You never forget the songs you hear on the truly earthshaking nights you have at the club. Those are the records that even one hook from can trigger a whole host of visceral, physical responses- your heart beats faster, syncing upward to match BPMs, remembering the press of flesh and the ritualized exertion of the whole experience, you can even find yourself caught up in the sweaty, sexy mesh of memory, lit by strobe light and the wistful eye of the mind.
Johnny Vicious' track "Ecstasy" was like that for me. That remarkable, analog-squelchy sweeping synth hook, the pounding drums, and the voice… Claudia Radbauer, an Austrian woman living in New York who went from being a dance music fan to being a dance music star. Now, as Lula, she had sprung from the speakers and decks of Danny Tenaglia-era Twilo to grace records from all over the world with her marvelous voice- From the X-Beat mid-90s through the glory days of the circuit, Lula's voice was the martial call to dance. Foreign, female, and expressive with the absolute liberation of the club, the singles and tracks kept coming. With Tenaglia, Vicious, Creamer and K, DJ Wout, Friburn and Urik, Peter Rauhofer, and many others.
But no mere discography can express the power that Lula held over late-90s dancefloors. When she broke into that countdown in the middle of "Ecstasy," it didn't matter where it was playing, because everywhere became Chelsea, and when she reached "one" and proclaimed that shirts needed to come off, by God they did. All over the world.
Lula currently has a track on Kult Records called "Fire and Burn," so we gladly leapt at the chance to talk at one of the most distinctive and beloved voices in the past decade and a half of dance music.
Jason Shawhan: So how does it feel to be the most famous Austrian voice in
American clubs since Falco?
Lula: I got goosebumps just reading this question… What an honor.
I really don´t feel famous or special or anything. Actually, I´m still surprised that people want to hear my voice with this hard accent on a track. It´s still unbelievable for me. I´m very proud and appreciate everybody who likes to hear my lyrics and my voice, but I really don´t feel like I´m somebody famous or special.
I don´t even tell people here in Austria that I do this. They don´t know me as Lula, they don´t know my songs. Anyway, Austrians are famous for being jealous, so I just stay away from the Austrian music scene. I know some of the guys, but I don´t hang out with any of them. My heart and mind is in America, and hopefully my body will be back in New York soon, too.
JS: What was the record that made you fall in love with house music?
Lula: Well, up until that time I had only liked rap and hip-hop, and new
wave and other stuff. But the record that made me fall in love with
house music was the original version of Yohan Square- "Love of Life,"
and all the Todd Terry productions, like Swan Lake and Royal House;
those were my New York House Music beginning.
I always loved dark, deep, painful, heartbeaking, uncommercial music. I fell in love with the speakers and nightclubs at the legendary U4 in Vienna in the 80s. Prince, Falco, Sade, they were all there. And Peter Rauhofer and Marcus Wagner-LaPierre (a/k/a Makossa) were DJing there. It was the best. Very dark, a great sound system, underground import music- I was there all the time, I even slept next to the speaker, and of course I fell asleep the next day at school. But I was addicted from my first night on, I became friends with the two DJs and they both worked at this great record store, and I started buying all these tracks. Axel Bauer´s "Cargo," Dead or Alive, Depeche Mode, Kurtis Blow, Grandmaster Flash... and I haven't stopped buying records since- only vinyl for the longest time; I really tried to fight CDs but I did not win- I had to give in.
And I never liked pop music, or this happy "loveboat" music, as Danny (Tenaglia) and I used to call it. The happy tracks were always my bathroom break records at Twilo.
JS: Let's say you had to put together a collection of your house
favorites, though…
Lula: The Original Mix of "So Get Up" by The Underground Sound of Lisbon,
Cevin Fisher's "TT Lover," Danny's Mix of "Sunday Afternoon" by The
Daou, Ralph Falcon's "Every Now and Then," "Silicon Rain" by Lords of
the Underground, Aphrohead's "Life's in the Sky," and "Share My Life"
by The Reese Project.
