In 1986 it all began near Cologne (Germany) in a little town called Kerpen Sindorf. For me, it was clear that it would be a long journey, and it still is. Now 33 years later and after 33 released albums, it is still something special and every day something new to create music.
Right now, we just released the album “Laughter filled with pain” – eight acoustic songs with some electronic elements here and there. It is a very personal album reduced to the essentials.
Listen to the album while reading the text.
The Beginnings
SWEET WILLIAM exists since 1986 and has been founded by me, Oliver Heuer. In 1989 we recorded our first album “These Monologues,” which has been first released on vinyl on Big Noise Rec. in 1990. Because of its good sales, other record companies got interested in Sweet William, and in 1991 we signed a contract with Hyperium/Rough Trade. The following albums, “These Monologues”, “Kind Of Strangest Dream,” and “DevelopmentThrough The Years” were all released in that period.
We did also tour Europe a lot in those days. In 1994, we ended a tour at the legendary Marquee Club in London. The album “Show, ” released in 1988 on Dion Fortune Rec., reached position 14 in the German Alternative Charts and stayed there for four whole weeks.
20th Anniversary
After some years marked by line up changes, the band found a new drummer in 2001 and started to record several albums and EP’s, which we released now on our own label. In 2010, we released the album “Brighter Than The Sun” on the French label d-monic and received excellent press reviews, and world-wide good sales followed.
In 2012, as a 20th-year anniversary CD, limited to 444 copies only, the French label Infrastition rereleased our album “Kind Of Strangest Dream 2012”. In May 2013 the new release “Ocean,”
a concept album with 74 minutes of music is again released by d-monic, as also in 2015 the album “Live on the French Riviera 1995.” At that time, we’ve been asked to play an acoustic concert in Paris. The reactions were overwhelming, and we started to work on new acoustic songs, and we played some more acoustic shows at the end of the year.
30th Anniversary
For 2016, the year of our 30th anniversary, some special releases were planned. The first release has been the book
“1986 – 2016,” followed by the three albums “Organic Shades,” “Rarities 5,” and the CD Box “Rarities 1986 – 2016”. Besides that, the final recordings and mixdowns for the new album “TIME” were made, and the record is released in November of the same year.
In 2017, we started to record some of the tracks from the very beginning of the band, tracks from between 1986 and 1988 that were never recorded before in a studio. The result is released on “THE EARLY DAYS 1986 – 1988”. At that time, we also started to record several new acoustic songs, which are released on the album “Laughter Filled With Pain” a few months ago on Datakill Records.
And Still Going
It is almost November 2019 now, and I am working on several new songs at the moment – again enough material for maybe 2 or 3 albums. I think the next SWEET WILLIAM album could be out in May 2020. Besides that, I am recording songs right now that could be just instrumental tracks – most of them just recorded with synthesizers – kind of experimental stuff, but to be honest, I don`t know – maybe it will all change again in the next month – Who knows, not me.
Sweet William
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