A new compilation explores the far reaches of the post-punk, experimental and electronic landscape in Switzerland on Senza Decoro: Liebe & Anarchia in Switzerland 1980–1990. Curated by producer / DJ Mehmet Aslan.
During the mid-‘70s, Switzerland had embraced punk within its cities, informing the subsequent post-punk era of the 1980s as music splintered into freeform musical strands across the whole of the country. It was to become one of the most innovative periods in Switzerland’s modern day music history.
“It was like a wild laboratory for all forms of new and strange sounds, rackets and compositional experiments,” explains writer Lurker Grand, “accompanied and inspired by cuttingedge developments in electronic musical instruments. A broad, innovative scene developed and the four different language and cultural regions of Switzerland were no longer perceived to be an obstacle. There was a curiosity for the foreign and the strange. Conflicts for freedom and free spaces took place and this was reflected in the music.”
It was unfiltered creativity and this free, non-commercial approach is a common denominator for the songs on this compilation. Many artists operated in their own universe; hardly any of the acts on this album actually met each other at the time. Only Liliput from Zürich achieved notable fame, building on the success of their previous incarnation as Kleenex.