Photo by Lukas Gut in December 2020 @ Labüsch Bar, Winterthur

Viaticum

The four members of Viaticum, old friends since early youth, while meanwhile living wildly spread across Switzerland create soundscapes which cannot be categorized. They call their music Kosmikrock- deeply rooted in psychedelic Krautrock of the 1970s crossed with Spacerock and other genres with loud, playful and intense guitar riffs.

Biography

The history of Viaticum started 2005 in an old vaulted cellar where Pascal and Michi started to play jam sessions as a guitar duo. Later Urs, the bass player, joined the guitarists and together they rocked the cellar night after night. More and more musicians joined the sessions which lead to wild musical experiments including keyboard, organ and percussion. Over the time song structures started growing out of those wild and vibrant jam sessions and the band name was aspirated into the sticky cellar air: Viaticum was born. For the young musicians their music embodied the supplies for the path towards the beyond, like the viaticum itself. The first demo songs were followed by some changes in the line-up and Bastian joined as new drummer. With this line-up 2011 the EP TRIP ME TENDER was released under Acoustic Desaster Records. On this record Viaticum defined their own style and built their overall Sound. The band called the young genre Kosmikrock, which was described by STONEROBIXX as «interesting mix of space, psychedelic, kraut, prog, & psychedelic rock». 2014 the self-released album KOSMIKROCK was born. Compared to the more basic sound of TRIP ME TENDER, the music on KOSMIKROCK became deeper: The songs got wider and more complex. With the new record, Viaticum toured for the first time. After that, the band members had a lot of private stuff to handle and after almost ten years, drummer Bastian left the band. New drummer Dave was a worthy successor. His reduced drumming should shape the new album SOLAR TRANSIENT and Viaticum’s future. Viaticum’s sound became again more down-to-earth without loosing the psychedelic influence. It was a long rocky road until the band found itself again and could create new ideas and songs out of long spacy jams. After the recordings of the new album, Dave left Viaticum and gave the sticks to Jöni, an old friend of the band. Since 2019 he contributes his fresh rhythms to Viaticum’s sound. The climax of this moved episode in the band’s recent history is called SOLAR TRANSIENT, their new album – fresh off the press!

Current line-up:

Michael Locher (guitar), Urs Gut (vocals, bass), Pascal Gilgen (guitarspacenoise, clarinet, Korg Volca FM and vocals), Jonas (drums).

Address

The yelling light
c/o Christian Poffet
Oberseenerstrasse 79
CH-8405 Winterthur
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