Provincial town of Boomtown

So-called concept albums rarely do well. They often suffocate under the ballast of the ambitions of artists who suffer from an inflationary idea of the depth of their insights. But there are exceptions, and this multi-media concept album on the subject of "Neuhausen am Rheinfall" is a particularly fine exception. The project began with the idea for a casual collaboration between two regulars at Schaffhausen's TapTab music club, namely Jürg Odermatt from the guitar band Papst & Abstinenzler and David Moore aka electronica tinkerers Kneubühler and Herr Mehr. The result is a charming testimony to the love-hate relationship with growing up in the provinces in the form of a "package", which includes not only a sound carrier, but also a booklet with music, texts, photos, collages and drawings by artist friends.

As a sophisticated (Schaffhausen German) lyricist, Odermatt is interested in the details in passing, for example the local trolleybus route that starts at one cemetery and ends at another - and that the discotheque where he himself once dared to take his first dance steps was called Terminus. Other pieces are dedicated to an iron bridge or the last man to be hanged on the gallows on the hill, or the Hotel Schweizerhof, where Empress Sissi once stayed. The sounds that accompany these descriptions sound just as laconic and gently ironic as the project title. They consist of cinematic, beat- and bass-driven sound collages, which occasionally also feature a fierce disco groove or a catchy tune (Trolleybus, Chaltfront). The images, which are partly documentary and partly metaphorical, deepen our understanding of the subject matter - and Odermatt's essay Childhood in the backwater is the cherry on top of what is indeed a delicious coupe.