Wedekind

Wedekind, consisting of Rainer Prokop (vocals, guitars), Eduard Lehrner (synthesizer, keyboards) and Helmut Hutterer (drums) formed up in spring of 2000. About one and half a year has passed with practice and some breaks for different reasons.



In August of 2001 Wedekind recorded a first four-track-demo, which proved surprisingly successful. The demo-cd was unreleased, but available by download. In November of 2001 Wedekinds Cosmological Impotence got massive airplay on radio FM4 subsequently airplay on radio 97,9FM and became a regular part of the musical program of radio FM4. The demo-version of this song attracted some attention and finally appeared on the Postcards From The Heartland-compilation (Firewalk With Me-Records).



In January of 2002 Wedekind won a radio FM4-webvoting. Due to this circumstance the band was the opening act at the FM4-7-Jahres-Geburtstagsfest in Vienna (Arena). On October 16th of 2001 Wedekind had played their first live-show, in summer of 2002 some first bigger festival-gigs followed (e.g. Nuke-Festival).



In March of 2002 Wedekind was pre-nominated for the Austrian Amadeus Music Awards in the category of Alternative Act of the Year without any official release. Finally, there were five nominations and Wedekind found themselves among them.



June, July and August 2002: Wedekind were recording their debut-full-length The End of My Heartbeat. Within Austria the album appeared on the German independent record label Defiance Records (Zomba) on May 12th of 2003. Since June 2nd it has been available within Europe and the U.S. of A.; Defiance Records had already released sound carriers of bands like Jimmy Eat World, The Get Up Kids, New End Original, Hot Water Music, Pale a.s.o.



In May and June 2002 Wedekind had recorded the song Cold Humans Helltrip for the Volkswagen-Soundfoundation 03/02-compilation. The compilation appeared in August of 2002. Another song of the debut-album became part of the FM4-Soundselection 8 in February 2003: The Mosaic. May 19th 2003: The album-version of Cold Humans Helltrip is the contribution to a Warner Music Austria-compilation called Rock Now Vol. 1.



At the end of May 2003 Wedekind are on Frequency Warm Up-Tour together with Wir sind Helden and Benjie. During summertime the band is withdrawing (from live-appearances) because of interior reasons. One day after Frequency Festival, on August 16th, drummer Helmut Hutterer finally decides to quit the band. Pleasure and Sunset is already the fifth radio-single of the album The End of My Heartbeat, which goes on air in late August 2003.



In December of 2003 Christian Gaunersdorfer inherits the part of playing the drums for Wedekind. After a period of reorientation the band begins to play shows again at the end of March 2004.



Wedekind hit the studios in April to record the song Sinister Highways for a limited promotional cd-single. Even more new songs had already been written and there was still a process of writing and arranging songs with regard to the second album Opiates!. This process had been kind of time-consuming and after several delays the extensive recordings for the second longplayer Opiates! started in July of 2005. Opiates! is out on Acute/Edel on the 12th of May 2006. The first radio- and video-single is called Moth.



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