In 2010, Sarah-Maria Burgin and theater composer/guitarist, Sandro Corbat formed Scratches, a four-piece band from Basel Switzerland. The band includes bassist Marco Nenninger and drummer Jonas Pina. Sara-Maria’s and Sandro’s theatrical experiences help them create strong musical and visual moods. Their new single and music video Beautiful is dark, strange and mesmerizing. The song and video are reminiscent of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Orpheus was deeply in love with his beautiful wife Eurydice. Then, one day Eurydice was bitten by a poisonous snake and dies. In order to bring back his wife, Orpheus traveled to the underworld. The music video exudes the same sense of deep love and inconsolable lost.
The lyrics of the song will take you from happy times on the beach to death and sorrow. The pace, tempo, and style of the song reminded me of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, with additional pain that was much more raw and real. The solo guitar riff in the middle of the song was like a mourner crying at a funeral, ending in an almost sob of relief. The music video is like a tragic dream that comes to you in a fever. In this dream, you are haunted by images of a dead lover, sadness and loss fill your soul and yet you can’t wake up. In the video, images of the lovers happy in bed alternate with the young man blood-covered and dying. It feels like an intimate look into youth, love, lost and bitterness. Overall, the music video is dramatic and keeps you wanting to know more. In the end, you will feel strong deep emotions and isn’t that what music is all about?
Direction: Friedrich Theodor Werner
Production/camera: Marco Bauer
Purchase on itunes
Before Beyond Album Release
This is what lead singer Sarah-Maria Burgin had to say about their music:
“A lot of our songs carry an internal need, a silent cry from the soul about hurting each other in this society, the loss of something, the longing for something, something which has to find the way out. The normal everyday life is on the surface, doesn’t go deep, but there is so much beneath, a lot of sad things happen between the lines and between humans, which is worth to find an expression for. So I would say our music tries to capture these feelings which are so difficult to express, to explain and define in words. The combination between music and lyrics is sometimes more able to transport feelings, which normally are so difficult to talk about. The music gives a lightness a contrast, so that its easier to digest the hard stuff of the lyrics.”
Scratches plan to release their new album Before Beyond on Czar of Revelations, in Switzerland on January 21st, 2017. And then worldwide on February 10th, 2017. Scratches new album explores the themes of a world upside down, a world in transition, a world on the verge of change, along with the uncertainty that comes with that. Be sure to give it a listen!
Image credits: Nicholas Winter
Image credits: Jo Jankowski
