New Music: Check out CRISTALLIN
Somethingyousaid.com’s Kaya Strehler points you in the direction of some sounds from Switzerland:
I previously wrote about the high level of music being created within the tidy little borders of Switzerland and brought your attention the Bern band Labrador City. Since then I’ve had the pleasure of having two of my senses brought into a romanticised courtship thanks to CRISTALLIN.
I first saw Simeon Sigg, aka CRISTALLIN, at the same little Mexican restaurant that housed the aforementioned Labrador City gig. While this show left a lot to be desired, before I could rip into the live trio, it was brought to my attention that this was amongst a very limited number of times that they had played live together. Ok. So I cut them some slack.
Over the next few weeks my curiosity got the better of me and I begun listening to the two mini EPs more and more. The dreamy layered pop melodies, cut with edgy electronic influences and topped off with Siggs casually crooning off summer romance lyrics makes the songs strong contenders for the ‘repeat’ button.
The pop catchy vibes make it impossible to sit completely still. Even as I am writing this with my earphones in at a local cafe, my head is bobbing and swaying. The barista wont give me any more coffee because he thinks I’m too fidgety on caffeine, truthfully though, my ‘mellow dance moves’ just perceive me to be in caffeine induced fits.
The first EP Eon was released around 2012 via The Brio Life and seems more experimental with the electronic drum machine and distorted vocal pedals. It gained some attention, not enough in my opinion, but alas I do not control the internet. The newest release, rightly titled Core, showcases four songs stripped back and more grounded. Still with a dreamy lofty luring manner but somehow deeper, less experimental, more realised and completed. To draw a comparison of the growth between the two EPs, I would team Eon with the renowned summer Corona ad ‘From Where You’d Rather Be’ dripping with a vague air of summer romance and salt encrusting sunset kisses. Whereas, Core has less falsetto tingling sounds, which when teamed with the lyrics provide a still catchy (my head still bops like a maniac) yet darker more meaningful story on parr with some indie film about the complexities of relationships. Angelus has Siggs humble voice repeating ‘even if i walk away from you’ over and over making it the vocal counterpart to an internal struggle and Talking to the Sun completes the short EP with the whimsical and wistful murmuring ‘underneath the stars we confessed out dreams’ and ‘ when it’s you and me together on the run’ to complete the concept.
A few weeks after the introduction at the initial concert, he was playing again. I was curious to see if the concept of live performance had started to agree with the young musician. Like last time it began with Sigg standing solely on the stage as his self-filmed and produced aesthetically mesmerising visuals project behind him. His calmness and obvious enjoyment up there is apparent and even heightened when, after a few songs to establish Sigg as CRISTALLIN, his guitarist (Mattia Comuzzi) and drummer (Florian Sebastian) join him on stage giving the rest of the show even more depth and presence in the venue. While there were still a lot of tweaks that need to be ironed out, particularly the pauses between songs which seem to slap you awake out of the trance he just put the room in, the improvement from the little restaurant in Zürich was stark.
Simeon and his fellas will be playing across Switzerland this summer season and while I realise the likelihood of this readership making it across is pretty minimal, you should most definitely get onto the cyberspace and check him out. Only good things will continue to come.
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Words by Kaya Strehler.
