BURNING SOUND RECORDS
HOME OF DIY SUBCULTURE SINCE 2004
Infos
Burning Sound Records is based in la Chaux de fonds (Switzerland), we are a record label, recording studio, local promoters, and a booking agency. We have our own music club : La Machine à Trucs in La Chaux-de-Fonds and we run The Amazing Rock n' Roll Circus FREAKS SHOW.
If you like good Old Punk, Rock'n Roll, Trash Blues, Soul, Garage, Dirty Gospel, Psychobilly, Gipsy Blues Trash, etc... Get in touch with us, share ideas and lets make good nights with good bands... Rock'n Roll Right On!!! 'cause it's the best and only thing we can do since 2004.
Burning Sound History by DEJAN GACOND
« Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop apocalypse! Holy the jazz bands marijuana hipsters peace n’ junk n’ drums! »
Allen Ginsberg – Howl
It’s a sunny Saturday morning during late spring of 1994. Lots of people are gathered at market place, buying vegetables and cheese, olivas and dried meat. Café terraces are filled and loud political conservations with a sharp accent can be heard at every table. The enthusiastic debates about the world get suddenly lower when the warm, beautiful roaring of a saxophone spreads into space. If streets musicians are not unfamiliar on this market place, the saxophone is played on this day by a ten years old kid. Every now and then he comes around and starts playing in the streets of La Chaux-de-Fonds. No one, nothing could stop him. It was only the start for this street jammin’ kid who will be known around as Bab a few years later.
The last decade of the 20th century is also the beginning of new unknown unilateral world. The era of masses is the kingdom of capitalism. Most people in this town are scared of this money making hydra and they try to imagine an alternative way of dealing with this monster. Discussing and sometimes arguing about society, listening music and drinking in the cafés has always been an important part of life in La Chaux-de-Fonds. If jazz and classical music had a nice representation in the area, the wasted youth of the 1980’s needed a sonic dream. They fought hard for their rights to party ! As improvments always come after protests for some kind of change, an entire generation of rockin’ freaks obtained Bikini Test. An alternative music club that became soon lengendary and that welcomed in its sweating walls The Gun Club, Noir Désir, Cat Power, Lydia Lunch, The Young Gods, Dee Dee Ramone or Screaming Jay Hawkins among many others. From jazz to rock, from experimental to classic, from contemporary to electronic, music has always been necessary to face long winters and poverty. The Chernobyl kids of the 1980’s had a pertinent and generous auditory education but the world they were thrown in imposed an idea in their imbalanced minds. What about re-inventing the DIY sub-culture ?
Bab is a child of the nuclear generation born in the 1980’s. He was illegaly playing in the streets when he was ten, Bikini Test opened pretty much at the same time and Bab started to work there as a volunteer when he was fourteen. He had his own sleeping bag backstage in case the nights were too long for him. He’s been soaked by rock n roll, grunge, trash blues, gypsy rock, punk and harcore as a teenager. Bab always knew he’d become a musician, but hanging at Bikini Test helped him to discover so many bands, helping the staff for the technic, the food, at the bar. He discovered how works the parallel world of alternative music. It’s pretty much like society, but without the stupid shit, the inequalities and the rules. A materialized, ephemeral utopia that delighted Bab during his adolescence. La Chaux-de-Fonds is a special town filled with freaks and anarchists, maniac artists and wild rockers and the precense of this teenage street jamming nuclear kid in the middle of them created a natural link between the generation that created Bikini Test and the madness that was about to developp from this place.
It was not only La Chaux-de-Fonds, but a whole area vibrating with a musical energy. From Saint-Imier to Le Locle through La Tchaux as they say here, they were invisibly rebuilding the anarchist connection. Saint-Imier had Espace Noir, Le Locle had L’Anciene Poste and la Chaux-de-Fonds had Bikini Test. As many bands came to play around here, many bands were forming as well. Everyone started to play with everyone. Another kind of sweaty rock n roll orgy what about to come ! L’Ancienne Poste in le Locle was a big building filled by rehearsahl room. A special atmosphere was emanating from this old post office that became an alternative center. Bab was practicing there with his first bands : The Raunchos and Spacies Googies. After they met with Vincent Tripet, Raph Piccard and Pelou, a crazy, intense journey was about to start. The idea of permanent struggle stucked in their minds and they re-invented the underground culture this area needed. Bikini Test was almost a famous institution and they were proud of it, but they needed to reconnect with a wilder spirit.
