Louis Jucker

About

" A homemade soundtrack to life’s twists "

Louis Jucker feels liberated from any expectations of what folk music should be, always taking the opportunity to stretch out and try some new approaches. A singer, songwriter, producer and event curator, Louis studied architecture in Lausanne before fully committing to music as a practicing “full-time punk musician”, in his own words. Louis started as frontman in the mathcore band Coilguns before his solo career took off, and since then he’s found a more intimate and experimental way to express his artistic restlessness. On the album ‘Suitcase Suite’, released in September 2023 via his own Humus Records, the Swiss artist uses his collection of suitcases, found in attics and in flea markets, filled with homemade effects and electroacoustic instruments, to produce a bizarre and beguiling workshop of bluesy, noise, and lo-fi sounds. Louis presents this record on stage with the Nouvel Ensemble Contemporain (NEC), in a show that’s both exhibition and concert.

There’s a hazy, strange innocence in his work. He’s been playing with weird sounds of recycled instruments, crackling wood, people talking, wind flutter: every sound makes sense to him if it suits a song and its meaning. And that’s partly the reason he has become a very prolific figure on the alternative music scene in Switzerland. Take for example ‘The Black Lake’ (2014) and its haunted tales, taped in just a few days in an isolated cabin in the Canadian woods. Or the ‘Eight Orphan Songs’ (2013), where experimentation and folk sensitivity go hand-in-hand – ‘The Girl That Left You At The Bus Stop’ especially embodies both. As for his 2020 album, ‘Something Went Wrong’, it works as a sonic self-portrait of Louis coming to accept his own aging, depicted perfectly in the home-made video of ‘31 Years Of Waiting For This’. Louis Jucker is a very creative, culturally experimental artist who does a lot, yet still brings it together in a coherent statement.