Miscellaneous Musician and father: the new album "Stranger" by Andrea Bignasca

The rock singer, guitarist and songwriter Andrea Bignasca has taken three years to release his new studio album "Stranger". In the meantime, he has become a father. This experience is a recurring theme throughout the new album.

Andrea Bignasca has been a father for two years. After the birth of his daughter Cecilia, he took a break from music, "a little forced, but gladly taken", he told the Keystone-SDA news agency in an interview. Now his new album "Stranger" is being released. His fatherhood runs like a thread through the album, starting with the title track.

The song "Stranger" is also representative of the album. "It's definitely one of my favorite songs to play live." He sees the song as a "new peak of intensity" after "Trouble" on his first album "Gone".

Bignasca began his career as a solo musician in 2013. His first studio album "Gone" was released in 2015 and since then he has performed around 200 times in Switzerland, including at the Montreux Jazz Festival, the Gurten Festival and Zermatt Unplugged. In 2018, he also appeared on stage in Germany for the first time. "Stranger" is his fourth album.

Strangers, but connected in love

"Basically, we are all strangers to each other," he explains the title. "My daughter, who I didn't know, myself in the unfamiliar situation of being a father, and the same goes for my partner, as well as for these songs, which are new." But what connects everything is love."

As a musician, he was initially driven by a "hunger for music", as he put it. But circumstances have changed. "I used to be able to afford to wait for songs. Now I have to go in search of them a little more." He uses the image of a fisherman fishing for songs who can no longer afford to take a nap.

"I've tried to remember that initial hunger and the courage it took to throw myself into my career." He is "a bit more disillusioned" - also a theme on the new album. "I used to wake up in the morning for music. That's shifted a bit because there's one more mouth to feed" - from the former passion to necessity, the job. Nevertheless, he wants to be a father to his daughter who shows her that "he does what he loves with passion and respect." The flip side of this coin is his life on tour. Because it takes him away from his daughter. That's why he made it a rule never to be away for more than two weeks at a time.

This also applies to his upcoming tour, which he starts at the end of October in Viechtach in Lower Bavaria. "That's something of a zero date" said Bignasca. He is performing there in the old hospital, "a place that is very close to my heart." Bignasca has already been there three times, including with his father. Until February 1, he will be touring mainly through German-speaking Switzerland, with a performance in Lugano and a detour to the Netherlands.

Song in Italian for his daughter

"Stranger" comprises eleven songs, one of which is in Italian: "Tutto tuo" with a cello accompaniment. It is dedicated to his daughter. "In this song, I talk about the hunger that led me to make a living from music and about the initial fears and joys that are very similar to those of being a father."

Bignasca was born near Lugano in Ticino in 1988 and also grew up there, in an environment where Italian and German were spoken. Now he says: "I've wanted to make a song in Italian for a long time." He has lived in Lisbon for four years.

"Stranger" sounds less rough than the previous albums, it is more elaborately arranged, with more instruments. This is exemplified by the opener "A song". Bignasca wanted to "move away a little from what a band plays naturally in a room. The keyboards and drums in particular are a little reminiscent of the 1980s. More mature perhaps, I also wanted to signal a change in sound."

What Bignasca has not changed, however, is how he conceived the album as an ensemble. "The songs always come from me in clusters." He wrote the music first, then the lyrics. He recorded in Seregno, in northern Italy, in Matteo Magni's Magnitude Studio. This is his sound engineer at concerts, and he already worked with him on his penultimate album "Keep me from drowning" (2021).