Four years of ERNST

2025 was our fourth year as ERNST—can you believe it?!

As an end-of-year-reward for our loyal fans, we decided to give you a short review of the four wonderful years of creating music together! 💜

2020: Before recorded history

Fans who know their ERNST lore also know that we recorded one song before the now infamous 5-piece formed.

‘Goodbye’ was written in late 2020 at our very first songwriting camp in Carinthia.

It’s a murder ballad, as we were inspired by Nick Cave’s album ‘Murder Ballads’. The ERNST logo was born, stemming from an oil painting I did for the single cover of ‘Goodbye’.

In the same year, THE most important incident in ERNST history happened:

Nicki, Ralf and Dan coincidentally met Elias who lives two floors below us. Here is a picture from that fateful evening:

2021 & 2022: The Beginnings 🐥

It took another three quarters of a year before we finally started off as a full band as Ralf permanently moved back from Germany in late 2021.

When we asked Elias to play bass, he enthusiastically went on to “recruit” Philipp as a drummer and Elsi as a violinist, who he knew from back in school.

So all of a sudden, ERNST had six members.

How utterly inexperienced we were! Yes – Ralf, Dan and me had had a band before and we’d been writing since we were in our early 20s.

You would probably not recognise us now… 🥲

This is a short video of our very first gig at Cafe Carina (fun fact: every small Vienna band basically starts out there) just after the end of a Covid lockdown on 4 February 2022.

People had to wear masks so we didn’t know whether they actually liked us… 😷

We are happy to say: We have improved.

Slightly.

After that, we were trying to create a unique sound together which meant writing loads of songs, performing them live, scrapping shitty ones and improving the ones that stuck.

‘Shard’, which we first recorded in March 2022 at Alexander Lausch’s (Opens in a new window)studio, is still in our active repertoire.

At that point I realised, creating our music is always part of a bigger process of creating art: I love cooperating with other artists to get new perspectives which then extend the music.

For example, photographer & sculptor Daniel Nuderscher’s (Opens in a new window)macro video of shards (and other objects) form the background to our music video for Shard (Opens in a new window) and Robin Krcha created the wonderful shard graphics for our first T-Shirt merch (and single cover).

My talented brother Michael Salomon (Opens in a new window) filmed and edited the music video of ‘Shard’ as well as the live video of the perhaps less well-known ‘O Melancholy’:

2023: Shaping the ERNST sound 🎸

We released two more songs: ‘Stiegenhaus’ and ‘Be Quiet’ – both recorded and mixed by Grandmaster Flow (Opens in a new window) in Linz; music videos were done by Sophie Marte.

Creating the video for ‘Stiegenhaus’ was particularly fun!

Filmed in our stairwell (the literal Stiegenhaus), we must have run up and down the six floors perhaps ten times before we managed to capture the shots perfectly.

This was also the year of writing lots of new songs during our songwriting camp in a cabin in Styria and also starting to write this wonderful newsletter. (Opens in a new window)

You could say this was the year we finally managed to create a consistent sound: A dreamy and dirty indie rock.

In Summer, we said goodbye to our violinist Elsbeth Reiss who was studying violin at the mdw (Opens in a new window) and simply had too much going on.

2024: We were signed! 📜

Yes, this was the year when things started to kick off.

First, we got massive support by Alexander Galler, (Opens in a new window)an amazing music photographer who also happens to live in our area. Not only did he take amazing press pictures, he also wrote a blog post (Opens in a new window) about us, containing various photographs from our gigs.

Recording ‘Don’t Buy It’, ‘Neue Saiten’ and ‘Trigger’ with Mario Fartacek, (Opens in a new window)we went on to be signed by Paulina Parvanov (Raspberry Soda) (Opens in a new window)– our manager until autumn 2025.

Playing at festivals in the UK (twice) and Croatia; and of course, at Waves Vienna, (Opens in a new window) were among our highlights.

It would be too much to tell you what else we did that year but here’s the recap of 2024 with all the highlights. (Opens in a new window)

‘Don’t Buy It’ is still our favourite music video – created in April 2024 by Markus & Karin Gmeiner. (Opens in a new window)

2025: Our Debut Album 💿

What happened this year, you ask?

Erm … nothing much … right? 😅

Early in the year, we were surprised to see how many people participated in our ‘No, Virginia, no!’ online campaign in order to raise awareness of gender inequality.

Yet again, Karin & Markus proved masters of their craft. The music video was beautifully done …

And then finally, after three years in the making, we released our debut album ‘Mere Illusions’ in April! 😇

We had a bit of a break afterwards, being absolutely exhausted from all the work we’d put into the album (and the two single releases + music videos).

Our release show at Flucc was definitely the best and biggest show we’ve ever had – thanks again to everyone who was part of it!

The rest of the year, we spent playing smaller gigs and protests in various places and focused on songwriting once again.

We were already back at the studio in November, and are currently working on our new single ‘5 Grad’.

By the way, the label Raspberry Soda is about to become a sub-label of the indie label Feber Wolle (Opens in a new window). We look forward to working with them going forward!

We ain’t done yet!

Of course, this was only a short summary of what happened to us in the last four (ish) years.

They have been years of creative focus, playing small and big venues in Austria and abroad but also innumerable times of laughter and behaving like children … it simply cannot be captured in a few lines.

However, you can re-read our other newsletter posts (Opens in a new window) in order to see what else we’ve been up to. 😉

And what is to come next, you ask?

Well, we won’t give away too much but 2026 is already shaping up to be our best year yet (🤫)

Review

And because this is a special newsletter edition, we also asked our good friend and writer Dominik Kurcsics (Opens in a new window) to write a few lines on how he’s observed our development, having been there from the very beginning.

No one was really dancing while ERNST had their very first gig at Café Carina. But surely not because anyone disliked it – we had to wear masks, were obliged to sit the whole time, but they definitely moved us on the inside! And if I remember correctly, in the end there were quite a few who'd bitten into the forbidden ERNST-fruit and couldn't resist the urge to start shaking.

The next time I saw them, a year later, was at the Raspberry Soda Show at B72 in 2023. The masks were gone, ERNST was stronger than ever, and they already had the power to control the crowd – going low and jumping high. Well, except me, who fell like a domino onto another innocent person while squatting. (Still sorry!)

A year later, in Upper Austria and in the birthplace of Hubert von Goisern, I saw them again at the wonderful Kunstmue Festival. What a wonderful time listening to Nicky's powerful words in the conservative countryside – only to see them appear at WAVES Vienna just a few days later to rock this international festival!

The last time I saw them, not long ago, the lean ERNST-team sang at the Christkindlmarkt in Spittelberg – this time moving little girls and boys who just couldn't stop dancing and people in their third trimester of life. That's ERNST – having fun while singing about serious topics, making danceable songs while never forgetting the power of their words!

To (at least) 20 times 3 more years! Yiehah!

Dominik Kurcsics

Have a great end of 2025 and see you next year! 💜

ERNST