Wrong Maps by Ja Ja Dickicht

After the two diverging single releases „Lights Out“ and „All This Smoke“ Bern-based outfit Ja Ja Dickicht doubtlessly intend to keep surprising their audience with the upcoming 5-track-EP „Wrong Maps“, which is an astounding survey on how to make Avant-Pop sound as accessible as it is complex and idiosyncratic.


„Our every day maps for navigation through the social world, through our conscious or unconscious minds, through the thicket of the internet are inaccurate, at times even corrupted“, is the notion behind the EP-Titel. While this is poetically mirrored in the dreamy vocals of the closing track, it also infuses the rest of the release as a musical subtext, manifesting itself in the voice, the lyrics and the rhythmic layer, unfolding a musical universe of contradiction. The music is almost never just floaty or restless; determined or insecure; Pop or the opposite of Pop. It is both at the same time.

„What you can expect from this release are five carefully orchestrated tracks that are a true and personal interpretation of how innovative Pop music can sound like,“ says Pascal Schärli, the composer and multi-instrumentalist behind the project, who played, programmed and recorded most of the instruments himself. „ At the center of every composition is always the songwriting, but this is just where the work begins...“

And indeed, while listening, one can literally picture how from this inner foundation a dense and surprising construction of atmospheric guitars, synths, noises and challenging rhythmical compositions is layered and folded into each other. „I try to look at every song as a growing individual who has its own DNA and therefore develops very specific needs about how it has to be treated in the production process.“ Ja Ja Dickicht draw their own maps, trying to find a way to make it work.