Edition #142
This week, we recommend the new songs by Moictani, A=f/m, Obliecht, Lizki, and Moletrap.
Is rock music making a sneaky comeback? One could think so with the exciting new tracks by Moictani, Moletrap, and even Lizki. They shamelessly draw from all around and make it their own. Here are my latest picks for the Weekly5.
❶ Moictani – Pan Con Tomate
Hailing from Switzerland’s West, Moictani mixes French and Spanish vocals, underlined with a slightly psychedelic krautrock—playful and with a charming DIY feel. With its punkish edge, Pan Con Tomate sounds like the soundtrack for a thrilling aftermovie of a party that got out of hand.
❷ A=f/m – Side By Side
Music for thoughtful dancers. Side By Side by the duo A=f/m cracks with a poignant beat and floats with a spherical melody and dreamy vocals. Juxtaposed, these elements make for a captivating electro-pop which doesn’t shy away from a particular melancholic note.
❸ Obliecht – Small Enough
How do you push the boundaries of indie-pop? Obliecht have the answer: add a dulcimer, which is considered a traditional Swiss instrumental, and give the arrangements an almost rave-like notion. Small Enough brings together the folky vocals and songwriting and their danceable sound perfectly.
❹ Lizki – Back Out Alive
With her 2021 debut album, classically trained singer Lizki combined her stunning vocals with avant-garde electro. But Back Out Alive follows an indie-rock direction. While the opera reminiscence is gone, it was simply replaced by a truckload of coolness.
❺ Moletrap – Taffy (Flags of Aber Prom)
Welsh band Moletrap delivers your daily dose of no-bullshit rock, drawing from punk and garage. Taffy (Flags of Aber Prom) takes up speed and highlights the electrifying euphoria of a shredding e-guitar, but also a catchy melody. And, oh boy, the Spanish crescendo in the end!
2x2 Tickets for Jeremy Loops
On February 21, Jeremy Loops is playing live at Volkshaus Zurich. We are giving away 2x2 spots on the guest list.
South African singer-songwriter Jeremy Loops is set to embark on a highly anticipated headline European tour titled Coming Home, bringing his electrifying live performances back to audiences after a break of over two years.
Known for his infectious energy and captivating stage presence, Jeremy Loops has captivated audiences worldwide with his unique blend of modern folk music. Recently released tracks—Dust over Dunes, Go Again, and Coming Home— have garnered critical acclaim and further solidified his position as an innovative and dynamic songwriter.
Explaining what fans can expect, Jeremy says: "We’ll be playing the much-loved classics, and I cannot wait to introduce some of my new songs, keep an eye out for their release over the next few months!"
Win Spots On The Guest List
As a presenting media partner for the show, Negative White gives away 2x2 spots on the guest list for the concert at Volkshaus Zurich. Here is how you have a chance at winning:
- Be a registered free member of Negative White.
- Fill out the form (button below) by 7 February at 12 pm CEST.
- Winners will be informed via email.
Hit and Miss in the Heartbreak Hotel
Dutch-German Luna Morgenstern’s EP «heartbreak hotel» glitters in all shades of hyperpop. Some tracks excel, and others try a tad too much.
Dutch-German Luna Morgenstern’s EP «heartbreak hotel» glitters in all shades of hyperpop. But it’s trying a tad too much.
There were almost no hints in which direction Luna Morgenstern would develop back in 2021 when I heard (and very much enjoyed) her single In My Head. Despite having the ingredients of a catchy pop song, it felt different. The gigantic climax. Morgenstern’s impressive courage in letting down the guards and granting an intimate insight.
The latest development became more evident with 2023’s Jealous—hyperactive, catchy, UK Garage mixed with pop. But it worked perfectly, and again, Morgenstern caught my admiration.
And today, Luna Morgenstern has gone entirely down the neon-coloured rabbit hole of hyperpop. Her new Extended Play is called heartbreak hotel, and it’s packed with overwhelming tracks—aesthetically somewhere between 90s rave and 2000s bubblegum pop.
The opener, hush hush, kicks it all off with a thick layer of autotune. Admittedly, the synth melody lingering in the background has a grip but drowns under the opulent UK garage-styled beats. The track just tries a bit too hard to encompass everything and nails nothing, really.
On to the title track, and that‘s a different beast. The bell-like melody sounds already promising, almost sinister and dangerous. Then, Morgenstern‘s voice—melancholic and full of regret. A crunchy beat enters the heartbreak hotel. It’s a slow and creeping track; and one that highlights her strengths in songwriting, too.
i don’t have many belongings
backpack with my longings
leave them all at the door
—room number seven
Yes, heartbreak hotel is worthy of being called a title track. If you only listen to one track of this EP, this should be the one. It perfectly accomplishes what Morgenstern set out to do, as she states in the EP’s promotional material: «I wanted to capture the feeling of detachment right after the separation, that can almost feel like a vacuum or being stuck in emotional confinement.»
But then, we come to miss u, and while the beat has a nostalgic feel, the song, a clichée love song, is relatively bland, lapping along with nothing spicing it up. I feel I have already heard this song a thousand times.
Deep basses make a return in spiral, and Luna Morgenstern shows her experimental side even better, indulging in playful twists and surprising turns. The result is a little less accessible but more intriguing.
Coming full circle to the autotune and hyperpop excess, somebody else is indeed less overwhelming than hush hush. It has a slight hymnic quality but simultaneously feels too restrained and never truly breaks free of its constraints. In a sense, the music reflects the lyric’s tale of the ambivalence of looking for solace in a rebound while still grieving a breakup.
