In May 1994 in The Wire, journalist Simon Reynolds coined the term post-rock, defining it as follows: “Post-rock means using rock instrumentation for non-rock purposes, using guitars as facilitators of timbres and textures rather than riffs and power chords.” This renovation of traditional instrumentation (guitar, bass, drums) towards new, different possibilities of expression is still fully felt today. At the very end of the 20th century, this taste for novelty gave rise to many vocations – in Lausanne too, as was the case with Honey for Petzi.
The trio, made up of Sami Benhadj (guitar and vocals), Philippe Oberson (bass) and Christian Pahud (drums, who was awarded a Swiss Music Prize in 2015 by the Swiss Federal Office of Culture), adopts the canons of post-rock aesthetics while adding its own personal touch, which might be summarised as a constellation of combinations, or hybridisations: Honey for Petzi’s music is at the same time tightly-fitted, forthright and generous in the intensity of the movement that builds it, and features an alternation of finely crafted moments and surges of power.