„I was always thinking about the Swiss Music Awards,
and I’m highly against it.”

If you’re a frequent visitor on our site, I’m sure that you know Reverend Beat-Man and his record label, Voodoo Rhythm Records. He has been nominated for the Swiss Music Prize, which will be awarded for the first time on 19 September. Among the nominates also are the folk-punk band Mama Rosin, and the avant-garde music group Ensemble Phoenix Basel, in which you can find Alex Buess, who is also member of the experimental space rock trio MIR.

„My biggest idol has always been Batman, so everyone just called me Beat-Man.
Now my name is just Beat-Man, even in my passport.”

Born Beat Zeller in 1967 near Berne, Reverend Beat-Man has become a firm fixture on the music scene. He first tried his hand as a singer and musician at the age of 13 before forming his band The Monsters in 1986 and setting up his own record label Voodoo Rhythm Records in 1992. With The Monsters, Zeller created an entirely new genre that fuses psychobilly with garage punk and went on to showcase it with more than a thousand concerts in South America, Japan, Australia, the US and the rest of the world. He attained cult status thanks in no small part to this work with Voodoo Rhythm Records, which has gained him a reputation as a resolute champion of innovative and experimental artists. In Switzerland, his achievements were honoured with the Canton of Berne Special Recognition Award in 2007.

A short film has been made about Beat-Man on the occasion of his nomination

„We are all mountain people with weird, hard, heavy and strange ideas.”

„to be on stage with Howlin’ Wolf once
that would have been the greatest for me.”

„The Rolling Stones today (…) just shit, Mick Jagger and such, boring as hell.”