Manes by Ben Bertrand, releases 16 March 2020
There is an endless abundance of variations that the clarinet can use in changing the colour of a single note. As a privileged listener - and - experiencer, Ben Bertrand through his favourite instrument shared the musical blueprints with me, which resulted in this album. His music has become a vivid part of my almost daily thoughts - allowing what I hear to clash and sing with the patterns and rhythms already established in my mind. A voluntary trip, an absorbing experience in our Brussels vibrant cultural life. With his instrument and countless machines, Ben creates a web of sounds that are hard to pin down but easy to absorb as a whole. Ben Bertrand happened to me. His music, full of beauty, is good to listen to and pleasant to follow. A sense and perception of continued growth too illuminated and overwhelming to resist. While I sense when a new composition is coming, Ben was able in our daily conversations, to progressively untangle a musical mystery and layout the puzzle of a new creation. Listening to his music is like sitting at the sea, watching a slow motion of our crazy life sailing by. You, as a listener, with this record stepped in an early stage of his career, with hardly any involvement of other people, composition wise. Besides composing alone, there have been countless hours when Ben Bertrand worked and interacted with Christophe Albertijn for the recordings. There is also the essence of our regular exchanges and the visions we knit. These are in my opinion just the starting points of plural interactions and musical endeavours to be. It is a matter of his artistic trust and let go, while Ben creates his own language, package and macrocosm. The excellence of Ben Bertrand's music lays in its involving and easily accessible nature, regardless of your personal or musical past experience. Ben Bertrand is all before you for you to dig, and nobody is asking you to file him away under any category.
Tommy for Stroom & les albums claus

At 123 minutes and—in its physical form—three CDs long, Éons, the new album from Belgium’s Neptunian Maximalism, is unquestionably a massive work. Even so, the size and scale of the project—formed in 2018 by multi-instrumentalist Guillaume Cazalet and saxophonist Jean-Jacques Duerinckx—never feels unnecessary or extravagant as this aptly named collective uses the healthy runtime to explore heavy psych, tribal rhythms, free-jazz freakouts, meditative drone and the vast, shadowy spaces in between. Arriving in the wake of a four-song EP and a largely improvised live album that hinted at Neptunian Maximalism’s ambition, Éons fully delivers on those early promises. The sonic epic not only gives the band plenty of room to roam, but also follows a conceptual framework that imagines the end of Earth’s human-dominated anthropocene era and the onset of a “probocene” era, in which the planet is ruled by superior, intelligent elephants.
Accordingly, there are times when Éons roars like a herd of shaggy, stampeding beasts. But there are also sections of the album that evoke a fire-lit religious ritual (complete with chanting and ceremonial drums), and others that sound like Ascension-era John Coltrane enveloped in a bewitching swirl of black magick. The clanging lurch of “Lamasthu” brings to mind drone-metal masters Sunn O))); one track later, “Ptah Sokar Osiris” offers up a healthy dose of freewheeling, horn-charged groove that’s more aligned with a globally inspired band like Goat than with most drone music. It’s that dichotomy that makes Neptunian Maximalism so interesting: one minute, they’re a hulking ship scraping its metal sides on the way out of the harbor, and the next, they’re the weird interstellar dance party happening down in the hull. Perhaps calling them the Sunn Ra A)))rkestra is a little too on the nose.
Belgium's NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM (aka NNMM) is a community of “cultural engineers” with a variable line-up, mixing drone metal with spiritual free jazz and psychedelic music. The project was initiated in 2018 by multi-instrumentalist Guillaume Cazalet (Czlt, Jenny Torse, Aksu), who brought together veteran saxophonist Jean Jacques Duerinckx (Ze Zorgs) and two drummers, Sebastien Schmit (K-Branding) and Pierre Arese (Aksu). In 2020, Stephane FDL and Lukas Bouchenot took the drums. Reshma Goolamy (bass), Romain Martini (guitar), Alice Thiel (synths, guitar), Joaquin Bermudez (saz, setar), Didié Nietzche (soundscapes) and Leslie V. (black magic scenography) joined in 2019, thus changing the band into a real drone orchestra.
By exploring the evolution of the human species, NEPTUNIAN MAXMALISM question the future of the living on Earth, propitiating a feeling of acceptance for the conclusion of the so called "anthropocene" era and preparing us for the incoming “probocene” era, imagining our planet ruled by superior intelligent elephants after the end of humanity. As Guillaume Cazalet explains, “for certain scientists, if we hadn't rule the Earth, elephants were supposed to be at the top of the pyramid of terrestrial life.”
The ambitious album trilogy of “Éons” is a musical experience of gargantuan proportions where each chapter is part of a fascinating ritual, a cosmic mass of light and darkness recalling the works of SUNN O))), EARTH, ALUK TODOLO, ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE, SWANS, MOTORPSYCHO, SUN RA and the late JOHN COLTRANE.
The intoxicating bacchanal starts with “To The Earth (Aker Hu Benben)”, a heavy tribal music affair influenced by stoner metal, noise rock and free jazz. “It's a balance between sacred and profane, and resumes lots of human feelings or their consequences, such as love, war, hate, ritual dance, transmutation, strength, feminine/masculine juxtaposition, etc,”, says Cazalet.
With “To The Moon (Heka Khaibit Sekhem)” the band opts for a slightly different approach, surrealistic yet brutal, occasionally steering towards black-doom metal. Cazalet: “Here the rhythm section plays an important role, fueled by an obscure power that plunges the listener into a magic, occult trance; this album is characterized by shamanic invocations and summonings of the ancients by using animal-like growls and the homo-sapiens' proto-language as reconstructed by Pierre Lanchantin, an English researcher/archeologist from the University of Cambridge.”
The third and final chapter encompasses the interstellar meditations of “To The Sun (Ânkh Maât Sia)”, described by Cazalet as a solar drone opera: “We worked on the power of frequencies and tonality, chthonian deep vibrations and iridescent high lights by using huge amplified baritone sax and guitars, spectral soundscapes, antic cinematographic views and tribal percussions.”
Wrapped in a phantasmagoric painting by Japanese master Kaneko Tomiyuki, NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM's “Éons” is with no doubt the quintessential mystical and psychedelic journey of 2020.
credits
releases June 26, 2020
"Éons" line-up:
Guillaume Cazalet (Czlt) ::: Amplified bass and barytone guitar, bow, sitar, flute, trumpet & vocals
Jean Jacques Duerinckx ::: Amplified saxophone barytone and sopranino
Sebastien Schmit ::: Drums, percussions, gongs, vocals
Pierre Arese ::: Drums, percussions
Recorded by Guillaume Cazalet, with the help of Jean Jacques Duerinckx at HS63, Brussels, March 2018. Mixed and mastered by Guillaume Cazalet at Homo Sensibilis Sounds studio, Brussels, June 2018
Lyrics from Pierre Lanchantin’s Imaginary proto-languages
© Pierre Lanchantin, Homo Sapiens project (part of Marguerite Humeau’s FOXP2 exhibition, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2016) Machine Intelligence Laboratory, University of Cambridge
Cover art by KANEKO Tomiyuki, "Vajrabhairava", 2014
© KANEKO Tomiyuki Courtesy Mizuma Art Gallery.
______________
Cat. Nr. IVR133