With free/fall, the EP finds its closure in an oddly sparsely arranged piece that puts Morgenstern’s voice and lyrics in the spotlight. Seemingly out of place among the opulent compositions, free/fall winds you down from the sensory overload that preceded. It’s also a callback to her style a few years back, to songs like In My Head: an emotionally captivating and beautiful pop sound with a very personal style of songwriting.
With heartbreak hotel Luna Morgenstern takes a shot at a conceptual record. It deals with the stages and facets of a breakup, the pain that comes with the death of love. Diving into hyperpop as a general soundscape is admittedly a risky and unexpected choice for such a sad topic.
Yet, the bold approach doesn’t always pay off. While heartbreak hotel, spiral, and free/fall provide moments of excellence, the other tracks try too hard or not hard enough.
Luna Morgenstern – heartbreak hotel
Release: 24 January 2025
- hush hush
- heartbreak hotel
- miss u
- spiral
- somebody else
- free/fall
Valentino Vivace – Discoteca Vivace
Switzerland’s rising star of Italo Disco, Valentino Vivace, presents his sophomore album. A short burst of retro vibes, neon lights, and tropical nights. It is an escape from the grey reality.
Hot and humid night. Glittering lights. The dance floor is clear for Valentino Vivace.
After his self-published debut, Meteoriti, in 2022, the Swiss Italo Disco upstart his sophomore album, Discoteca Vivace. The title is a promise.
Vivace’s work is short but concise: If we ignore the opening Preludio and the Interludio (prima dello slow), he leaves us with six tracks. With this runtime, we’re more in EP territory. But let’s just leave this technicality aside for now.
First, if Italo Disco isn’t your thing, you keep far away from Discoteca Vivace. All that’s waiting for you are sticky and sugary tracks that celebrate 80s nostalgia. Neon lights, Lamborghini Countach, palm-lined coastlines, tropical nights. And yeah, this sound has a feverish erotic quality.
As Valentino Vivace explains in the press release, the album’s concept is pretty simple: «The idea of the album was to represent the different moments of a club night. From the pure energy of Italo Disco to the endorphin-fueled climax of the night, and finally to the slow, dreamy tracks at six in the morning when the sun rises again.»
Deep basslines, flickering synths, catchy hooks—it’s all there. Sometimes, Vivace takes it slow, as in Ti sento or Baia Degli Angeli, his hommage to the deceased Italo Disco pioneer Pino D’Angiò. But then, there are Hulahoop, Eroi, or Anima romantica, the faster-paced, vibrant bangers. They are—similar to previous tracks like Autoradio or Insieme—designed to stir euphoria and shower you with dopamine, and do so successfully.
Discoteca Vivace is a short-lasting burst. But for someone like me, who is not hugely invested in the genre, it’s actually the perfect length. The production is tight, a significant improvement from Meteoriti, and there’s a consistency in songwriting connecting the tracks to an intriguing offer, pushing the initial ideas to the next level.
Only Hype?
Maybe more of a concern than a criticism would be the overdose of retro vibes. With this album, Vivace doubles down on this exaggerated version of something perceived as vintage sound. Acts like Hurts or Crimer spring to mind, cooking with similar recipes. Initially met with frenetic hype, it‘s hard to maintain a larger audience. All hypes ultimately die down; enjoy it while it lasts.
However, Valentino Vivace’s challenge will be to evolve the sound into something more contemporary and remain fresh and surprising.
But today, that‘s still all hypothetical. Discoteca Vivace offers you all the shades of Italo Disco you could wish for—the soothing slow dance and the pumping and thumping anthems. And the sound’s hedonistic, devil-may-care attitude unifies an undeniable, sprawling coolness and a desire for escapism.
Valentino Vivace – Discoteca Vivace
Release: 24/01/2025
- Preludio
- RGB
- Hulahoop
- Baia degli Angeli
- Interludio (prima dello show)
- Ti sento
- Eroi
- Anima romantica
Drowning in Synesthesia
Ronan Courty is set to release his album „Synesthesia“ on January 24, 2025. Today, he premieres a stunning music video shot by Mathieu Fisson, including album excerpts.
Bursts of eerie droning, creating haunting resonances and extracting otherworldly sounds. What we experience in Extraits de l’album Synesthesia is an experimental journey travelling deep into the unknown.
French artist Ronan Courty is about to release his album Synesthesia on Friday. Named after the perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway, the extracts Courty presents today underline the fitting title.
„For several years now, I’ve been researching sounds and techniques on my double bass linked to the objects I associate with it: clothespins, drumsticks, plastic, tuning forks… In Synesthesia, my aim is for the prepared instrument to generate sufficient resonances and harmonics to become polyphonic and enable me to envisage this solo as a dialogue, a duo,“ explains Courty.
The Metaphor of Bondage
Courty’s meticulous research results in an alien soundscape, cinematic in its quality, widening the field of view to a staggering size, and slowly filling the canvas with shades and shapes.
In the video, directed by Mathieu Fisson, Karine Laur performs Shibari on the double bass. Courty elaborates: „The idea of Shibari on double bass as a metaphor for my instrumental practice became obvious as I came to see this inanimate object as a living thing, adding objects and techniques without damaging it.“
Director Fisson adds: „I wanted to film the knots being tied on the double bass the way I like to film musicians playing: close up and in motion. There’s something raw and hypnotic about Ronan’s music.“
Yet, there’s also a notion of juxtaposition. One could read the constraints of bondage as a symbol for the instrument’s traditional intent, contrasting Courty’s unconventional approach to eliciting fantastical sounds. But what connects all three artistic practices—videography, Shibari, and Courty’s music—is a clear sense of beauty and attention to detail.
