B. Fleischmann
Angst Is Not a Weltanschauung!

The week had passed quite depriment. After all, you'll agree, it's never pleasant when the company you work for announces a redundancy of about two hundred employees; and if, on top of that, you're a permanent freelance, it's even less pleasant.

However, perhaps it's the shifting bipolar depression that's been with me lately, dragging me into the deepest existential misery with the same ease it throws me into the most senseless joy; I was approaching Friday night with the old enthusiasm of youth. You know what? I'm going to see Fleischmann, who is playing nearby tonight: I'll lounge in a comfortable theater chair, in the dark, perhaps drunk, with some authorial electronica lulling me into the sweet half-sleep of intoxication.

Operation cost: 12 euros, proving that having interests that don't necessarily align with the masses still has its advantages.

The Viennese Bernhard Fleischmann is a musician who, like his fellow countryman Christian Fennesz, has managed to reinterpret the electronic paradigm through a more exquisitely human and intimate perspective: starting from Brian Eno's more pop-oriented experiments, and merging his classical studies with his past experience as a drummer, Fleischmann landed at Morr Music in 1998, becoming its leading artist. Since that year, Fleischmann has graced our ears as the creator of equally intelligent and sentimental electronics, never overly cerebral and always at the service of emotion, electronics that do not fear contaminations, ending up touching, in addition to jazz, blues, and country territories, the moods of a fragile singer-songwriter style.

How to render all this live? The stage is still empty, but I happily spot two microphone stands and an electric guitar next to the inevitable console. Beside me, finally ordinary people, slightly radical-chic (scarves, neckerchiefs, velvet jackets, turtleneck sweaters, striped socks, and absurd hats prevail), but still less fake than those fetishized Nazi-like steroid junkies I have to deal with at post-industrial congresses where I usually wreck my eardrums.

Tonight, Fleischmann presents his latest album "Angst is not a Weltanschauung!", released in 2008: a CD I didn't originally intend to purchase, given that my collection respectfully includes "Welcome Tourist", which I consider his unsurpassed masterpiece.

We wait with curiosity.

Fleischmann is just as we expect: a wholesome face, a perfect mix of shyness and friendliness, and his disconnected phrases between tracks amuse the audience, showing the simplicity of a guy who has the good habit of not taking himself too seriously.

A minimal rhythm base starts, piano chords, undefined sounds blend it all together: it's "Hello" (also the album's opener), which revisits the unmistakable style of the artist, recognizable from miles away. The real surprise is the guy to Fleischmann's left, a person with an indescribable look (V-neck sweater and a big-collar shirt), who I will later discover is Sweet William Van Ghost, a singer-songwriter with a hoarse and deep voice that strongly reminds us of Nick Cave's golden days. Those expecting an electronic concert will be disappointed: we are facing refined authorial pop, where electronic fabrics, broken sentences, and stylized arrangements typical of the artist serve as a decent backdrop to the voices of Sweet William Van Ghost and Marilies Jagsch, quite a character, slender, disheveled, blatantly P.J. Harvey.

Thus, Fleischmann returns to the forefront with an album that amplifies the glitch tendency, finally crossing into pop and singer-songwriter territories: a formula that at times may fall into easy solutions, but always knows how to move emotions, and above all retain the melodic taste and poetry of the Austrian composer, so much so that every note, despite its simplicity, warms the heart and recalls the soul of previous albums.

In "24.12" our musician picks up the guitar and charms us with slightly manipulative post-rock but capable of engaging, also thanks to Jagsch's consistently apt performance.

What led me to the idea that buying the CD, displayed at the stand for only 13 euros (but how lovely it is to listen to music that no one cares about!), would be a good move, is the intense "In Trains", a poignant ballad that begins very Portishead, then evolves into what, supported by the singers' vocals, could be a duet between Cave and P.J. Harvey. In the background, seemingly fitting images are projected, somewhere between psychedelic and scholarly cinematic references, miraculously in tune with the dramatic musical developments. But what completely breaks any hesitation about the purchase is the formidable "Phones, Machines and King Kong", a daring reinterpretation of a friend Daniel Johnston's song: live it's long, beautiful, intense, the sampled voice of the young singer-songwriter comes directly from the speakers, but here Fleischmann is brilliant in building a crescendo that perfectly blends with Johnston's lyrics, also aided by suggestive projections that trace the salient traits of the well-known masterpiece of American cinema.

And it's in the instrumental pieces (few, to be honest) that Fleischmann gives his best, proving to be a careful and competent musician, able to gracefully navigate knobs, levers, laptops, and switches, to deliver music that's anything but simple yet easily digestible, with that mastery and ease only the greats possess. Frequent changes of tempo and atmosphere. Plus a positive message, that of music that believes in serenity without superficially glossing over the undeniable complexity of our existence.

The rhythmic "The Market," animated by a vaguely Latin heartbeat, playfully concludes the set (which, for the record, included two singer-songwriter interludes, where first Jagsch, then Van Ghost, engaged in two solo moments, marked by an inspired folk-singer-songwriter style).

And the album?, you might ask. Well, "Angst is not a Weltanschauung!" confirms all the goodness mentioned above: as in the best happy-ending stories, I then bought it, and the following morning, which was Saturday morning, when I woke up and the sun was bright outside in the sky, listening to it made me feel good as hadn't happened in a long time.

In the end, life is worth living.

When the marionettes started to pull the string,

they noticed that stocking fear helps to keep the strings hold tight.

I think:

Angst is not a weltanschauung!

B.Fleischmann