Šuma Čovjek – new album «Ringišpil» release 25.10.2024
Šuma Čovjek will release their third studio album «Ringišpil» on October 25th, 2025 and announces an album release tour through the Swiss club scene!
«Ringišpil» means carousel in Croatian/Bosnian/Serbian and is about the interplay that holds us together. A constant turn forward, everything is in motion, in constant transformation and thus transience and rebirth. What we have in common only survives in interaction: on stage, between band and audience, and in our society. The title song is reminiscent of the cheerful, over-the-top and yet dreamy music from well-known Balkan films. The Serbo-Croatian refrain is supported by an anthemic melody line with strings and winds. In addition, there is the energetic French chanting, accompanied by stomping polka beats.
Šuma Čovjek is the result of a transcultural Swiss-Bosnian-Algerian cooperation. With heartfelt lyrics in varied arrangements and brass beats, their live concerts turn into fantastic moments, the interaction with the audience being at the heart of every show.
The 10 songs on the new album are an eccentric mixture of melancholic ballads, rhythmic Balkan pop-rock pieces, oriental beats and furious brass sounds. Lyrically, the band takes up social issues again in the new album, but also processes personal experiences and life questions. With acrobatic air jumps between French, Croatian and Arabic and German, stories are told in the native languages of the two lead singers Ivica Petrušić and Hafid Derbal. The songs function as duets or dialogues between the two singers, which are developed with pianist and producer Manuel Wülser in a musical and textual dialogue.
The song «Comme un poisson dans l’eau» tries to capture the moment of happiness of being able to be together with people of the heart. A moment of lightness, clarity and childlike naivety. «Like a fish in water» you surrender to the sweet pull of happiness and let yourself drift through life. But the song also critically questions the portrayal of these intimate moments on social media. Can shared happiness work virtually?
Current social issues are addressed in the song «Responsable», which was created in collaboration with the Basel rapper La Nefera. The song is an orchestral hip-hop opera that combines elements of techno/deep house with brass sounds. In terms of content, it is about the question of responsibility for the past and future. How do we create a debate where the voices of reason and peace are heard in all this noise of division and conflict?
At «Winek?», an Arabic electro-disco anthem, packs an epic global political but also everyday message. Winek? means «Where are you?» in Arabic and is nothing less than the question of hope, truth, humanity. It is a view of a world that seems to have come apart at the seams. Where are you humanity? Where are you love? Where are you goodness?, the song asks.
In the ballad «Point d’ancrage», the musicians with Swiss-Algerian-Bosnian roots take up the theme of feeling home. It is a dedication to Switzerland and all the people who have become part of their everyday lives. The song is full of nostalgic melancholy, which is supported by the orchestral instrumentation of winds, strings and piano. «Point d’ancrage» (the anchor point) is in a way the continuation of the song «Ničija Zemlja» from the album «No Man’s Land» (2018), this time from the point of view of the children and not the parents.
Review
Šuma Čovjek released their first album «No Man’s Land» in 2018. The accompanying single «Bouge ton cœur» was one of the most played songs on SRF3 in the same year. The second studio album «Fata Morgana» followed in 2022. Previous highlights of her concert tours have been performances at the Montreux Jazz Festival, Open Air St. Gallen, Zermatt Unplugged, Rock oz’Arènes, Heitere Open Air and many more.
