Dear Press-People: Use the buttons below to download press-packs in your preferred language (right-click, choose "save as..." if your browser demands it). This is what you will receive: A handy zip-archive containing a press-text, infos about the songs on the debut album, some printable foto-material and the FIGURE IN FRAME logo in eps-format. - Everything you need to put together a fancy article.

Since their foundation at Christmas 2006, FIGURE IN FRAME have wasted no time - their self-produced EP called “Your Fire Isn’t Red” was followed by lots of acclaimed live-gigs and finally the title of “Diesel:U:Music & gotv Rookie of the Year”. And pow, zap - FIGURE IN FRAME immediately turned out to be an insider’s tip within the indie scene. But to the Vienna-based troupe, that corset seems way too tight:

“To us, the masses aren´t just like a red rag to a bull and we won’t let ourselves be consumed by any scene that considers it obscene to be successful and that condemns musicians from their corner if they conquer the mainstream audience!”

Peter Brunner, singer and frontman, discovered his passion for music very early on in his childhood. He remembers taking a toy guitar away from his sister, leaving her in no doubt: “I´m the singer!”. Later on, he was able to gain experience in various band constellations before he appointed his friends Michael Lenzinger, Andreas Reinisch, and Ben Arslan as colleagues and got them aboard his musical boat. The boat was named after a painting by the British painter Francis Bacon, and up to the present day it has never even thought about capsizing.

„I´ve even been living in our rehearsal room for drawn-out periods because (to me) being able to make music is more important than paying the rent”, says Peter Brunner. The story of the young musician abandoning everything else in life for his passion may well be a cliché, but music history has taught us that most pop- and rock culture legends owe their careers to just such a cliché. And also it may well be that this very obstinacy is what it takes to make it in the music business – that, and to be surrounded by the right people.

FIGURE IN FRAME consists of just such people, people going through thick and thin together, forming a stable unity on stage (and not only on stage). This was one of the circumstances that brought Grammy producer Helmuth Schärf into the arena, who recorded the songs of their first album, SMALL GLOBAL TRAGEDIES, in a live setup. No technical paraphernalia, but musical ability and skill far away from forced perfection – that is one of this young band´s trademarks. “We aren´t and don´t want to be compulsive perfectionists on our instruments. Our music remains human, never polished or brushed up, and sometimes even dirty.”

Many of the songs on the debut album are about global tragedies – the kind of tragedies which mostly happen very far away from us yet have their repercussions on everybody´s daily life no matter which part of the world they call home. “We comment on world politics from a different perspective, our own perspective – the only perspective which we may honestly claim to know.” You won´t find any terrifying news-headlines, messianic messages and sermons straight from the Betty Ford Clinic in the band´s lyrics. What you´ll find are stories about those small global pinpricks forming the essence of our society.

Shortly after the recordings for their debut-album FIGURE IN FRAME hit the studio one more time; when Jose Feliciano invited the music-scene of Vienna in the summer of 2009 to create a brandnew alternative version of the inofficial Vienna-hymn, „Sound Of Vienna“, they just jumped the train and got to it. And so this catchy tune, made world-famous in 1987 with the original production by Helmuth Schaerf, got a new, rocking attitude…a new „Sound Of Vienna“ for a new generation.

Music is not the only means used by FIGURE IN FRAME to transport their meaning. A number of videos bear the clear trade mark of Peter Brunner who, in addition to his musical work, is studying film direction under Michael Haneke. Artwork, web sites, music videos – the members of FIGURE IN FRAME themselves are the ones producing all these “trappings”. In this context it comes in handy that bass player Michael Lenzinger has studied media arts. And it somehow makes sense now that lead guitar player Andreas Reinisch has spent significant portions of his spare time making drawings of such filigree proportions as to only make them clearly visible under a magnifying glass.

So, here they are: Four rats with a strong affinity to art – who, by the way, don´t like being dubbed “artists” – who will not leave the boat they built together any time soon, the boat that has proven to be almost unsinkable, and they will make music together that is honest and has something to tell us. What remains is to ask them how they think it sounds:

“We make rock music … but then again, what does that actually mean, rock or pop? If we reach a lot of people, it will automatically become popular – and thus will be pop. The music will remain rock. And that’s that.”

(Text: Luna Wagner)