Cargo Records

Spielt Noise Boys

Stephan Eicher is the second-born of 3 children in his family. Mr. Eicher tortured homemade sequencers and rhythm machines, and assaulted reel-to-reel tape recorders, as young Stephan watched. Stephan quickly developed his musical curiosity particularly with his little brother Martin.

In 1972, when Lou Reed released his Transformer album, the Eicher boys' lives were turned upside-down. For Stephan (13), it was a revelation. Stephan then convinced his dad to buy him an electric guitar.. A difficult adolescence followed. Stephan left home at 16. Once at the school, he got into video and decided to become a director. He also organized Dada happenings and concerts, together with a small group of friends who called themselves the NOISE BOYS.

To maximize the cacophony, they listened to Tristan and Isolde on headphones while trying to play other music, with the objective of literally driving away the audience. As all artists need to make a living, Stephan would spend his weekends in Bern, where he had picked up a casual job as a waiter at Spex Club, the local punk hangout. On September 16, 1980, with STARTER (a proto-electro group) on stage, the police arrived, busted the place and carted everyone off. Stephan, who had somehow escaped the roundup, seized the opportunity to snatch STARTER's equipment, which had been left behind.

With this equipment, he tried reproducing some NOISE BOYS songs, according to his frenzied imagination, and recorded them on a dictaphone (yes, a dictaphone, maybe now you understand why these tracks sound so cheap?). He gave the cassette of that improvised session the ironic title STEPHAN EICHER SPIELT NOISE BOYS. That cassette contains 7 songs, which are reissued on this record. Stephan went to Urs Steiger of OFF COURSE Records. Urs instantly latched onto the recording and offered to put out a 45. They resigned themselves to sacrificing 2 tracks from the cassette, "Hungriges Afrika" and "One Second". 750 copies of the 45 came out in December 1980. Urs, in his wisdom, sent a promo copy to François Mürner, the "Swiss John Peel" at SOUNDS, the Swiss alternative radio station, who was crazy about the record and started playing it on the air.

Stephan was astonished to discover that his record was selling well, and that his music could attract a wide audience. In parallel, Stephan's little brother Martin, who had also evolved in the punk milieu, returned to singing and playing guitar in the group GRAUZONE.. Urs Steiger of OFF COURSE, was working on his SWISS WAVE THE ALBUM compilation project, asked GRAUZONE to provide a track, sharing the disc with Liliput, Jack and the Rippers, the Sick and Ladyshave . Martin asked his brother to take charge of the recording sessions. Under Stephan's artistic guidance, 2 tracks came out, "Raum" and "Eisbär". The compilation SWISS WAVE THE ALBUM started off slow in sales, but picked up speed thanks to the song "Eisbär", which became an incredible success with 600,000 singles sold.

In 1983, GRAUZONE (whose signing by EMI turned out to be a mistake), was already on its last legs, and Stephan lent his gentle assistance to their turn toward mass-market music with the "Les Chansons bleues" album, but that's another whole story…