H E X - II (2025)

Somewhere on the verge of post-rock, gothic rock and experimental music sit the five artists of the Swiss outfit H E X and they sit there and make their difficult to categorize music. Their second album leaves the audience with the feeling of participating in something unique. Dark and heavy but also unique.

Is this just post-rock with vocals? I doubt it. Is it just dark indie? Not really. The long compositions are based on the vocal parts that are not meant to be very catchy but rather atmospheric and mysterious. Remember the Icelandic band called The Autumns? It's what this music reminds me of. Very indie rocky in a way, but having also a lot of space for gloomy and heavy guitar work to introduce the audience into the hazy trance so similar to some of the more atmospheric-playing post-rock bands.

Accoridng to the artists, the album was created from a total chaos multiplied by changes in the band's line-up and I'd say you can notice that. The compositions somewhat lack order and seem to simply be the manifestation of the band's energy. This, together with the coherent, very dark texture of their sound makes a curious mixture that is first of all aimed at creating the atmosphere, but also, another quote from the artists, at making "an attempt to map our flaws and turn them into strengths, to make our misalignment with the world into a language of its own". Does it work? Of course it does.

II costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: Liminal

Country: Switzerland

Genre: dark rock

Label: Humus Records

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Ilajan - Villes de Papier (2023)

Ilajan is a debuting singer-songwriter who keeps her music in a very dreamy atmosphere. This is the first EP ever in her discography and Villes de Papier promises a lot for future.

Released by Hummus Records, album is made by Ilajan and her sister, Indiana, who "shape their own delicately oneiric atmospheres, mixing guitars, voices and electronic experimentations". Their compositions are as dreamy as they can be with slow and cozy music drowning the audience with its beauty and calming abilities. The singer/songwriter component is very strongly present here with the artist's soft vocals as well as emotional and particularly poetic lyrics being the focal point of each song (especially mysteriously appealing when sang in French!). I'm reluctant in making comparisons here as I'm not an expert in these genres, but if I was to make a guess, I'd say it's what Tori Amos would sound like if she decided to venture to the dream pop music territories. 

Villes de Papier costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: Mad

Country: Switzerland

Genre: dreamy singer/songwriter

Label: Hummus Records

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YRRE - Luhlae x The Witch (2022)

When talking about Swiss music this year, I am excitingly waiting for E-L-R's sophomore album. But there is something else that proved to be as compelling and gloomy. YRRE's debut album Luhlae x The Witch is a soundtrack of fear and noise disguised as modern drone post-metal album and I love it.

This very special album is "an adaption of a ciné-concert composed to the movie ‘The VVitch'" by Robert Eggers and was created for the festival 2300 Plan 9 les Etranges Nuits du Cinéma and performed for the first time at Bikini Test in La Chaux-de-Fonds under the name Luhlae x The Witch (thus the title of the album of course). The movie itself grew up to be an icon of ambitious horror genre and the original music by Mark Korven is masterpiece on its own. This album seems to be an interpretation of the movie through post-rock and post-metal sounds. There won't be any surprise when revealed that the album is particularly dark and heavy. It achieves that with very modern post-rock/metal means though.

While the band describe themselves as dark ambient noise, there's way too much of the guitars and drums and other effects. It is, yes, soaked in noise which makes the angry and desperate post-metal vocals that sound in the backgrounds even more poignant. And in general, the feeling of horror is very well tangible in every second of this fantastic release. There's quality of sound, there's inspiring noise, there's captivating ambiance. Fantastic.

Luhlae x The Witch costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: Uhtceare

Country: Switzerland

Genre: noise post-metal

Label: Hummus Records

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Profond Barathre - Tinnitus (2021)

This is not news that the Swiss can make some quality hard music. The likes of Rorcal or E-L-R proved that in recent years. Profond Barathre is another pebble in this avalanche. And this year's comeback (it seems that they had some works in the past, I'm not very oriented in the metal scene), called Tinnitus, doesn't only make your ears buzz, it's also some Music with a capital M.

This is the kind of music that pretty much optimally balances the metal rabidness and post-genre's atmosphere, the raw and coarse guitars complement the wall of noise's ambiance characteristics. The compositions are not overly complicated but their straightforwardness build up the whole thing's mesmerizing quality. Especially that the tracks here are massive and very long, long enough for the audience to get lost and buried within them, under the massiveness of the sound. It's especially admirable when you realize that the whole album was recorded in a "couple of evening sessions during the winter 2017-2018" and without much post-production, I can hardly believe it, the quality of sound here is so good.

And yes, tinnitus after this album is a real thing.

Tinnitus costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: Corpus

Country: Switzerland

Genre: post-black metal

Label: Hummus Records

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