Organic Intelligence XI: The Swiss Underground

In this month's antitode to the algorithm, David Stubbs guides you through the heady, radical sounds of the Swiss underground.

“In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brother love, had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

It took generations for Switzerland to live down Harry Lyme’s Orson Welles-scripted speech in the film The Third Man. As Lurker Grand, co-author of Heute und Danach – The Swiss Music Scene of the 80s put it, “The English indie or American (alternative) music scene is part of a long cultural heritage in those two parts of the world. Switzerland did not have this at all. We were the generation that did bring this into conservative society and I believe we did it right.”