The belgian-german band Dictaphone around mastermind Oliver Doerell returns with their fifth album named "goats & distortions 5".
After their last highly acclaimed album "APR70" Oliver Doerell is surrounded again by his longterm bandmembers Roger Döring (clarinet & saxophone) & Alex Stolze (violins). In the last 3 years they dived even deeper in their "morbid instruments" concept. An old tape machine, which Doerell found in a hidden room in his house in Berlin served as soundsource, ghostly sounds could be heard and the machine died soon after being sampled. For the first time Roger Döring played a bass clarinet on this album and after the recordings lost it in the subway on his way home…
They improved their skills to use rustle as a instrument and are supported by the voice of Helga Raimondi in the track "your reign is over". The result is an ungraspable, ghostly, spooky album consisting of ten different journeys into the experimental sound world of these unique compositions.
The history of Dictaphone: In 2000 Oliver Doerell found a partner in Berlin's Roger Döring, who shares Doerell's love for the Brussels-based music of the eighties. In the following years the duo and several guest musicians (e.g. Stephan Wöhrmann (SWOD)... , Malka Spigel (Minimal Compact) released the critically highly acclaimed "m.= addiction" (2002), the "Nacht" EP (2004) and "Vertigo II" (2006) via the City Centres Offices label of Thaddeus Herrmann and Shlom Sviri (Boomkat, Modern Love). In 2009 the violin player Alex Stolze joined the band. During their two decades of existence Dictaphone played shows in more than 20 countries with festival appearances at Mutek, Transmediale, Unsound, Benicassim & more. Their latest releases were the praised "Poems from a rooftop" (Sonic Pieces) from 2012 and the "goats & distortions 5" predecessor "APR 70" in 2017 on Denovali. Denovali also reissued the past repertoire of the trio in 2017. Oliver Doerell composed for more than 30 pieces of Modern Ballet and BBC documentaries.
Praise for Dictaphone:
"minimalistic and subliminal elegancy" (ARTE)
"timeless, unusual & beautiful" (Colin Newman)
"Dictaphones gives warmth to the concept, your thoughts a body and atmosphere to the music" (Spex)
"This is the music to fall in love with over many evenings, each subsequent rotation capturing another moment of time to be recalled in the future. Highly recommended" (Headphone Commute)
"When played from a rooftop, this music may be as quiet as a poem, but it carries the power of a manifesto." (A Closer Listen) more

