“I’ve been making music since I was a child, but prior to now, I just never had the opportunity to really go for it,” says Trickster as he puts the finishing touches on his long-awaited debut album. “I guess also that I needed to learn the life lessons that allow me to tell the interesting stories that I want to…”
Born in Austria and now residing in England, his life story is as captivating as his music; from a broken family and a tumultuous childhood, he ran away from home at the age of 10 with the hope of reuniting his parents, establishing a blueprint for a life filled with audacity and ambition.
From brushes with the law and a prison sentence at the age of 18 for financial missteps, he continued to tread a fine line, through it all keeping one foot firmly planted in the philanthropy that characterised life. Through his success in high-risk oil and gas transactions in Latin America, he donated nearly 50 per cent of his income to those in need, but his life took a dramatic turn in 2017 during a perilous car accident in South France, as depicted on his recent single, Still Kicking.
It was a reset. “The path into the madness was my childhood. I saw things that I should not have seen, and when I started growing up I began copying them, and that was not a good idea,” he reflects. “In some ways I needed to do those things, it was like a fuel for a while. Also, if I had not done those crazy – at times illegal – things then I would have taken a different path and I wouldn’t be sat here right now. Everything happens for a reason.”
That philosophy applies to the crash too, which resulted in the loss of all his physical assets, engulfed in a ball of flames, but which he survived unscathed. “That was the craziest thing; after the crash that completely destroyed my car, I woke up in my own house, without a scratch,” he shares. “I was not in hospital. The police came that morning to notify my girlfriend that the car had burned out the previous night, and that I was presumed dead. I heard them arriving and came down to see them; the police officer actually had a heart attack when he saw me, and he was the one that ended up in a hospital bed! There’s no explanation for what happened.”
Living life on the edge with music beneath the surface as a constant, it provided a vehicle for Trickster to channel his incredible life experiences into epic autobiographical anthems that can only be the result of a life lived to the full. Rejection from music school early on saw him resigned to performing in strip clubs by the time he turned 16, but a brush with death and the stark awakening of facing his own mortality head-on led him back to a path he was destined to go down.
“I met the fantastic producer Richard Flack in Marbella,” he recalls. “I was playing the piano in my house there last summer, and he listened in and suggested that we make some music together. Richard introduced me to Guy Chambers and the whole Trickster project sprang from there.”
Chambers, of course, is one of Britain’s best-known composers, having established a longstanding collaboration with Robbie Williams, like whom Trickster shies away from being boxed into one particular genre. “I do not want to limit myself to one style of music and I always say that, even if people only liked rock music I wouldn’t focus on that, I need diversity in my approach to everything,” he notes. “I want the challenge of taking on new styles and sounds. Pop, rock, classical, dance mixes, there’s room for all of it in what I do, as long as it is done really well.”
Most important for the singer-songwriter is the heart of each song. “Much of the pop industry is full of 20 year olds who haven’t got the experience that I feel is needed in order to make proper music: which is very much what I do with Trickster,” he reflects.
“I could write fiction, but I don’t think people want to hear that. Probably 95 per cent of the music that you hear out there is fiction, it’s all made up, or it’s AI, and there’s nothing behind it. That is exactly what I am trying to avoid, I want authenticity and heart.”
That’s true of his forthcoming single, Red Flag – “an anthem for all the criminals out there [and] a warning about how quickly things can go wrong” – of which he recounts: “Interpol were hunting me in 2018, and I got arrested in Mexico. I was extradited to my home country and ended up in front of a judge and got sentenced harshly. In what became one of the most impactful events in my life, this experience of prison changed my entire attitude to life, and I ended up wanting to do some good in the world.”
Before then, he’s released the holiday single, Silent Night / Santa Claus Is Coming To Town – a considerably less-NSFW follow-up to last year’s Thank Fuck It’s Christmas, later re-released as Praise Be It’s Christmas – with the crossover-number bearing a personal importance to the musician. “Silent Night is a hugely significant song that everybody knows and loves, and it was actually written in Austria, my home country,” he smiles. “It’s one of the most played and translated songs ever. I have always wanted to record this Christmas classic, it’s good for people to hear it and go back to their roots a little, and remember when they were kids. They will recall being happy and that’s important; it makes me happy.
“I decided to cross it with Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, to bring a bit of a New York sound and a bit of Hollywood together: good energy and good vibes, just like the perfect Christmas.”
Silent Night / Santa Claus Is Coming To Town is out now; the Trickster debut album is due in 2024.
