HAVING MADE HIS MARK WITH A FAUX ITALO-DISCO ALBUM TWO YEARS AGO, THE AUSTRIAN DJ AND PRODUCER (AND FORMER MODEL) PREPARES FOR AN AMBITIOUS FOLLOW-UP
it’s bad. Vocals are sung in English, but it’s Italian
English, and always about hanging out in Beverly Hills,
though of course they’ve never been there.” If Eckert
doesn’t sound like Pitchfork’s imagined Italo messiah,
that’s because the album was conceived as a joke. “It
was fun to do it, to make a fake Italo record that sounded
Austrian DJ and producer Diskokaine flops on the couch exactly right,” he says, but now he’s ready to move on.
in a friend’s Lower East Side loft after a Thanksgiving din- “No more Sally Shapiro.”
ner with Moby. “There’s this piano track I want him to work Before becoming a musician, Eckert modeled, walking
on for my new album,” he says. “Moby is good with piano for the likes of Yohji Yamamoto. It was a lot of “waiting,
tracks, the sort he made in the early ’90s.” Two years ago, waiting, and waiting,” he complains, but it did start
the 24-year-old from Vienna, whose real name is Wolfram him on the Paris–New York circuit. A recent collabora-
Eckert (“Pronounce it like the two animals—wolf and ram,” tion with underground MC Princess Superstar began
he explains in a thick accent), made a stir with an album when she recognized him at a Berlin club. They’d met
called Disco Romance, credited to the fictitious singer years earlier in New York, where he’d charmed night-
Sally Shapiro, which was hailed by music site Pitchfork life impresario Spencer Product into giving him gigs.
as the second coming of Italo disco. Eventually, he made friends with people at influential
For those unfamiliar with the genre, Italo disco was labels DFA, Ed Banger, and !K7, and he’s since deejayed an ’80s spin-off of ’70s disco that was “cheesy, really everywhere from Barcelona’s Razzmatazz to Berlin’s emotional, and over-the-top,” Eckert says. “Basically, Panorama Bar.
The new album reflects all of these interactions, with fresh emphasis on musicality that faintly suggests MGM making it vastly more sophisticated than the homage t a bygone genre with which Eckert first made his nam Currently untitled, the disc includes two new Princes Superstar tracks, plus collaborations with Holy Ghost (DFA) and DJ Funk (Ed Banger). All the makings of a smas album are there, though Eckert remains nonchalant. “I’ getting really lazy with keeping up-to-date with music an the parties. I think everything will be boring,” he says. “ just go where the chicks go.” JACOB BROWN
DISKoKAINE IN NYC, DECEMBER 2008
PHOTOGRAPHY MAGNUS UNNAR STYLING YUKI JAME
JACKET TRUSSARDI 1911 SHIRT FILIPPA K
SKIRT COMME DES GARÇONS
SPIKED CuFFS TRASH AND VAUDEVILLE
GRooMING AKI MAEKuBo STYLIST ASSISTANT DINA SHESTAKoVA
PRoP ST YLING ERIKA MERCADo FoR MANuEL NoRENA
STuDIo (DE FACTo) RE TouCHING DIGITAL MEDIA NYC
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