AMENRA’s first release for Relapse Records is at once a departure and a momentous act of deliverance. Stepping outside the run of albums titled Mass I-VI, De Doorn casts a 21-year journey from the heart of Belgium’s crusading hardcore scene to world-renowned, spiritually guided innovators in an enthralling new light.
Ritual, remembrance and hard-won rebirth have always been at the heart of Amenra’s colossal, soul-purging approach. Centered around frontman Colin H. Van Eeckhout, but marked out by a transcendent unity of purpose, their albums have acted as totemic, personal marker points, a means to process individual grief as a shared, cathartic experience. Their live shows are acts of incendiary, communal exorcism that reach a cusp of sublime, out-of-body experience. A closely knit collective, they transport you to a febrile state where confrontation of pain, transformation and true healing can occur.
Amenra have always been profoundly bound to their hometowns around Flanders, the weight of that area’s war-torn history. The sacrifice and sense of a larger purpose that bridges the fragility of humanity and the pull of an immaculate ideal is carried as an ever-present resonance. No more is this apparent than in the spectacular, commemorative events the band have performed in recent years – to mark ending of the First World War; the band’s 20th anniversary; and the departure of long-time band member Levy Seynaeve. At the SMAK Museum Of Contemporary Art in Ghent’s 19th-century, monument-strewn Citadelpark in May 2019, they offered a communal recognition of loss and letting go. Here, audience members were invited to make their own offerings, placing personal notes of acknowledgment in wooden structures created by Indonesian artist Toni Kanwa Adikusumah, before they were brought out into the park and set alight as an act of recognition and release – a forging of hope from the flames.
Written for the purpose of that rite, De Doorn (‘The Thorn’) occupies a place between Amenra’s recorded and live work, less a testimony to the band’s individual bereavements, more an invitation for others to come forward, and to pass through darkness into light. Where the Mass albums have taken the form of solitary struggles whose fearless honesty has aligned itself to the most intrinsically human of chords, the dynamics of De Doorn are as stricken by destiny as ever, but sonically looser. Guided to a lesser extent by the band’s characteristically immense, behind-the-beat traction, it’s more lush, immersive, steeped in sonorous, cathedral-echo ambiences amplified to the point of static-infected instability and carrying passages of deeply intimate spoken-word that feel like being drawn in to the most hallowed of confidences. Its themes of dialogue and the passing of knowledge are echoed in the combined vocals of Colin and Oathbreaker’s Caro Tanghe. Her spectral presence on the opening Ogentroost acts as both counterpoint and complement to Colin’s stricken howl as the song cycles between enervation and helplessly compelled momentum. Their whispered devotions in the following, vast, hallowed atmospheres of De Dood In Bloei leave you feeling as though you’re bearing witness to the most private of conversations.
The first Amenra album to be sung entirely in Flemish, De Doorn imparts a universal power by digging deep into local customs. Not just allowing for a greater range of expression through the intimacy, allowances and layers of meaning granted by your native tongue, it takes inspiration from Flemish forms such as Kleinkunst, a folk-based musical wave driven by storytelling, and the passing of wisdom through generations. Yet as with every Amenra release, De Doorn is an act of observance that recognises the path travelled by fully experiencing the moment, as a rite of consummation, reckoning and deliverance. That state of transition is exemplified in the closing Vor Immer, a hushed, plaintively wracked coda that bursts into newborn, world-in-your eyes transfiguration where sheer, sense flooding experience becomes a blazing threshold where rupture and rapture become one.
The thorn is the most potent of symbols – in religious terms, a reclamation and an agony as a mark of transformation. It’s the nagging reminder of vulnerability and it’s the violent protector, without which beauty cannot thrive. For the cover of De Doorn, it’s been cast in bronze – a thing of value and a memorial, each band member given their own piece to symbolise their own pain and their belonging to the greater whole. In bronze, it is both nature and something else – a mark of singularity and a portal to a continuity that we all share. As Amenra have acknowledged once more, it’s one that hears our call, even when we feel we are at our most alone.

It is GlamPop. It is ArtRock. It’s High Fidelity Lofitronics. It’s reminiscence to the Dandy Warhols for some, to Franz Ferdinand for others. It’s a delicate mix of 70s Pop, 80s Beats and 90s Rock.
It’s groovy. It’s edgy. It’s taking the best of all worlds and transforming it into a here & now sound that is truly their own.

"We drew a map of the road trip together. A green line from Bambi across the Danube to the Carpathians. A fairy tale animated in technicolour, unfolding in slow motion. All protagonists hovered slightly off the ground. The soundtrack of Transcarpathia and a whirling unresolved hum. A disembodied camera flies thru a bartak forest; it sinks down on a nest of wild mugwort..."

ZAÄAR is a Belgian collective born from a rib of NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM, the cosmic free-jazz orchestra that in the last two years catalyzed the attention of those in love with psychedelic music, experimental drone doom and space ambient. Drinking deep from the same inspirational well to open our third eye on majestic horizons of psychedelic beauty, but their approach is more instinctual, cruder, more primitive. Their psychedelic free-jazz soaked in droning ambient melodies awakes and stimulates ancient and forgotten senses, laying dormant since when humanity has been projected into the greyness of an industrialized reality, bringing the listener back to a time when everything was new and exciting and dangerous. ZAÄAR is more than a band: it’s the reconquest of our savage side; the terrifying and primeval roar of a mind ravaged by magic drugs; the lush sounds of a soul swimming in the primordial broth, savoring again an existence full of marvels and hazards. Welcome to the jungle!