“Silence” is the name of the new album by FREE SWIMMING – and that after a phase in which the band was in rest mode, so to speak. Jürgen Plank spoke with band leader FLO KARGL about the current restart as well as about a series of concerts that FREE SWIMMING are currently playing at Café Carina, each with musical guests such as MARY BROADCAST or FRANK ELSTER. FLO KARGL also talks about the influence of his own fatherhood on his listening to music and explains why he no longer listens to the radio news at breakfast.
“Trumpf”, the first track on the new album, naturally has me on Trio remind. You also sing the line “Heart is Trump” but the riff has Neil Young qualities.
Flo Kargl: “Trumpf” is actually the last song we wrote for the album. The song is on People’s Voice Festival happened when an encore was called for and we had already played everything. I said to the band that I have another riff and they should just stick with it. We jammed with that riff, it was pretty loud and wild and I yelled some lines with the word heart. We then arranged this raw song in a rehearsal and decided to let it happen as raw as possible and then let it happen in the studio at the moment. I have prepared the text a little.
Yes, that’s right, somewhere in the back of my mind I had the song by TrioI heard that on the radio when I was a kid. The riff is obvious, it was a simple riff and that’s where you end up with Neil Young. We’ve already set it up to make it bang.
The riff mentioned is reminiscent of that in “Rockin’ in the free world”. What does Neil Young mean to you?
Flo Kargl: What music do you listen to when you have become a father and spend a lot of time with the child? I have completely decoupled myself from streaming and listening to the radio. Over the past few years I’ve become very addicted to Neil Young and have bought a membership on his website and listened to a lot of his music. And lots of old stuff that I enjoy, like blues rock. That’s an influence for me, you can say that.
Because you address the topic of family: one song on the album is called “Mama want”, I heard that as a reappraisal, a kind of trauma story.
Flo Kargl: Yes, that’s this song too. There are some milestones in my own family history, such as my grandfather’s suicide and my mother’s escape from Czechoslovakia in 1968. There are some stories there. It’s a very personal song. I know the pictures that are created there myself. A lot of what I can do with the current outdoor pool-Band do, comes from the subconscious, from the heart, from the stomach.
I got the impression that you act quite freely on this album, also in the lyrics.
Flo Kargl: I don’t think much about what I write anymore. I repeat myself in the language, live I scream a lot. With a lot of repetition and that goes well with the music. And then of course, and you mentioned that earlier, when you change sides yourself and are no longer a child and your own fatherhood and upbringing become an issue, old stories come up again. Stories in which you recognize yourself, but standing on the other side. I haven’t played “Mama want” to my mother yet. I’m not doing badly with the song, I can play myself free, how she does it is another topic.
How did the repetition of individual lines of text come about?
Flo Kargl: By playing live, something happens to the songs. For example, there is the track “Ufa” on the album, which has no finished lyrics. There are some musical passages where it’s not clear how long the solo is now and when the next change will come or how we’re going to set it up. It’s similar with the text, if you feel a little bit inside yourself during the concert: what do you actually want to say now? And which statement is the one you want to repeat right now? With “Ufa” I often repeat the sentence “Friend or devil” or only bring it up briefly and instead repeat another sentence several times or just scream the word love. The recording in the studio is then a snapshot of the session, with the text just as it is.
“IF A TONE IS A LITTLE WRONG, BUT THE ENERGY IS RIGHT, THEN WE LET IT”
How does that compare to your band, for example? Prater WG?
Flo Kargl: We don’t improvise everything completely freely, other songs have a clearer flow and already have a story to tell. But I’ve let myself go a bit more in recent years. I wanted to be less committed. That is perhaps also the difference to what I used to do with the Prater WG made: the goal was to make real pop music, to concentrate on working towards a pop song. And outdoor pool is now the complete opposite: we work from the gut. As it happens, so it happens. If a note is a little wrong but the energy is right, then we leave it.
How was the recording?
Flo Kargl: We never changed anything in the studio either, because we record completely live on tape. At Thomas Pronai’s studio in Oslip. There are no overdubs and no cutting. The new album is like a session: that’s how the band sounds, that’s how it sounds in the studio, in the end it’s like a concert. There might be a few false notes and a few text hacks. But that’s good, that’s rough, that’s kinda like life.
“THE ALBUM IS NOT A CONSCIOUS STATEMENT AGAINST SOMETHING BUT A CONSCIOUS STATEMENT FOR SOMETHING”
You also have quite long songs on the album that don’t adhere to pop marketing criteria. Songs with freer musical structures, with more parts than usual in pop music. Or there is also a long intro or a long solo, as it was more in the 1960s or 1970s. To what extent is the album also a statement against this marketing logic?
Flo Kargl: The album is not a conscious statement against something, but a conscious statement for something. I use music to let go of something. To let something out and I don’t want to squeeze myself into a frame. I need space there. I just don’t like finding myself in a compromise that always sounds the same anymore. I like to have a little more freedom, which has become very important to me in recent years. Now the name fits outdoor pool also perfect, better than ever, also because of the musical approach.
The two in the rhythm section play so well together and just let me do it. It’s a lot of fun, like we’ve been playing together forever. They are both studied musicians. I have no idea what I’m doing there. But it just works and that’s great.
One track I would like to mention is “Wiad Wieda Wean”. “It will be again,” you sing there. Is that more of a love song for you or a slogan to persevere in view of the complicated world situation?
Flo Kargl: You can hear that any way you want. I think this statement “It will be good again” is important, because not everything that you see or hear or feel is always final. I don’t always want to only sing about negative or sad things, I also want to convince myself that it will happen again. Yes, if you look at the world situation and see what’s hitting you: we used to like listening to the radio news at breakfast. Since the Ukraine war started, we stopped doing that. That didn’t work for me anymore. War is awful and so is with so many important issues, including the whole climate thing. The stubbornness of a generation that just doesn’t want to do anything for the sake of profit is terrible. And that does something to you, if you always hear these negative things, that does something to everyone. Of course, this also happens in relationships, for example in moments of argument.
You just try to say to yourself as a mantra: it won’t be that bad and somehow it will be fine again. Maybe a song is missing that dissolves the mantra and says: now it’s really good again.
You are playing this year with a concert series carina coffee in Vienna. What are you doing there?
Flo Kargl: Sometime last year I woke up and thought: great, we’ll do one somewhere steady-gig-Story. We call that outdoor pool– Dance and have this for it carina coffee Chosen because for me it’s a great location, where technically everything is top and you can also make a recording with several tracks. Everything is very informal there. The idea behind it is this: we chose Monday for 20 dates and we play with guests each time. Recently about with Mary Broadcast with a full band, that was a super evening. The Challenge is that guests with us songs from outdoor pool play. Something unique always happens at the moment. We don’t rehearse with the guests, everything happens live on stage. And so far it has always worked well. We also try to document the evenings, make videos and live recordings. Some people have been to all the concerts and make a checklist, a kind of collective pass. It’s been like this for the whole year, with the aim of having a really great live album next year. Bands have always played in the same club over and over again. That got lost a bit in Austria because you get the feeling that you can only be successful as a musician if you play in ten different locations a month.
Many thanks for the interview.
Jurgen Plank
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Concert series “Reigen 2023”, Cafe Carina (Vienna)
04/17/2023: Freischwimma round dance 2023 with Frank Elster
05/08/2023: Freischwimma Reigen 2023 with Somerset Barnard
May 17, 2023: Belt connection, Cafe Carina, Vienna
all other dates on the band website
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Link:
Freischwimma (Facebook)