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Benoit Pioulard

Josefstädter Straße Metro Station, 2011

It may seem like an odd choice to go for a location as noisy as a metro station for a session with Benoît Pioulard, where his beautiful, fragile and exceptional songs blend with the sound of accelerating trains, car traffic and passers-by. Portland-based Thomas Meluch, the man behind Benoît Pioulard, frequently uses field recordings himself for his songs, but rather more subtle ones than the Viennese early evening huste and bustle. To keep a certain intimacy even within the very public sphere of a metro station we go to the most quiet side of the platform for Thomas’ song „Tie“ (who would expect two trains to arrive in not even four minutes when the average interval is five minutes?) from his 2010 album „Lasted“. For his take on the new and unreleased „I Walked Into The Blackness And Built A Fire“ Thomas moves to the staircase, amused by some reactions of rushing-by people. In the end the odd location proves to be a rewarding place to film a session. Sometimes you have to listen more closely to hear the beauty out of the noise. Maybe some people did when passing by Thomas’ performance and kept a Benoît Pioulard melody in their head for a while.

Camera
Michael Luger
Sound Recording
Matthias Leihs
Post production
Michael Luger

Josefstädter Straße Metro Station

In the 1890s the famous Art Nouveau architect Otto Wagner designed a city railway along the Gürtel, that runs partly on a viaduct and is now the trace of the underground line U6. Josefstädter Straße is one of those historic stations and if you hop out here, you’ll find yourself amid the various bars, venues and small clubs along the busy Gürtel road. As the concert venues B72, Chelsea and rhiz are all close-by, we’ve filmed a whole lot of sessions around this area. If you head further out of town, you’ll soon arrive at lively Brunnenmarkt and Yppenplatz. If you take the other exit through the typical green swinging door of the historic station, you’ll face Breitenfelder Kirche.