Austria's least charming cult music/performance group do noisy disservice to various musical genres while invoking the higher powers of pseudo-masochism. They gather musical scraps from industrial, metal and avant-garde and opera for their toilet bowl techno, roll them in detritus, find the assholes and stick live plugs in them.
Fuckhead appearances are sordid multi-media events with digital video, complex lightshows, and performance with spontaneity the only consistently choreographed element. They are located firmly the trajectory of Viennese Actionism, the short and violent fluxus/happening/performance/body art ‘movement’ in the 60s and 70s, taking inspiration from artists such as Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch.
Fuckhead started out in the late 80s as an industrial duo, Didi Bruckmayr and his brother combined steel drums and noise loops made on an 8 track. They expanded due to boredom, acquiring bass players and a guitarist, and developed into an experimental rock band. They started getting naked because the stage was too hot for them, then built it cleverly into the performance, and have now perfected their sado-masochist shtick complete with leather thongs, replete with tattoos. After experimenting with the violent side of actionist style shenanigans (Didi hanging from hooks) which ended ‘more or less tragically’ in the hospital, they’ve had to rely on other shock tactics – body fluids has now become the perennial favourite. Not blood! Of course, but less injury inducing vomit and other mysterious secretions.
As the performances became more extreme, their renown increased, reaching underground cult status in Vienna and abroad in the 90s, with appearances at international festivals as far away as Australia, and an album released on Mego
The Male Comedy ... Oder Der Traum Vom Kleinen Glück (1998).
The current line-up is Didi Bruckmayr (vocals, words, performer, pressure, tonguing, scream, throat, damping, absorption, body); Ddkern, aka Dieter Kern (percussion, electronics, sequencing, and composition); and Michael Strohmann (guitar, bass, electronics, synthesis, sequencing, Ispw Programming, engineering); and opera singer Siegmar Aigner. Bruckmayr and Kern are also members of the group Wipeout.
A Fuckhead with the Hugo Wolf Quartet project will be realized in autumn 2007, and a new work Integral: sentimental futuristic hymns for lonely astronauts, vector lovers and spaceship customizers, performed by Aigner will be released as a 12" on a very obscure industrial label in the near future.
> www.fuckhead.at
Appearances:
> CTM.07 > Wasted 4_Day 2
