THE BIANCA STORY – Digger
01. Crescendo
02. Glück Macht Einsam
03. Guns And Kisses
04. Does Mani Matter
05. Neon Sand
06. No Fire Without A Flame
07. Kick Back
08. You Sir
09. Universe
10. Gilgamesh Must Die! ( Pt 1 )
11. Dear Dead July
12. B/W
One ought to think that the Swiss love their Matterhorn. But if this huge, cold and dangerous mountain stands for the music industry and is made of ruthless marketing strategies, unfair hierarchies, capitalism and concepts of payment which are often intransparent it is understandable why the Basel-born band THE BIANCA STORY wants to “break a hole into the hardened rock”. The quintet used the Matterhorn as a symbol for this industry whose diktat they didn’t want to follow anymore. They decided to tunnel it through crowdfunding and asked their fans “Are you diggers?”. In fact their fans turned out to be real glowing diggers and contributed the 90.000 euros that were necessary to produce the bands new album Digger. Now it is “set free” and can be downloaded from the bands website for free.
It’s the third album of the THE BIANCA STORY and it contains twelve catchy songs of pure pop character with a touch of groovy sound gimmickry. The combination of the clean, melodic baritone of Elia Rediger and the teasing, fairylike voice of Anna Waibel, accompanied by impulsive drums, a straight bassline and energetic synth melodies brings ARCADE FIRE to mind but with a less opulent and hymnic sound.
Another reference could be their compatriots BONAPARTE, even if THE BIANCA STORY is far from being so consistently nuts. Maybe it would help to even raise their recognition value if the band would choose one or the other direction. There are definitely songs which give a foretaste of where the way could be heading. For instance the rhythmic Dear Dead July and the bouncing Does Mani Matter. The latter is featured by the gloomy voice of Dieter Meier, who is a Swiss conceptual artist and singer of the electropop duo YELLO. The music fits perfectly in small artistic locations and a good mood is bound to occur – especially for girls in skimpy dresses and boys with a propensity for staginess. The first track Crescendo stands for the whole program of the album. Most of the songs start quiet and swell in one way or the other.
THE BIANCA STORY had to dig through their mountain to reach the “land where the music is free” and the songs render this effort audible. They are definitely able to break some rocks. The start of Kick Back sounds like the toiling workers and the text says “We will cut through this mountain” and “We miners take it all”. You Sir is a self-reflexive swansong of the entertainment industry as well and it shapes the style of the band with cheerful keyboard and xylophone sounds. Digger is an album which arouses the more interest the more often you listen to it and whose danceable tracks create an appetite for more. Fortunately the Swiss has some more mountains to tunnel through.