2023-08-11 07:53:50
An outcry against a social system shaped by failing climate policy and miserable future prospects, and at the same time an attempt to make the best of it to do – that is ENDLESS WELLNESS, consisting of Philipp Auer, Milena Klien, Adele Ischia and Hjortur Hjorleifsson. The four-piece band from Vienna has been with us since spring Ink Music signed and releases songs with an almost obscene mixture of poetry, slang and comforting irony. With Katharina Reiffenstuhl, two of the band members in the office of their label, a conversation that resembles their music: Unrelenting, honest and insanely funny.
For music like the one you make, you probably need a narrow one friendship and above all the same sense of humour. How did you meet?
Philip Auer: Really different. Adele and Hjörtur at the Rockhouse indeed. And we met each other…
Milena Clients: … about playing together in the band. We used to have a band together as teenagers and we all grew up or went to school in Salzburg. Salzburg is not that big. (laughs)
Did you then move to Vienna together?
Milena Clients: No, we’re not all the same age either. For example, I haven’t lived in Vienna for a long time, I’ve only been here since autumn 2020. However, our friendship has always been continuous and even overcoming distances since we played in the band. Everyone had their own projects, we kept visiting each other during the holidays. In the summer, after I moved to Vienna, the current band was formed. After Hjörtur repeatedly told Philipp that he finally had to do something with his song sketches.
How did the name come about ENDLESS WELLNESS conditions?
Milena Clients: With a lot of thought and a wide variety of opinions. We thought about it for a really long time and didn’t agree at all. There were always a few ideas that we all thought were okay, but none that were a perfect fit instantly. Then Philip ENDLESS WELLNESS suggested and we were all like this: “Yes, that is him”.
Philip Auer: That was the first one everyone could agree on.
So is there no deeper meaning behind it?
Philip Auer: It worked so well for us because it carries a similar ambivalence to the songs.
Milena Clients: Yes, after this impulse idea, this meaning crystallized more and more.
Philip Auer: The desire for this hurdle-free “feel good” life or the impossibility of it. And also simply because wellness is such an uncomfortable term. A marketing term that has such a self-optimization in itself.
Milena Clients: And it’s used and seen so often that it’s almost meaningless again. Exhibiting that with the audacity to claim endlessness somehow had an appeal.
Your new song came out last week, “Children”. And so ironic and Your music is also humorous, there is a serious topic behind it. How is did this song come about?
Milena Clients: The Philipp had some raw lines and song-carrying chords. This had been around for a while, but we hadn’t had a chance to continue working on it. Then we rented a cabin in Slovakia for a long weekend for the first time together with Martin Brunner and Árni Hjörleifsson and did a writing session. There the song got the space it needed.
Philip Auer: There has been a lot of discussion. At first it felt like we didn’t even know where this song should go – that only came up during the discussion. After hours of discussion, this song was finished the next day.
Milena Clients: I think even on the same day.
Philip Auer: That’s right, it was a uuur long day.
Milena Auer: The day was really long. We had breakfast and the discussion turned this breakfast into lunch. It was just an intense conversation about having children and what that means on a personal and societal level. What doubts do you still have to contend with yourself, how can you deal with it yourself without having to share responsibility for the life of another person, a person whom you first lead into existence. All big questions – correspondingly long breakfast. (laughs) Then in the afternoon we started the demo of the song.
Philip Auer: It’s pretty much the same as the finished song.
Milena Clients: Yes. Philipp and I exchanged individual lines for a long time. There were a few lines that were really difficult, we gnawed on them for a long time.
Philip Auer: The song was actually finished in one day and then it took a year until one sentence changed.
What sentence was that?
Philip Auer: Let’s not say.
Milena Clients: You can think for yourself which sentence that was.
“YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE SO FEAR OF WHAT’S COMING WHEN WHAT IS THERE IS SUPER SCARY BEFORE”
In the song there is the line “I don’t know how to build a long-term future” – are you afraid of what is to come?
Philip Auer: In any case. On the one hand it is very clear what is coming, and now it is already very noticeable what is there. With Rhodes and so on.
Very appropriate at the moment, yes.
Philip Auer: You don’t have to be so afraid of what’s coming when what’s there is already super scary anyway. At the same time it is so difficult to grasp. I know this crisis is real. But it’s kind of like thinking about death – there’s just a limit to the human brain, I feel.
Milena Clients: There are certainly a few clever scientists who can formulate this better and more pointedly than I can. But it has been clear for several decades that it will develop exactly as it is developing at the moment. It is a permanent state of catastrophe and it is extremely difficult to convey this through the media. Of course it is a crisis, but when you hear the word crisis, you think of a challenging time that also has an end point. But we would have to behave differently now. In fact, it’s an ongoing disaster.
Philip Auer: That’s why the great fear is not necessarily about the climate itself, there are ways to counteract it. The big fear is more of human error. Many politicians claim that this is not something that needs to be dealt with.
