-by Elizabeth Spouse (Development Coordinator / Curator at Improper Walls)

ZINN is a soft heavy metal and when you bend it, it screams. Drama and simplicity fuse with wild garage guitars and soft psychedelic pads. Dark voices sing themselves to sleep with fragile vehemence, waiting for a dream pop or the apocalypse. Grievances are pointed out, but there is a call to reflect and become active. Genres are combined and interwoven outrageously. This gives rise to a new genre of its own: femme revenge. The patriarchal threat, which appears among other things in the form of femicides, ZINN counters, just as threateningly and mercilessly. In an enormously individualized world, ZINN makes a case for commonality and solidarity, while remaining restless and avenging their dead sisters.

In 2018 the former Weird-Folk Singer/Songwriter project of Margarete Wagenhofer (Small Night Searching) merged with the newly founded band project: ZINN. Together with drummer Lilian Kaufmann (Schapka) and bassist Jasmin Strauss (Cry Baby) the songs—of the Searching Small Night—were interpreted in a new and chanson-punky way. In 2020 they released their first album "ZINN" on Numavi Records. Producer: Wolfgang Möstl. In 2022 Leonie Schlager (The Zew) joined on bass and synthesizer. Now in 2023, they’ve joined the label Staatsakt.

MORE FROM AND ABOUT ZINN

So, without further ado, meet ZINN!

Leo: Hi we’re ZINN…

Margarete: …and we’re playing Improper Sessions…

Lili: …at the fabulous O-Sounds Studio.

I like that you describe yourselves as “femme revenge” and reading your calls for solidarity amongst rising femicides, not only in the world, but here in Austria. What does being “a threat to the patriarchy” look like for you in practice?
Lili: I think being our most authentic self, to a certain extent, because we as people who are perceived as women, who speak up, who are loud, who say what we want to say, who stand up for ourselves and also for others who don’t have the possibility of having loud voices…that’s already such a threat to the patriarchy. I think that’s also something that’s really sad; just being yourself and being loud as a person who is, to a certain extent, marginalized is already a threat to the system we’re in. I think that says so much to the system, to the “unfairness”, if I can say so, of the system we are all born into. I think that’s something we are all trying to change and we have this great privilege that we have a stage to perform on so often. We want to take this privilege and say out loud that we stand with people who are harmed by the patriarchy, who are harmed by the racist structures we are all in, who are harmed by the queer-discriminatory society. I think that’s something really important, and also, we are witches.
Margarete: Yeah, and we are also the revenge of the dead women who were killed in femicides in Austria…and there are a lot, in this shithole, small country. They cannot speak anymore, but we can speak and we can sing and we can cry and we can avenge them, maybe a little bit in a song. Maybe that’s also the reason for “femme revenge”.
Leo: …and we can be brutal with our words and our sound.
Lili: Not only the revenge of the women, but also the revenge of the queers, not only the cis women, but of the trans women who are killed by the patriarchy. We know so much about women, we are saddened and it hurts us a lot, but we know so little about people who are not really falling into these categories.
I really like the word ZINN for a band name, and the descriptions I’ve seen you give in other interviews; that tin is a soft heavy metal, and that it sounds like the German word “Sinn” (“meaning”). You’re clearly a band with a cause, a message, which is really cool. How does this element of being hard and soft play into your own lives, activism and music…these clashing things?

Margarete: I think the word describes us very well, because we are also soft and we are also hard and aggressive, but we also have our melancholic side. We want to get these things together, and yeah, that’s ZINN.

Leo: I think, as you said, it suits our personalities, because we’re ambivalent about things, and we’re on the spectrum between brutal and soft.

You say you’re awaiting dream pop or the apocalypse. The word apocalypse is usually associated with total and utter dread. What would an “ideal” apocalypse look like for you?

Leo: We see the apocalypse as a word more like a reboot and something that organizes things from the beginning again. It might be a chance to build a better world.

Margarete: It might be a chance for change. Maybe years ago it was more apocalyptic in the negative way, in that we have no hope for this world, but Ms. Donna Haraway…we are very into her, especially her book Staying with the Trouble…we changed our minds and now we think the apocalypse is a good thing, because it means change, and yeah, this world has to change.

Leo: It’s the real system change.

Lili: Yeah, I think it’s also an ambivalent thing, because it can mean change, it can mean change for the better, I mean, it does mean change, but we are obviously striving towards a world where everyone has a better quality of life, not only humans, also animals, also plants, also mushrooms, so that we are all living in harmony, to put it in a very cheesy way. It’s true that we exploit our world so much, we focus so much on this “human thing”, whatever this even means…

Margarete: We are not human, we are hummus, like Donna Haraway says.

Leo: …and we are striving towards symbiosis.

Margarete: Yes, symbiosis is a very important word in, again, Donna Haraway’s work. She thinks about getting together again, and not only humans, because we are overdosed with humans. We have to get connected with a lot of creatures, a lot of critters, and critters are everything and everyone in this world, not only humans. The anthropocene is a very bad and destructive era because of humans, so we have to get connected to the other living creatures on this world and that’s the big thing we have to do, and not to think only about ourselves. And fuck individualism.

Lili: Yeah! …thank you. And I wanted to say, the anthropocene is over.

Margarete: …and also the capitalist-cene.

Lili: Yeah, the capitalist-cene is also over now. With our new work coming at the end of the year we want to draw a picture of how the world could be without these, as you mentioned, capitalistic, individualistic ways of life only focusing on humans. We want to enter a world where we are all, as I said in a cheesy way, living in harmony. The anthropocene is over.

Can you tell us a bit about your album coming out soon? And perhaps, for example, what food, drink and/or activities might pair well with listening for the ultimate ZINN experience?
Margarete: Red wine!
Leo: I think it’s more than one drink, because it’s so diverse and there are so many influences that even we don’t know about. We sucked it all up, like a network of mushrooms and created something really good and I’m very happy with it actually. I think you are too.
Margarete & Lili: Mmm mhhmm [nodding in agreement].
Margarete: I think you can consume a lot of stuff with this album.
Leo: A different thing for each song.
Margarete: You can begin with red wine, like I will do, and then maybe later you can choose Averna Sour…
Leo: …or whiskey…
Margarete: …and don’t forget water in between, and maybe Pommes…french fries.
Lili: For me, at least, when I listen to it…because now we had of course the mixing loops and we had to listen to it again, giving our feedback, and we got it back again, and I was always lying on my bed and just listening to it. This is also something I think you can do, just listen to it, you don’t have to consume anything.
Margarete: Maybe it’s better we don’t [all laugh].
Leo: It will definitely tell you a story…and a few more.
Margarete: And don’t forget the tea. Herbal tea, genau.
Lili: As we got from the amazing Elizabeth today, the Bergkräutertee. Really good, we are drinking it now.
Nice. Do you have anything you’d like to add?
[All look around nodding no]
Margarete: Good questions!
Thank you for these lovely answers. I’m convinced now that the apocalypse is something to look forward to!
Lili: It could be, it should be!
Leo: It depends on us.
Margarete: Let’s see!

Improper Sessions is a concert series in which we’re inviting musicians to play in the middle of an existing exhibition, with the entire evening dedicated to the musical act. It’s a platform for musicians to present their music outside of the standard concept of the concert stage or music video; a space where we can create something together, allowing for more sides of the musician to be seen. Each performance takes place in front of a small audience and is live streamed. You can learn more about each musician/band via a short interview released in each Improper Dose following the concert, as well as an additional edited video that we believe will be quite beautiful, so make sure to check this out and be on the lookout for future acts!

IMPROPER SESSIONS presents ZINN