“Don’t call it a comeback, I been here for years” said LL Cool J once upon a time. Those words could just as easily come from the mouths of Urbs & Cutex (pronounced Cut-ex), a Viennese DJ and production duo who have been mainstays of Austria’s hip-hop and downtempo scene for a quarter of a century.
Because while they never went away as such – Urbs in particular has released a series of albums and EPs in recent years, the latest being 2023’s trip-hop excursion Geheimland – the new Urbs & Cutex album On Our Way is the first by the duo since Peace Talks!, way back in 2003.
But those 22 years disappear in the blink of an eye when you listen to it as the duo’s signature mix of smoky beats, cinematic moods, jazz samples and scratches remains reassuringly present and correct.
So why a new album, and why now?
On a three-way Zoom call where Inflyte+ was joined by the pair from Vienna, Urbs – real name Paul Nawrata – explains: “It started with a folder on my studio computer that got filled with stuff that kind of sounded like it would fit for Urbs & Cutex. So that got really massive and it was really time to reap [what I’d sown].”
Once Urbs was happy that he had a collection of ideas – often in the form of loops – that he thought could be the starting point for an album, he called up his old sparring partner and the two linked up to put it all together in Urbs’ studio.
“It’s really nice to start a project with everything in place beforehand,” he says. “So it was really easy to make the album and, for us, extremely fast. In, like, nine months, the whole thing was finished, and that shows how obvious it was to do it now.”
Cutex (real name David Schuller), adds: “I never saw music as a job; whatever comes, comes. Urbs picked up the phone and we just did it. It was an experiment.”
Scratch the surface, though, and it seems there were a couple of other factors at play here. One is that Urbs & Cutex’s previous work has been available on streaming since a few years after their hiatus, which means that, slowly but surely, their music has been finding new ears all the time. Then there was a successful gig two years ago at Vienna Popfest, when Urbs & Cutex performed a DJ set – on vinyl, as they have always done it – in support of one of their heroes and “the hip-hop godfather in Vienna,” according to Urbs, DJ DSL.
“A lot of people turned up, it was packed and hot and a really good party, and maybe that was an eye-opener too that somebody might still be interested,” he says.
Urbs & Cutex may be a new name to many music fans outside of Austria and Germany, but they are products of what Urbs describes as a “fertile” electronic music scene.
DSL was particularly influential. “He attended the DMC championship twice and I saw his routines very early,” says Cutex. “He was very technically good and that’s what kept me extra motivated and perfecting the scratching skills. The ability to hypnotise the people.”
Urbs adds: “He had a completely unique style because he played hip-hop like house music, and it was totally hypnotic. It was like trip-hop before it existed, because he made it kind of abstract and took it away from that cutting and scratching, staccato hip-hop style and made those long beat journeys.
“That’s where we come from, that’s why our songs, structure-wise, are more like house music or electronic music and not like rap songs.”
Vienna also produced fellow beatmakers Brenk Sinatra and Kruder & Dorfmeister, as well as visionary artists like Fennesz, Dorian Concept and Soap&Skin. And it goes all the way back to the early 80s punk scene and bands like Chuzpe and Graf Hadig.
“There were so many crazy artists in Vienna or Austria,” says Cutex. “It goes in the hundreds, so there’s a lot to dig for and to experience.”
While Urbs & Cutex are still vinyl DJs at heart – even if Urbs admits that his scratching has got a bit rusty over the years – On Our Way is designed mainly for a more domestic setting.
The record unfolds unhurriedly over its 70-minute run-time, ideally suited to balmy summer days or smoky listening sessions late at night – ideally on wax.
“25 years ago when we made the first album, we thought about vinyl as a mixing tool,” says Cutex. “You used two copies and rocked the clubs.
“The new album is still a vinyl product and best consumed on vinyl – it sounds very good, actually – but it’s more like home listening.”
Urbs adds: “It’s been less on our minds to rock clubs with this one, definitely. I don’t know if we have so much control over it, really. It comes out of our bellies and that’s the way it turned out.
“We really try not to think about all that too much – we want to enjoy the moment of making it and everything else is an afterthought.”
But while the pair have an old-school devotion to analogue sounds, they are far from Luddites. After all, the project started with Urbs sending sounds into the cloud – a far cry from their old ways of working with, as Cutex recalls, “an E-mu sampler, an Atari computer, and the mixing board – and that was it.”
Sampling has changed, too, he says: “It’s the same process as crate digging, but I do it more digitally.”
Urbs adds: “Sometimes we found stuff online and then bought the records to sample it because it just sounds better, that’s especially true for the main things in the song.
“There’s still quite a lot of vinyl on the record but obviously it would be kind of stupid to neglect the possibilities that the internet gives you because it’s all out there.”
Just as digital recording and playback changed the game in the 70s and 80s, and the internet did likewise in the 90s and 00s, now AI tools have been added to music-makers’ arsenals.
“In the middle of the project we had a problem and then said, ‘Hey maybe AI can do that’, and obviously it could,” says Urbs.
“So actually we redid most of the songs with the possibilities of AI because you can mix it better. If you use a sample and something doesn’t fit, you just kick it out. Or if the sample sounds bad, you can get the [stems] and mix it before you use it. It’s terrifyingly good.”
Which is an interesting word to use – what about the wider implications of AI, like the use of copyright material in training the tools, or the proliferation of AI-generated music and other ‘AI slop’ now available and – to many – indistinguishable from the real thing? Terrifying?
“AI is gonna do a lot of good things and a lot of bad things, and obviously we’re doomed anyway with AI, so it just enhances the process of the total annihilation of mankind,” Urbs says with a wry smile. “Let’s enjoy the time we have!
“It’s not something we’re proud of, it’s a tool. It’s like being the first one with a screwdriver, you’re gonna use it. I don’t know, really. I’m a dad, I have a family, I have stuff to do and I don’t worry too much about things that I can’t control. I’ve got no time for that.”
Many of us are looking for a balm for the soul these days – it’s no coincidence that ambient music had a real moment during the pandemic, as many of us (this writer included) took solace in soothing, transportive music as a way of escaping from the horrors and uncertainties that dominated our lives.
Nearly a quarter of a century after they put the Urbs & Cutex project into cold storage, perhaps that’s the role that On Our Way will play for listeners that find it and sink into its heavenly collage of beats and samples. Because there’s still a place for escapism, isn’t there?
“Absolutely,” says Urbs
His partner has the final word: “It should uplift you, it should bring you to a better place because the world is cruel enough. I hope and I think that this album passes the test.”
On Our Way is out now on Beat Art Department.
(Main image credit: Mischa Nawrata)