Tender Ender Releases Second Album ‘Red Kites’
Swiss songwriter Thomas Schmidiger has released ‘Red Kites’, his second album as Tender Ender, less than a year after ‘Black Swan’.
The nine songs were actually written and recorded between 2022 and 2024 in Gysenstein, Switzerland. Much of the music is built around an old home organ and its built-in rhythm machine, with Schmidiger also playing piano, harmonium, vibraphone and pedal steel. Sabine Ruch joins him on vocals. The idea was to keep things simple, almost as though the songs were being played in somebody’s living room.
We’ve already featured three songs from the album: ‘Darkness’ in August, ‘Woke Up with a Knife’ in September and ‘Choice’ in October. ‘Darkness’ features a lovely duet with Ruch, while ‘Choice’ is a much more stripped-back piano song.
Schmidiger worked on the album with Manuel Egger, who also mixed it at Suburban Sound in Winterthur. Greg Calbi and Steve Fallone handled the mastering.
We spoke with Schmidiger last December about ‘Black Swan’ and his songwriting. He’ll be celebrating the release of ‘Red Kites’ with a concert at Bad Bonn in Düdingen on November 14.
‘Red Kites’ is out now on vinyl and digitally.
Photo: Thomas Schmidiger
Tender Ender Website / Bandcamp
