Until last month, Martin Auer's organic bakery chain was largely unknown outside Graz, Austria's second-largest city, where it is based and runs most of its branches. These days it is global viral material, because of its new New York outpost, RYE, or rather because of the $60 price tag on its signature rye sourdough.
For me (Alexei here), the story began in December 2023, when an email asked whether I'd write copy for the shop. It was going to be not just an upscale bakery but a European concept store: besides bread, there'd be ceramics, loafers and glassware from niche but high-quality producers in Austria, Germany and Spain. My commission was to talk to them all and write it up the way I write for Monocle. One of the producers was GEA Waldviertler, the Austrian shoemaker whose founder, Heinrich Staudinger, once invented his own currency before running, unsuccessfully, for president.
One meeting drifted from texts to the question of what music the shop would play. Martin Auer, who was there, said he would ideally like specially made music playing at all times, Monday to Sunday, just as there were specially made interiors and imagery. Everyone, me included, replied that this wasn't humanly possible in the timeframe: you'd need several bands working nonstop for years, or an extraordinarily prolific composer. Still, I said, I could try. The most I could do was an album of seven or eight songs.
This wasn't entirely spur of the moment. I am a musician. I have been in bands, and have a solo project, Alexei Korolyov & the Single Pieces (the single pieces being the friends who play with me). It also turned out Martin liked much of the same music I do: the Beatles, 1960s rhythm-and-blues, Neil Young. The one reference we agreed on was Young's minimalist, guitar-driven soundtrack for Jim Jarmusch's 1995 Western Dead Man. A bakery with a Jarmusch soundtrack, I thought. How great is that?
The result is not quite as dark, and I am in no way comparing myself to Neil Young. You can listen to the album (for free) on
The idea was a song for each day of the week, plus one extra, just in case. Hence the titles: Wednesday, Why?, Thursday Soon and so on. They play at anchor points through the day, marking the change from morning to midday, midday to afternoon.
So far it seems to be working. There are even people Shazaming the songs, although they may simply be trying to find out who wrote such rubbish. All I can say for myself is that it feels great to be given free licence to create, and to have the result played on repeat in New York, of all places.
