Alois Return in Blue

Their debut album “Mints” was crowned “IndieSuisse Album of the Year 2017”. Now, Alois return with “Azul”, a paean to the healing powers of blue skies. “Azul” is released on 5 June 2020 via Red Brick Chapel and distributed by Irascible/Believe Digital.

Lucerne-based five-piece Alois describe their music as “tropical synth-pop”. If this term evokes visions of sunny soca rhythms crossed with rhumba, samba, reggae and perhaps even the odd dollop of hi-life and soukous, the impression is, indeed, partly right. It is also quite wrong. Alois do start off from these rhythms. But what they do with them is much closer to an organic type of synth pop viewed through the prism of dub than the sort of records usually filed away in the world music section. Singer Martin Schenker describes “Azul” (Spanish for ‘blue’) as “definitely body music, though body music that reflects deep emotions.” Starting off from a series of clubby, sequencer-driven song sketches, the band adds guitars, percussion, mellotron and extra synths only when these sketches are properly thought out and developed. Once the new recordings are complete, they are treated with a variety of effects to complete a dense, subtle and narcotic album that works on the dance floor just as well as in a concert hall or on a quiet night at home.

Alois
Red Brick Chapel
Believe Digital
Irascible