My Five Favourite Albums - SWISS PLEASURE
- Flex Admin
- Feb 5
- 3 min read
Swiss Pleasure’s music thrives on contrasts—urgency and dreamlike haze, warmth and unease, the deeply personal and the universally resonant...
Their latest single ‘2009’ encapsulates this tension perfectly, pairing jagged indie rock textures with an undercurrent of melancholic introspection. With its nervy rhythms and layered, expressive vocals, the track explores the defensive mechanisms we build to protect ourselves from exclusion, all while maintaining the trio’s signature balance between raw emotion and meticulous craftsmanship.
The accompanying music video builds on this theme with striking visuals that turn constraint into creative advantage. Directed by Mayar Attia, the film presents an isolated protagonist hosting a tea party for imaginary guests—intimate and surreal in its execution. The warm, inviting interior scenes of the verses give way to stark, outdoor landscapes during the chorus, where reality presses in with an unshakable weight. As with their music, Swiss Pleasure’s approach to visual storytelling is both resourceful and deeply considered, reinforcing their place as one of the most compelling acts to emerge from Berlin’s underground scene.
With their latest EP Heliotropia establishing them as a force in indie music, the trio’s influences—spanning dream pop, post-punk, and jazz—shine through in unexpected ways. Their sound is a tapestry woven from diverse inspirations, making their artistic DNA as rich as their compositions. To understand Swiss Pleasure’s unique approach, we sat down with them to discuss the albums that shaped their craft—the records that continue to inform their songwriting, their vision, and their ever-evolving sound.
From Agathe:
Arooj Aftab - 'Vulture Prince'
She's a pakistani singer and composer. I don't have words to describe how beautiful this record is, I am humbled and overwhelmed by her singing and her arrangements. In those horrible times I feel like she is lamenting for us all.
Space 1.8 - 'Nala Sinephro'
She's Belgian-Caribbean. It's an album that is absolutely perfect at what it does: ambient spiritual jazz. I had the chance to see her live with some of the best musicians from the UK jazz scene, she was stunning. This the kind of record that I will still be listening to on my deathbed.
From Alea:
Joe Henderson - 'Inner Urge'
Plenty already written about this album. One of my favourite saxophonists in top form with an amazing band playing some beautiful and evocative tunes. I always find something new when I come back to it and the music carries so much emotional depth and variety. The way Joe Henderson weaves his lines is endlessly inspiring and captivating, but also the interplay between the group and the way they respond to each other… it all feels so perfect.
From Claire:
Black Country - 'Ants From Up There'
An album that's been back on rotation for me over the last few months is "Ants From Up There" from Black Country, New Road. An all time fave for me because not only does it have, I think, some of the best songs ever written ("The Place Where he Inserted The Blade" always gets me) but also because it's at the crossroad of the sound of many other favorite artists of mine, blending many different genres together (which is also a core component of Swiss Pleasure's sound) and it feels very raw emotionally. Not that surprising when you know it was written and recorded right before former lead singer and guitarist Isaac Wood decided to leave the band, for mental health reasons.
John Grant - 'Queen of Denmark'
...such a masterpiece, I don't even know where to begin. I'll just say it's one of these very few albums for which I remember vividly exactly where I was and what I was doing the first time I heard it. It's a redemption album, both deeply sad and optimistic at the same time. And I can't get enough of this modern arrangement take on old 70's sounds.