)
„NHOMS love and live the large format. With MMXX they mount a huge creative screen for the big cinema of their remarkable and mind-blowing music.”
Toph Taylor (Trouble over Tokyo)
“MMXX is what the brain of Frank Zappa would sound like if it was rebooted and fed, "The Matrix"-style, all of the known musical genres in the world. It's a concept album of epic ambitions set in the bleak future, pitting good against evil and throwing in some kick-ass musical acrobatics along the way.
File under Rock / Pop / Ska / Opera / Reggae / House / Alternative / World music / Folk / Eastern / Western.”
Wolfgang Schlögl (I-Wolf, Sofa Surfers)
“With their new album MMXX the multitudinous Viennese Band NO HEAD ON MY SHOULDERS definitely separates itself from any role models and delivers a dazzling display of genres, melodies and musical craziness that is set somewhere between the hard-core of Mike Patton the freaky perfection of Frank Zappa and the big festival-stages. The fusion-rock-bigband has shaken off any genre-bonds and merrily soars all musical seas. They don’t bow to the boring dictate of different scenes, but instead defy any restrictions and create a real bombshell of an album along the way!”
Andreas Felber (Musikjournalist)
“It is a fact that the time of postmodern material-patch workers is long past. Nevertheless: NHOMS arouse the ears’ appetite. In the best songs there is a lot of eclectic nutrition for impatient ears, sensually shaped into songs full of surprises. There is trashy retro-charme that gives the listener the impression to be beamed back into different decades of the last century simultaneously. And there is the intoxicating intensity of musicians that gaily follow their own imagination and with every note know exactly, what they are doing.”
Hannes Löschel (Musiker, Komponist)
„Krocha-opera or mini-rock. Junkfunk or Tommy. Hair or BalkanBrass. With their enthralling concentrations of antagonisms like this or similar ones, NHOMS create a new matter of course, maybe even a genre (like the “junk-melodrama”…) or a new form (a kind of avant-garde rock-song-suite…). In any case they make a very exciting contribution to the reanimation and reassessment of the interdisciplinary “step across the border”.
Birgit Denk (DENK, Musikmagazin “Aufdraht” auf OKTO)
NO HEAD ON MY SHOULDERS know, what they are doing. They have presented an opus that seamlessly continues the line of the popular concept-albums of the 70’s. A very unique and independent sound prepares the ground for stories that are far beyond any Balkan, Brass or Jump-Songs. Distinctive and with a lot of passion for detail they sing, gurgle, tootle and rumble. An album to be listened to!”
Daniel Riegler (Musiker, Komponist)
„Yes, in my opinion that’s how big you have to think, when you’re creating something. More is more, so to speak. Clear case: VERY great!”
Reviews:
Planet.TT Nr.4 Herbst 2011-10-09
If there was justice, this Viennese fusion-rock-big-band had to be put on a par with other musically loony virtuosos like Frank Zappa or Mike Patton. The listener takes to an intoxicating rollercoaster ride, that displays a wide array of genres, craziness and melodies. The lyrics, too, are worth of some attention. „MMXX“ is a concept-album set in Vienna in the near future, where it tells a parable on current political and sozial problems. A must-have! (alexander@planet.tt)
Concerto NR.4/2011
Musically the band has always been by no means headless, as the band’s name might suggest, but instead unscrupulous and anarchic. Now the best, most crazy Austrian band raises the bar and on top of their manic back and forth and up and down ska, funk-, swing-songs adds a wonderful 48page, 21x21cm intricately designed comic-book drawn by nine well-established Austrian comic-artists. May download the songs, whoever wants to, without the book it’s just half of the story. Music and book look into the year 2020 (hence the title MMXX in Latin numbers) and tell a story of a Vienna, that is split into a good and a dark side. Fortunately there’s the “Glorious Nine” to save the day… A huge, amazingly ambitious opus that took the nine musicians almost five years to complete. Exhausting and fun and, if you get into it, exquisitely entertaining. (nick)
MICA online - Mi, 20.07.2011
The Viennese combo NO HEAD ON MY SHOULDERS is a band that never fit into a single genre and surely not after the release of their new and really strong album "MMXX" (Miscellaneous records). What the nine-piece band delivers with the support of some fellow musicians is probably the most exciting and most varied interpretation of rock music, which you could hear by a local combo in the recent past. Wonderfully arranged and highly energetic songs, intoxicating and inspiring. Definitely “great cinema”.
Songs, which according to the press release also manage to inspire people like Christian Kolonovits, Toph Taylor (Trouble over Tokyo) Hannes Löschel, Birgit Denk, Wolfgang Schlögl (the sofa surfer contributed four radio edits) and Daniel Riegler in the highest degree, must probably have that certain something. And they do. Here are musicians in the works, which give little or even no significance to the boundaries between different styles and forms. No head on my shoulders follow their distinct and far off any mainstream thought set thing without looking left or right, and design an overall sound, which hardly can be more complex and follows the opulent art rock designs of the 1970s.
The nine musicians [...] celebrate the fine art of crossover and merge elements of alternative rock with those of ska, punk, reggae, country, funk or world music with such an inimitable matter of course, that it is a real pleasure. What comes out in the end are highly varied and beautifully arranged songs that not are a moment are in danger, to stay on the surface. What is also due to the fact that the group is sceptic in the contents of their songs and in short stories covers current and explosive socio-political topics.
"MMXX", produced by GURU (Billy Rubin Trio), is equally an album for the brain, the mind and the legs. No head on my shoulders are not trying to correspond to any currently successful movement, but rather they pursue their own path which is highly self-contained, very self-confident and has a high recognition value. Let us hope that you get to hear a lot of this exceptional combo in the future. (mt)