Dagobert - Die Tour mit Band

Dagobert, the melancholy crooner from the Swiss mountains, is back with a new album. More than a decade ago, Lukas Jäger, as he is known by his real name, was drawn to the hustle and bustle of the metropolis of Berlin to find happiness. Real life got in his way, with all the trials and tribulations of love, which have since become the inexhaustible source of his creativity. Dagobert's music dares to combine 80s revival pop music with German-Swiss pop music, he himself tends to make grand gestures and most of his songs are about love and longing. The Swiss singer presents these themes in a similarly theatrical way and with a captivatingly dry sense of humor. In his videos, Dagobert creates his very own artistic figure somewhere between David Bowie, Falco and a character from a poem by Joseph von Eichendorff. On his previous albums, he has already worked with such highly diverse people as Mille Petrozza (KREATOR), Konstantin Gropper (GET WELL SOON), Blixa Bargeld and Casper, providing impressive proof that stylistic boundaries are smoke and mirrors for him.

On his eighth studio album "Rama Kalala", which he will also be presenting live on stage with his band to mark the release, the Swiss pop innovator focuses on his core competence: the love song. And there is a lot of love on "Rama Kalala", so much so that you want to blush from time to time at all the honest feelings that touch you in these 34 minutes like a warm embrace. The collaboration with Swiss jazz legend Christoph Gallio, whose saxophone playing adds a lilting lightness even to sad lyrics, and producer Konrad Bechter, who stages Dagobert's songs in such an incredibly intimate and reduced way, give the work an enchanting aura. The influence of Alice Coltrane's Hindu late work also shines through, which is always present in the form of spherical synths, mantra-like choirs and the reduction of rhythm elements to tambourine and hand claps, which incidentally also explains the album title.

Overall, "Rama Kalala" has a pleasant lo-fi indie sound that beautifully conveys the emotionality of Dagobert's lyrics. Dagobert dedicates a particularly impressive love song to his mother, who is suffering from dementia, and even in this situation finds words that act like a plaster for the soul: "You have now overcome reason / And no longer need language / You have found love / Your river now flows into the sea".