April 2002 • Rockbites Alternative Daily
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Louie Austen’s 2nd LP merges lounge with Eurodance 23 April 2002
In the ’60s, vocalist Louie Austen performed in musical productions including Hello, Dolly in his native Vienna, Austria. In the ’70s he played Las Vegas before moving to New York city to pursue a touring career as a lounge singer with the Harlem Blues & Jazz Band, later returning to Vienna where he continues to sing classic jazz in hotel lounges. But a chance meeting in the late ’90s at a Vienna recording studio with the then 26-year-old producer Mario Neugebauer (of Cheap Records) has led to a unique and bizarre collaboration. Austen, an authentic veteran of the Sammy Davis, Jr. Dean Martin, and Frank Sinatra rat-pack school of crooning (online sources peg his age today at anywhere between 55 and 66), sings and raps kitschy, romantic, and sometimes erotically charged lyrics over driving, minimalist Eurotronic dance beats. No shit. For Only Tonight, his first proper 'dance' album and his second with Austrian producers Neugebauer and Patrick Pulsinger, Austen offers up a collection of previously released, reworked, and new material. Typical track length is seven minutes, making for extended episodes of cognitive dissonance as you take it in (or resist). On its own terms it all works, but damn if this isn’t truly and insistently surreal and vaguely disturbing. Only Tonight came out in Europe this past October and got general US release on 19 March. It follow’s Austen’s 1999 Consequences CD/double LP, still available from Cheap Records. With the exception of Grab My Shaft, a lurid duet with Toronto-born, Berlin-residing Peaches (Merrill Nisker) about early morning anal and oral sex, Austen wrote the rather ingenuous lyrics on Only Tonight, which roll off his tongue lightly and naturally. But the very successful Grab My Shaft was Pulsinger & Neugebauer’s idea. (The song’s repetitive rap, by Nµwalker, sounds distinctly like 'crap my shaft'—enough so, apparently, that an early MP3 of the song posted by Kitty-Yo bore that title.) Austen told online magazine Etronik “To be honest I would have chosen some other lyrics and title. It’s a bit rude.” You might pick up Only Tonight as a novelty product, or as the easiest way to get hold of Austen’s duet with Peaches; but after a few listens, if you’re open to it, you’ll perhaps see the album as a rather interesting and enjoyable piece of bizarre art. Three bites out of five. Rockbites ratings 5: life changing, 4: stunning, 3: captivating, 2: amusing, 1: annoying. | Louie Austen | | Louie Austen on SR (Austrian Popular Music Archive) | | interview on Etronik | | Kitty-Yo Records | | Cheap Records | | CD from Amazon US | | top of page | |
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