B-Sides Festival, 13 – 15 June 2019 Sonnenberg Kriens

Any festival that lists on its programme the exact time of sunset must be a tiny bit special. Surrounded by mountains, with gorgeous views over the large and beautifully clear Lake Lucerne, in terms of the beautiful scenery alone, the B-Sides Festival would be hard to top. Add to that a genuinely progressive concept – there is an exact 50:50 split between female and male artists – and you have one of the most enjoyable open air music events around.

An eclectic bill that ranges from Derya Yldirim’s Anatolian folk-pop to Kate Tempest’s intense musical poetry performance to female Zimbabwean rapper AWA, also includes many of the best and most adventurous artists Switzerland has to offer just now. Needless to say, the reputation of the festival has rapidly spread. It now attracts plenty of talent spotters from abroad and thus offers ample opportunity to strike up new friendships and foster new connections.

Apart from Swiss Music Export favourites like Black Sea Dahu, Camilla Sparksss, Odd Beholder, Klaus Johann Grobe, Eclecta, L’Orage and Cyril Cyril, here’s another handful of tips from us:

Kallemi: Formed less than a year ago, this quartet of women from Palestine, Dominican Republic and Switzerland – Jasmin Albash, Jennifer Perez, Maysa Daw and Rasha Nahas are all well-known solo artists in their own right – have swiftly hit their stride. Mixing all their diverse influences to great, organic effect, theirs is a riveting blend of hip-hop, Latin rhythms, gorgeous vocal harmonies and even the odd loud guitar.

Linda Vogel: A harpist by trade, singer/songwriter Vogel, with composer and drummer Vincent Glanzmann, writes beautifully eerie and yet memorable songs, influenced, apparently by writers like Fernando Pessoa and John Donne.

Asbest: The trio from Basel serve up a dark and heavy brand of post-Black Mountain guitar rock with a hint of Public Image Limited thrown in. Their music flows slowly like molasses and has undoubted hallucinogenic qualities.

Pyrit: Thomas Kuratli describes his wind-swept and dark electro-synthetic sound as “cosmic desert music”. A restless soul, Pyrit created his latest set of songs as far afield as Berlin, Tunisia and, apparently, the South Pole.

B-Sides Festival
Full Line-up B-Sides Festival