Adrian Sieber – Were We Ever So Young? (Youtube)
“Adrian Sieber offers a sample of his upcomming album and this can make you unpatient! A track formed from memorable synth melodies and shinny electronic patterns, which will keep playing on pepeat inside your head. Great job.”
-Nagamag.com
In August 2020, my solo album «You, Me & Everything Else» was released. This was an important first step towards musical independence after the Lovebugs had decided to indefinitely put their activities on hold two years earlier. My goal was to avoid the familiar, to explore my stylistic range and attempt unexpected collaborations. A risk that was rewarded. The album was well received by critics and fans alike and even made it into the top 10 of the official Swiss charts.
I would have loved to perform the new material on stage. However, when it became apparent that the pandemic would thwart these plans, I continued working on songs instead and started looking for the right kind of producer. When musician and sound designer Grégoire Pasquier (Shuttle) from Fribourg heard the demo recordings for the first time, it was ‘love at first synthesizer’, so to speak. Sound files and digital sketches were sent back and forth, and soon the first song resulted from this intimate, long-distance partnership: «It’s Serious», released at the end of 2021 and instantly chosen by SRF3 as their ‘Song of the Day’.
While the lockdown shook the foundation of my private life, writing new songs gave me stability. Undeterred I continued to play with my tunes and released four more singles in the first half of 2021: «Slave to the Algorithm, «Over My Head», «Luv U» and «Speakeasy». All these were published on my very own label «Some of My Best Friends Are Songs», and indeed they felt like best friends in the lonely everyday life of the pandemic. As a response to the isolation, Grégoires sound design became more and more open and epic the deeper he dove into it. Carried by analogue drum machines and other electronic equipment from the early 1980s, the new songs found its way to the ears and hearts of fans, blogs and radios alike.
Inspired by the positive feedback and the prospect of performing my favorite songs in a one-off concert in 2022 on the occasion of my 50th birthday, it soon became clear that my journey shouldn’t stop with these five songs. The singles «Were We Every So Young?» and «When We Were Friends», the sensitive «Alphabet of Love», the pulsating title track and three other ‘best friends’ now complete the album, which will be released on April 22 under the title «Unglued». An album that came together while everything else came unglued.
Reviewed by Nagamag on March 1, 2022