corpus absens is a project by Swiss musician Tom von Bueren. Born in 1970, he is no longer part of any emerging scene, but firmly rooted in the solid middle ground. As a teenager, he was already a devoted music fan with a broad and eclectic taste. In his early school years, he was initially forced to play the recorder, but soon abandoned it and, out of spite, switched to the violin—not as a strategic choice, but simply because he did not know anyone who played it. Which later proved to be a pure illusion. He continued instrumental lessons through secondary school, without ever being remembered as a particularly diligent practiser.
At the age of 14, the guitar entered the picture—and with it, a turning point. The Beatles, Krokus, Mike Oldfield, and Judas Priest accompanied his first steps. Suddenly, the unremarkable student became a committed one. He reproduced Oldfield’s solos, practised the guitar riffs of Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing on Sad Wings of Destiny, and invested the wages from a summer job with the municipal waste collection service in a 4-track cassette recorder. At 17, he recorded his first demo tape as a solo musician, featuring original songs and numerous instrumentals; a second followed two years later.
There were no live performances based on these recordings. Nevertheless, between the age of 17 and today, Tom has played in bands on and off—sometimes with original material, sometimes with cover versions. Most of these projects were shared with close friends from the wider circle of the Nidwalden music scene.
Earning money with music was never a realistic prospect—or rather, the opportunity simply never arose. So he learned a profession, pursued further education, and changed careers more than once. Music, however, remained a constant and active companion. Guitar, bass, keyboards, and drums repeatedly found new configurations in the songs stored on his hard drive. At 47, after considerable inner resistance, he finally decided to take singing lessons. He has never been satisfied with his voice—and still isn’t. To prevent the songs from continuing to decay digitally, he released his first official publication, Victim, on streaming platforms in 2019. As with many niche projects, success was modest. What remained was the good feeling of having finished something.
Songwriting continued—alongside a demanding job and family life. New releases are planned for 2026.
The name corpus absens emerged from the desire to preserve at least a fragment of anonymity—or to hide behind a pseudonym that literally means “without a body.” The underlying idea was that the music should stand on its own, without a face, without a pose, without a biography that must inevitably be heard along with it. A conceptual retreat behind the sounds, a deliberate act of invisibility.
Of course, this too is an illusion. In a time when even algorithms demand personality, every release remains inevitably tied to its creator. corpus absens is therefore less a condition than an attitude: an attempt to reduce presence without disappearing—and to focus on what remains when the body is supposedly absent.
