Lovebugs play Baloise Session

The Lovebugs, a Swiss Britpop inspired band from Basel, Switzerland founded in 1992, make music to live their dream, to live in the moment, to capture their experiences in snapshots and to listen carefully for the subtle, finer sounds in life. ‘We gave every idea for a song a chance and we rehearsed until this magic moment came – or didn’t come,’ says drummer Simon Ramseier. Bassist Florian Senn adds: ‘We worked without pressure or a specific concept and only allowed ourselves one luxury: A lot of time.’ The laid back atmosphere carried over from the songs to the entire band. ‘We are more colourful again now,’ says singer Adrian Sieber. “In our songwriting, it was important to me that the melancholy songs should not drown in sadness, but should still have a spark of hope.”

Alex Hepburn plays Baloise Session

The English singer Alex Hepburn worked through the painful experiences and losses of her childhood by writing in her diary. The journal entries later became rhymes, then lyrics and finally songs, which she sings with verve and a powerful voice: This combination has made her a shooting star of neo soul. The resulting songs are so powerful that Hepburn’s debut single ‘Pain Is’ and the debut album which followed, ‘Together Alone’, immediately achieved success in the European charts. It is no wonder since the modern soul of this young English singer is a product of the blues and rock of her childhood. Her voice is as rough and strong as a double whisky. Her fans celebrate her, depending on their age, as a new Pink or a new Janis Joplin or, and everyone agrees on this, as a worthy successor to Amy Winehouse. In the end, the comparisons are unimportant, because Alex Hepburn is Alex Hepburn.

Stress plays Baloise Session

The music of Lausanne rapper Stress is loud, bombastic and heavy on rhythm, just as it should be in hip hop. But if you listen closely, you will discover an undeniable sensibility to injustice and those little every day things that make life tough. The cocky, adrenaline-pumped city rapper has long since become a skilled and sophisticated verbal acrobat with his own fashion label. This could also be the result of his failed marriage with former Miss Switzerland Melanie Winiger. Both went their separate ways and the path of Stress led right to the Swiss charts. His albums and singles can be found there on a regular basis. And yet, Stress has kept his sense of insubordination and irony.

Iyeoka plays Baloise Session

As a pharmacist, Iyeoka sold medicine for physical ailments in her hometown of Boston and spent her free time singing poetry. As the front woman of the collective Iyeoka & The Rock by Funk Tribe, she was greatly admired by fans of the music of Gil Scott Heron and the Last Poets, and both of her albums were highly praised. Big city anger was evident in her songs, her intellectually demanding choice of words, and her sharp gift of observation, but also goodness, devotion and beauty. Three years ago, the daughter of Nigerian immigrants decided to start prescribing only medicine for the spirit and soul. She quit her job and in 2010, she released the album with the pragmatic title «Say Yes»: meaning say yes to life, to love. Since then Iyeoka is like Tracy Chapman, Lauryn Hill, Shirley Bassey and Sade – you could say she is the essence of all four with her sense of justice, rhythm, vocal power and gentle grace.

Patricia Kaas plays Baloise Session

‘In order to sing Edith Piaf, you need life experience and courage,’ says Patricia Kaas. What she means is that one must understand the emotions, the biography and the artistry of the great French chansonière to bring her songs to life. Maybe her own dramatic biography has made Patricia Kaas the ideal interpreter of the legendary Piaf repertoire. She succeeds by giving it her own personal note without tampering with the original authenticity of the chanson, which takes melancholy, irony and disillusion and combines it with an element of pride. Patricia Kaas has managed to create a bridge to the current pensive, intense acoustic sounds of the Seine metropolis, carried out into the world by trendy protagonists like Woodkid.

Schmidt plays Baloise Session

The provocative cabaret songs of the golden twenties are the source of inspiration for the 23-year-old Berlin singer Elisa Schmidt and her band. With her smoky voice, she gives the dry jazz-rock arrangements a sexy gangster charm, which she herself calls ‘Pop Noir’. The ‘pop’ part expressing an intoxicating lust for life and a mature swing vibe and modern urbanity, all in the same breath. The ‘noir’ part is provided by her voice and the dark, sensual enigmas she sings about. One of her greatest hits so far was the song ‘Heart Shaped Gun’, which climbed up the German charts as the title song of the German crime show ‘Tatort’.

Kyla La Grange plays Baloise Session

The songs of young singer Kyla La Grange from the British town of Watford are far from melancholy. She is the daughter of two hippies: her mother is from South Africa and her father is from Zimbabwe, and she was shaped by the openness of world culture and self-discovery. It is not surprising that she wrote her first songs at the age of five, ten years before she was given her first guitar. Kyla La Grange talks about being very shy in her childhood. She finally found her audience at the University of Cambridge when she was studying philosophy. The campus was full of open mic sessions, which influenced her sound and her songwriting. Kyla’s appearance is fascinating. She looks like a top model, has a smoky voice which is not sexy and sweet, but rather mysterious and haunting. She lets her folk songs grow into dark stories that hang in your heart like bats on the rafters of a fairy tale castle steeped in legend.

Aimee Mann plays Baloise Session

She’s done it all. Aimee Mann first played in a punk band, then a new wave band, before she became a singer-songwriter influenced by country music. In 1993, she released her solo debut ‘Whatever’, after which she was celebrated by the critics as a new female Paul McCartney. This woman from Richmond has the same instinct for simple, yet profound pop songs as the ex-Beatles songwriter. Inspite of the critical acclaim, Aimee’s label wanted her to write nice little songs for the masses, so she left and started her label ‘SuperEgo’. The record company must have been quite irked when, soon after, Aimee received an Oscar® nomination for the magical song ‘Save Me’, the title song of the film ‘Magnolia’. Since then, Aimee has achieved a kind of iconic status: The woman, who could already play all of Neil Young’s songs as a teenager, has developed into Young’s female counterpart: rough around the edges, but loveable and above all, a brilliant songwriter.