Liz Libido set to conquer Swiss pop scene

Liz Libido (from left to right: Tschopp, White, Vanni G, Fred). liz libido

The Swiss band, Liz Libido, has released a promising first album, which elegantly combines rock, funk and R&B to produce a characteristic and unique sound. For now, the band is only distributed in Switzerland, but the interest it has aroused at home foreshadows an imminent breakthrough abroad.

“It’s a good first album,” William White, Liz Libido’s lead singer, told swissinfo. “It’s full of great songs, with some of them not up to their potential and others way over.” White added.

Liz Libido was formed in 1998 in Winterthur. The band, initially called Pommes Fred, changed its name when White decided to join as its new lead singer.

The group, which includes White, Freddy Scherer at the guitar, Vanni G. at the drums and Thomas Tschopp at the bass has toured extensively in Switzerland.

Last year, Liz Libido took part in several Swiss music festivals, including Out in the Green in canton Thurgau and the prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival on Lake Geneva.

“Our dream is to have people screaming because we’re playing our songs,” White said. “I think everyone wants to be a star some way or the other,” he added.

Liz Libido’s first album was recorded twice, because the first attempt in a studio in Winterthur proved unsatisfactory.

“We were not quite happy with this version, and the record company we contacted actually refused to sign us,” Freddy Scherer, Liz Libido’s guitarist, explained. “So then we went to see an acquaintance of ours, Thomas Kempner, who invited us to test his new studio in Germany,” Scherer added.

The band, who were rapidly convinced of Kempner’s Cologne studio, decided to entrust him with the album. The songs were then mixed in Düsseldorf, before being sent to London to be mastered.

The new 12-track CD, which is distributed by Musikvertrieb, has already sold over 2,000 copies since its official release in March. But far from resting on their laurels, Liz Libido are already preparing their new album.

“There’s a new mood which we all feel,” White told swissinfo. “The new songs have a different way of satisfying something in each of us,” he added.

White says the next album will make more room for feeling and will be produced differently.

“There’s a little more dependency on feeling in the new songs, and not only on pop and sounds,” White said. “This album will be a little scrappier than our first album,” he concluded.

The upcoming album will also be marked by White’s efforts to sing more naturally. He explained that “personally, my fight on this album will be to let my voice just be as it is”.

By Jeff Nottage