Burning Sound Records came to life at this moment. The original idea was to create a structure to organize concerts in different places and to do the booking for some bands. The 21st century’s madness had just began, they jumped in their magic bus in 2004. The first concerts they organized were in Le Locle at L’Ancienne Poste. They were already dreaming about producing records and organizing tours. From a clandestine bar in the attic of Fantom Train - a madhouse in La Chaux-de-Fonds - to the funky, indelible, sexy Straksy and Hutsh parties, from Emeute Statique to insane gigs in obscured basements, from illegal n ephemeral alternative clubs like Le Loch or Le Bovistop (also known as Le Fritzl and as The Maybe Baby) to the gigs organized with Le Centre Africain, from many pubs to La Machine à Trucs.. The list is not exhaustive… hundreds of concerts, parties and fun… Burning Sound Records became a perceptions twisting machine, a body awakening process…
The fight was as hard as the cause was necessary ! It was a big hide and seek game between the police and Burning Sound team. The persistence of rock n roll addiction is stronger than the law and a full generation got soaked to the bone by this DIY art permanent protest. In 2005 they decided to produce their first ardent record with The Spacies Googies demo. Then a compilation came out in 2006, they met Guitar Fucker and others and Burning Sound Records became this energy gathering monster we all have heard about. They outlined the landscape of alternative music in Switzerland and elsewhere… From Dee Diglers to Welington Irish Black Warrior, from Julie Rocks U to The Watchmaking Metropolis Orchestra, from Love Cans to The Old Ladies Bags… The tantacles were spreading… sounds started to burn the grey swiss sky…
Louis Jucker, Léon Jodry, Brynjar Thorson, Pascal Lopinat, Dany Digler, Steven Doutaz, Tenko, Alain Come n Go, Guitar Fucker, Bab Digler, Meryl Nussbaumer, Vic, Armelle Schroll, Rémy Ruffer, Bertrand Vorpe, Luc Hess, Jérôme Correa… if it’s impossible to name them all, the constellation of talented musicians gathered by Burning Sound Records is wide. Then they started to hit the road through Europe. It was in 2009, Dany Digler never played music before meeting Alain, HB and Bab.The result was unbelivable, fresh, savage and brut. It was a Satori. He'd become a singer and a musician. At the same time some crazy teenagers’ were inventing the sound of the future. Julie Rocks U, the Vivian Girls, Dee Diglers and Wellington Irish Black Warrior got on tour and it was a funny, freaky, funky, sweaty riot. The monster became a hydra. The network extended to the whole Switzerland, France, Italy, Germany, England, USA and even Sardina. The links got stronger, the circle was bigger and Burning Sound Records imagined the Freaks Show when they met their twins in a squat near Nechâtel. The Freaks Show is a maniac rock n roll circus trashing European roads since 2009. Bands from all over the world come around to play either at a Burning sound event or for the Freaks Show, more and more records are published. The English band The Anteloids or the mysteriously masked Texan lunatic Attic Ted and a bunch of frantic Italian one man bands named Mr Occhio, The Blues Against Youth or Wasted Pido join the party.
Chuck Berry’s ghost is dancing in Burning Sound’s basement. We are in 2020 and Burning Sound Records are celebrating their Sweet sixteen. Gros Oiseau, Abstral Compost and Pascal Lopinat, Metzger und Bauer are about to publish stunning records on Burning sound. A big festival at Bikini Test is on its way… Circles are beautiful when they’re perfect. Words can slowly fade in the dense, invisible, infinite ocean of sounds. Music can invade our bloodstreams. Music can penetrate our souls. Music can heal our pains. Societies are fucked and rock n roll can accelerate the fall ! We are the street jammin’ nuclear kids of the lost generation... and we love this good old saxophone’s roar…
« Music is the connective tissue between protest, rebellion, violence, sexual awareness, and community. »
Lydia Lunch - Will work for drugs