Great spotted woodpecker

K5 Tour.

The confusion begins with the title: "Konstrukt 5" is the name of the latest album by Viennese group Buntspecht, and of course you relate this directly to the number of albums they have released so far, until you realize that "Konstrukt 5" is the sixth Buntspecht album, not the fifth. This makes it clear that Buntspecht cannot be categorized with a bourgeois sense of order or any classical category at all.

Much more important for understanding the group Buntspecht is the word before the number anyway: A construct, according to Duden - and now it's getting a bit awkward - a "working hypothesis or mental auxiliary construction for the description of developed phenomena", is always and forever everything that Buntspecht do, because this music automatically has something temporary, unstable and fragile inherent in it, therein lies its appeal. It's about the power and the magic of the moment, about what is right now and what you can make of it. Spoiler: A lot!

In the late winter of 2024, singer and guitarist Lukas Klein met with Florentin Scheicher (piano, vocals, trumpet) for a first session in an old house belonging to Klein's family at the foot of the Rax mountains, which was to lay the foundation for "Konstrukt 5". The vibe for this session was: at the slightest feeling of resistance or unwillingness, the idea would be abandoned and another pursued

Layers and samples from these sessions found their way unchanged onto the final album - small constructs, if you will. These miniature artefacts formed the basis of an album that was finally - as always with Buntspecht - worked out together in the original line-up of Antonia Luksch (cello, vocals), Roman Geßler (saxophone), Florian Röthel (drums) and Jakob Lang (bass), supplemented by further songs and recorded in the studio.

Moods and composition were almost more important than the lyrics, with melodies taking center stage: "The lyrics often emerged from the composition this time," says Lukas, "otherwise it was usually the other way around. Working on songs with this band is still mostly intuitive, almost unconscious. And perhaps the album owes its bittersweetness to this approach.

Buntspecht's indie chamber pop has a dystopian romanticism, a radically wild beauty, an insane intensity and a sincerity and artistic freedom that is unparalleled these days. Because he knows about our powerlessness. This is how Buntspecht provide warmth and hope in dark times.

Current album:
"Konstrukt 5" (2025), Penguin Records