Some albums you listen to – others you step inside. The same is true of S. Fidelity’s new album I Guess I’ll Never Learn, which programmatically invites the listener into the world of an artist one really ought to get to know. The Swiss-born DJ and producer, who has lived in Berlin for many years, works through collaboration, opening up spaces in his music that one wants to sink into. S. Fidelity, born Tim Wetter, brings together R’n’B, soul and hip-hop, finding a common thread running through all of them: a feeling of hovering intimacy and quiet, sensual melancholy.
»The flowing structure was part of the idea from the start. The three acts of the album are conceived as narratives that weave different moods together«, Wetter explains, adding: »That creates a journey in which the individual songs take on an added meaning when you hear them as a whole.«
Three acts, one state
That is already palpable on S. Fidelity’s earlier releases: he thinks in moods rather than individual tracks – an approach that clearly stems from his practice as a DJ and his affinity for mix logic. Wetter began DJing at the age of 13, and his albums follow the same principle: a finely calibrated flow that invites the listener to drift from mood to genre to state.
I Guess I'll Never Learn
Fidelity Radio Club
A Safe Place To Be Naked
365 P
What stands out is his consistently collaborative approach. I Guess I’ll Never Learn brings together voices including Collard, Dawn Richard, Jerome Thomas and Wandl, reflecting the diverse musical environment in which Wetter moves. »My songs always come into being together with the singers in the room«, he emphasises, before adding: »I try to avoid creating music for a clearly defined use case.« Instead, the music emerges through open exchange.
And that, for him, is precisely where its real strength lies: »We work freely on the songs and then suddenly, in hindsight, you realise that a song is idiosyncratic, stays in your head, or could become a missing piece of the puzzle for a project.« In the end, what emerges is an artist who creates spaces rather than explaining them – and finds his strength in exactly that.
