SELECTION: BEST LIVE ACT CATEGORY

FAI BABA

Fai Baba lives and works in Zürich, Switzerland. He‘s part of a new generation of international blues avant-garde. Fai Baba‘s songs inspire to all sorts of genre flogging: monster-boo- gie, toxic folk, garage-blues, psychedelic country…
And that‘s what rattles the bones at his gigs. One is seldomly confronted with repetition, a lot of music is given a way – raw, distorted, pumping, flying and crawling, beaten. Fai Baba leads the blues through a gigantic kaleidoscope and straight into the eye of freedom.

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KLAUS JOHANN GROBE

Perhaps one can say that freethinker of the discos throw melancholic slogans on the dance floor.

Or a synthesizer organ, drums and a canned bass try to say what many don’t understand.

Or poetry before prose. Or dance before music. Or the things of yesterday in the spirit of the times of tomorrow. Or everything is contrary.

Everything is Klaus Johann Grobe. Everything is duo. Everything is modern. And everything is now.

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KLAUS JOHANN GROBE

Perhaps one can say that freethinker of the discos throw melancholic slogans on the dance floor.

Or a synthesizer organ, drums and a canned bass try to say what many don’t understand.

Or poetry before prose. Or dance before music. Or the things of yesterday in the spirit of the times of tomorrow. Or everything is contrary.

Everything is Klaus Johann Grobe. Everything is duo. Everything is modern. And everything is now.

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PETER KERNEL

Peter Kernel is a Swiss Canadian art-punk project including Aris Bassetti (guitar, voice, graphic designer) and Barbara Lehnhoff (bass, voice, filmmaker). Inspired by a love story, Peter Kernel play music anyone can play in an attempt to’ satisfy man’s basic human instinct: a beat, something loud and a few words. Primary rock.

Throughout the years Peter Kernel shared stages with inspiring bands such as Mogwai, Trans Am, Cat Power, Enon, Blonde Redhead, Shannon Wright, Wolf Parade, Why?, Twin Shadow, Wild Beasts, Trentemøller, The Notwist, Sunset Rubdown, Gregor Samsa and many more…and performed at clubs and festivals such as Hmv Forum (London), Thekla (Bristol), Glee (Birmingham) 59 :1 (Munich) Point Ephèmere (Paris), Soundlabs Festival (Abruzzo), Paleo Festival (Nyon), Bad Bonn Kilbi (Düdingen), Cully Jazz Festival (Cully) and many more…

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THE PUSSYWARMERS

And now it’s dark… Here comes NIGHTRIDE, less of an album than a Gesamtkunstwerk, devised by The Pussywarmers & Réka in their newest conceptual lineup , the ELEKTRONISCHE ABTEILUNG. Forgotten synths, analog filters, hypnotic samples and loops conjure up a previously untold tale of the ultimate ride – the one into the Night. Sketched out in the solitude of a godforsaken mountain cottage that serves as the band’s current hideout, NIGHTRIDE clearly marks the Pussywarmers & Réka’s transition towards a different understanding of what writing music can mean. A sensual ode to the Night, perceived and portrayed as both dreadful and irresistible, borrowing from its rhythms – delayed, repetitive and compulsive. Tracked and mixed at the Pussywarmers & Réka’s own recording facility near Lugano with a broad selection of magnetic tapes, discontinued keyboards, Logic and a layer of Persuasive Percussions by Nic Mauskovic (ex Jacco Gardner), NIGHTRIDE will appear over the horizon as a full moon – white 12” vinyl wrapped in a one-of-a-kind cover designed by Ronny Hunger.

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THE PUSSYWARMERS

And now it’s dark… Here comes NIGHTRIDE, less of an album than a Gesamtkunstwerk, devised by The Pussywarmers & Réka in their newest conceptual lineup , the ELEKTRONISCHE ABTEILUNG. Forgotten synths, analog filters, hypnotic samples and loops conjure up a previously untold tale of the ultimate ride – the one into the Night. Sketched out in the solitude of a godforsaken mountain cottage that serves as the band’s current hideout, NIGHTRIDE clearly marks the Pussywarmers & Réka’s transition towards a different understanding of what writing music can mean. A sensual ode to the Night, perceived and portrayed as both dreadful and irresistible, borrowing from its rhythms – delayed, repetitive and compulsive. Tracked and mixed at the Pussywarmers & Réka’s own recording facility near Lugano with a broad selection of magnetic tapes, discontinued keyboards, Logic and a layer of Persuasive Percussions by Nic Mauskovic (ex Jacco Gardner), NIGHTRIDE will appear over the horizon as a full moon – white 12” vinyl wrapped in a one-of-a-kind cover designed by Ronny Hunger.

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ZEAL & ARDOR

«Nothing released this year is as strange, inscrutable or wonderful than Zeal & Ardor’s «Devil Is Fine»» extols US Rolling Stone , hailing the debut album as «a dream world of infinite possibilities.» The creation of Swiss-American songwriter/soundscaper Manuel Gagneux, «Devil Is Fine» is an artistic artefact like no other, a meld of black metal, field recordings, Delta blues, jazz, ring shouts, music box melodies, glitchy hip-hop beats, soul and gospel, brought together in the service of The One With Horns. It is the
most provocative, challenging, innovative and utterly individual album of the year, a recording which obliterates genre boundaries and creates a dark, diabolical universe all its own.

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