40 years ago, on a day like today, September 26 in 1980, the Swiss label Off Course Records released Swiss Wave The Album. The first compilation record of the local underground scene. The bands selected for the album were: The Sick, Jack & The Rippers, Liliput, Rudolph Dietrich & KDF, Ladyshave, Mother’s Ruin, and from Bern, the band Grauzone with two very innovative songs: “Eisbär” and “Raum”.
Swiss Wave The Album (back cover)
The year was 1979 and most of the Swiss underground bands were under the strong influence of English punk. Three of the future band members of Grauzone also played in a punk band called Glueams: Christian Trüssel (bass), Marco Repetto (drums) and Martin Eicher (guitar in Mental).
GLUEAMS – Mental. Taken from the single ‘Mental’ (1979)
Over time, the members of Glueams felt saturated with punk and opted to seek a new musical identity with more depth, which involves more feelings, introspection and cold bass/synthesizer sounds. By that time their look was already different, they dressed in black and listened to new bands like The Cure.
On one of Marco’s trips to London in 1979, he attended live concerts by bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees or Fad Gadget, and realized that the London punk scene was opening up to dark and electronic sounds. The new label Mute Records had just released their second single “Back to Nature” by Fad Gadget, and Marco noticed that people were taking the new songs very well. He liked that London atmosphere open to new sounds and was motivated to do something similar when he returned to Switzerland. Glueams was now history and the time was ready for Grauzone.
Grauzone 1979 – Marco with Martin and Christian (Photo: Stephan Eicher)
The following year, Martin’s brother, Stephan Eicher (synthesizers) and Claudine Chirac (saxophone) joined the new band Grauzone for the recordings of “Eisbär” and “Raum” for the compilation album Swiss Wave at the Sunrise Studios in St. Gallen. The producers in charge were Martin Byland and Urs Steiger, and the sound engineers were Etienne Conod and Robert Vogel. Eisbär’s first takes sounded similar to The Cure’s “A Forest”, so the producers advised the band to make some changes. Precisely that allowed the band to put more emphasis on their own ideas, thus giving a more personal sound to the recording.
Musically, the Swiss Wave album presented a new wave sound but still had a clear punk influence. No wonder, it was 1980. Grauzone, on the other hand, proposed something different. “Eisbär” was introspective and presented a desolate, cold and monotonous soundscape. The bassline was now very present and took the reins of the song, while the synthesizer made its avantgardist way, sometimes subtle and minimalist, and sometimes dissonant and noisy á la no wave. All this components contrasted decisively with the songs of the other bands on the compilation album. This was the first wave-post-punk song (including minimal wave, coldwave and noise elements) recorded by a local band in Switzerland. And so the release of “Eisbär” can be considered as the cornerstone and trigger for the start of the Swiss dark scene.
Now the local scene had its first own soundtrack, and began to develop slowly. Grauzone’s first concerts took place in locations like Club Spex, Gasskessel and Reitschule in Bern. From then until the mid 80’s, diverse concerts, discos and parties were held in places like Rote Fabrik (Zürich), Totentanz (Basel), AJZ (Biel), Big Apple (Zürich), L’Association Post Tenebras Rock @ Le Bouffon (Genève), Fri-Son (Freiburg), Sedel (Luzern), Grabenhalle (St. Gallen), Dolce Vita (Lausanne) and L’association État d’Urgences (L’Usine) in Genève.
GRAUZONE – Eisbär (1981). Original music video
When the album Swiss Wave was released, it was not very well received, and only about 1000 copies were sold. But a year later, Grauzone would release “Eisbär” as a single on their own, which was a great international success. In view of this, the album Swiss Wave was re-released and sales reached half a million copies.
GRAUZONE – Eisbär single. Off Course Records (1981). Photo: Sam’s Collection
What started with Martin’s nightmare, who at the age of 18 dreamed that polar bears hanging on the wall were crying and tormenting him. It became a legendary pioneering underground song, which against its will, would inevitably become a world hit. A cult song that marked the beginning of a new era and never stopped being a musical reference.
Martin with Stephan
Some time ago Stephan bought the original master tapes from “Eisbär” and now he preserves them as what it is: a historical artistic production. So four decades later the Eicher’s Eisbär is possibly with them again in the recording studio. If this is not a sign…
