Son of the Velvet Rat (SotVR) is the project of Austrian songwriter and guitarist Georg Altziebler. After years of finding inspiration in the California desert, he chose in 2013 to leave behind his impressive band history in Austria, with 5 albums to his credit, and make his home in Joshua Tree. This new endeavor finds him commuting between the anonymous wasteland of Los Angeles and the fierce but fragile beauty of the high desert, reinventing his creative sphere in a completely different artistic environment.
SotVR’s live-performances, solo, together with his wife Heike Binder on organ and accordion or with a full band, have quickly garnered them a considerable standing and following amongst the desert music community and beyond. There’s a certain strangeness in SotVR’s music and sound, with its origins woven deeply in the cultural heritage of the European folk-noir and chanson traditions, and it certainly strikes a chord in all who know the grounding force of gravity and still like to dance on the tightrope