Milena Clients: That’s why it’s so important to talk about it with people who are close to you. To use this hopelessness to look for an environment in which one feels safe, in which one can draw hope, if one does not find it in the institutions and decision-makers. That’s what the song is about for me personally.
So is music the medium for you to convey all of this to the outside world?
Milena Clients: I think that’s the number one priority for me to organize my thoughts myself and to deal with these feelings. We are in the privileged position of being able to convey this to the outside world.
The music video is also very exciting: A room tour by one empty old house and you together at a table in the garden. Has this one specific meaning?
Milena Clients: You can think about that when you look at it.
Philip Auer: Yes, I would not tell. I’ve heard very good answers and I don’t want to spoil that for anyone.
Milena Clients: All the answers so far have been very correct or within the scope of what we had in mind. And that’s also the extremely nice thing about pictures and texts or art in general that you try to convey to the outside world: that it goes a little beyond intentions and that each person finds points of contact within the framework of their own horizon.
“THE SONGS ARE ALSO SOMETHING DIFFERENT CHARACTERS IN A CERTAIN WAY”
This colloquialism in the texts is also essential for you. Philipp, could you even imagine singing in High German?
Philip Auer: I think that’s very different on the album now. Depending on what a song needs. It just occurred to me, on one of the newer songs that we’ve been working on right now, Adele said “Oh, you just have to shout a little more, then it’ll be fine”. One would think that the songs start at the bottom and then they have to get poetic. It’s more the other way around, things are constructed and then you have to make sure that it becomes easier.
Patch it up a bit.
Milena Clients: Exactly. Brainstorm a little less.
Philip Auer: Nobody knows the songs yet, but one song on the album, for example, isn’t colloquial at all, it’s very… set. Sung very composed, written very composed.
Milena Clients: The songs are somehow different characters in a certain way. It’s just fun to explore the dimensions and characteristics of the different characters a bit, of course emphasis, language or rhythm are very effective tools.
As for the album, you’re working on your first album right now. How is that there? current status?
Philip Auer: I don’t know what we can say. We now have a label. (laughs)
Milena Clients: I think you can say it’s advanced. We are full of anticipation.
“I THINK WE MANAGED VERY WELL ON THE ALBUM TO BE ENTERTAINING, SAD AND ANGRY AT THE SAME TIME”
What can people look forward to?
Milena Clients: Wow. That’s really hard to answer. To a lot of passion, detailed work and band history that went into it. Now that all sounds very pathetic, but it’s kind of the way it is. A really special project.
Philip Auer: I think we managed very well on the album to be entertaining, sad and angry at the same time.
Do you actually write your songs together? Or does someone come along and say “Look, I wrote something there”?
Philip Auer: Very different too, and that’s something that’s developing now as the album progresses. I already had three or four songs on the album, and then a lot was changed.
Milena Clients: For example, “Hand in the Face” is actually the oldest song. You wrote that in 2018, right?
Philip Auer: Exactly. One of the first I wrote in this style. Or where, as you say, that colloquialism first came in. That’s why we wanted to release it first. The songs just have different levels of maturity.
Milena Clients: In any case. So they also work on different topics, but from different maturing processes. I found it very exciting that you said at the beginning that we work a lot with irony and wit. That’s true – and I think that’s because we’re all very humorous people.
Philip Auer: That’s just the funniest thing you can say about yourself. “We are ur funny persons”.
Milena Clients: (laughs) And. “We have such a good sense of humor.” But somewhere irony can also be a form of protection when it comes to certain topics, and I think the songs on the album dare a bit more to expose themselves to seriousness. Even if it doesn’t mean that irony isn’t always serious. But maybe takes a detour more.
Philip Auer: Having fun can really hurt. Last year I read an article that scientists were proclaiming the “Age of Fire”. (laughs) You can only laugh at that.
Milena Clients: But probably especially if you have an affinity for science fiction.
“A Netflix Production”that sounds a bit like that.
Milena Clients: So yes, of course it’s a coping mechanism. It can be a protection, it is a connecting element. And I think in the album we also illuminate the dark corners without including the irony. I think it has both very important and good effects, they’re just different modalities.
Philip Auer: I also think it’s important to say that musically a lot happens together. Even if I deliver the most of the lyrics in terms of mass. On vacation in Slovakia I had four lines to a song that had a certain system. Then Milena and Hjörtur said “That could be the whole song, just stay in the system”. And then a huge blockage was released, I went for a walk for a quarter of an hour and then the song was finished. Even if it’s just a brief moment that happens, it’s a big step for songwriting, which is only possible in a group.
Milena Clients: Absolutely. And you can’t really separate these things from each other. That’s why you’re in a band: Because at some point you become a fusion brain.
You are four people. Do you always agree on that, in all the processes and Decisions?
Philip Auer: (both laugh) Oh no.
Milena Clients: We are four people with four very strong opinions.
Philip Auer: We never agree.
Milena Clients: All four never, that’s correct. But we are very used to accepting arguments, being able to understand them and then finding compromises that everyone feels comfortable with.
Thank you for the talk!
Katharina Reiffenstuhl
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