Velvet Two Stripes have been giving us a taste across 2021 of their upcoming album. Including fiery track ‘Fever’ and the sassy single ‘Two to Tango’, now the blues-rock trio are ready to unveil the full project ‘Sugar Honey Iced Tea’. Listen and buy now here: https://amzn.to/3jfNonI. Featuring nine fuzzing and buzzing beasts of songs, the album shows off the one-of-a-kind sound of the blues-rock female force that is Velvet Two Stripes.

Highlights from the album include the focus track ‘This House is Built on Sand’, a track that shows off the band’s musicality, incorporating a banjo that really sets the haunting tone for the single. ‘Catch 22’ is a slower and more soulful offering but every bit as rich as their most powerful tracks.

Velvet Two Stripes aren’t afraid to get personal and political in their music and often draw from their own experiences which can be heard on the penultimate track ‘FU’. “That track points out the at times awful confrontations, encounters and contradictions that women are experiencing all day every day. It doesn’t matter if you’re a musician on or beside the stage, as a university student, a teacher or a barkeeper.” Velvet Two Stripes add.

In 2020 Velvet Two Stripes’ tour ended two weeks before hitting the studio to record ‘Sugar Honey Iced Tea’. They got invited by the young and adventurous producer Nick Kaufmann into the Relief Studios in Belfaux in the Western part of Switzerland. The first day in the studio is the first day of the Swiss lockdown. “While our friends are confronted with Corona and isolation we have been in our own bubble aside from the pandemic and apocalyptic moods. But our trip to the studio from Zurich to Belfaux was strange. There were no cars on the highways – but we encountered military tanks and trucks.” The governmental decreed isolation underlines the band’s solitude even more. “Because we were in the hinterland, surrounded by cows and dung, completely walled-off from our ordinary lives, our jobs and university, we could focus entirely on the recordings. All this lead to an atmosphere much more intimate. We fiddled about from early mornings till late at night.”

All songs Velvet Two Stripes compose without drums. They have a vague idea of a fitting beat. Rhythms are added in the studio with the drummer Ramon Wehrle. He is a good friend from the music scene of St. Gallen and has become an important part of the band. There is lots of discussing and trying with producer Nick Kaufmann in the studio. It’s an affair on equal footing. “Nick and Ramon did understand us immediately – and they knew how to carve out the strengths and moods of the songs even more.”

Listen and buy ‘Sugar Honey Iced Tea’ now here: https://amzn.to/3jfNonI