Draft:Sam Himself

= Sam Himself = Sam Himself (born Samuel Koechlin) is a Swiss-American musician from Basel, Switzerland.

Life
Sam grew up in Basel before moving to New York City at the age of nineteen. The artist currently splits his time between Brooklyn, NY, and Basel, Switzerland. To support his musical career, Sam used to hold a variety of jobs as bartender, songwriter or comedy writer.

Career
Shortly after beginning his collaboration with New York producer Daniel Schlett (Iggy Pop; The War on Drugs), Sam released his first EP as Sam Himself in 2017, which was called Songs in D. This was followed by the EPs Nobody (2018) and Slow Drugs (2020) , which were recorded together with drummer Parker Kindred (Jeff Buckley; Elliott Smith) and bassist Josh Werner (Ghostface Killah; Lee 'Scratch' Perry). Slow Drugs also marked the beginning of Sam Himself's collaboration with mastering engineer Greg Calbi (Bruce Springsteen; David Bowie). In 2021, he released his first studio album Power Ballads, which reached number 36 in the official Swiss charts. This was followed less than two years later by his second studio album, Never Let Me Go, which reached number 23, for the first time with contributions from New York drummer Chris Egan (Blood Orange; Solange).

In April and October 2022, Sam Himself presented orchestral versions of a total of eight original compositions for the first time with the Basel Symphony Orchestra, which the artist arranged for the orchestra together with Emmy award-winner Mark Bächle and composer and arranger Michael Künstle.

Sam Himself's single La Paz has been part of the soundtrack to the Sex And The City follow-up series And Just Like That (S2E02) since June 2023. The first broadcast of the relevant episode on the US television network HBO took place on June 22, 2023.

Sam Himself describes his musical style as "Fondue Western", a genre creation by his producer Schlett in allusion to the shared admiration of Italian composer and Spaghetti Western founder Ennio Morricone, certain stylistic characteristics of Sam Himself's preferred guitar sound and the artist's Swiss-American dual identity.