Shred Room 57: Spilling Soup On The Velvet Suit

day oonoh:

MC Yallah & Debmaster: first of a bunch of Nyege Nyege Tapes artists being featured here, a female Ugandan rapper and a French DJ, loud, hard beats, lots of energy and audience interaction from Yallah, pwetty goo'

Lucy Railton: slow cello improv with extended techniques and electronic effects, sometimes great but with a lot of wandering

Avalanche Kaito: just caught the last bit of this band of two Belgian freak-out rockers and an 'urban griot'/singer/performer from Ghana or something; lots of enthusiasm for sure but not an amazing mix of elements

Jaimie Branch: also just caught a little at two points from this soulful jazz band (I think Jaimie is the frontwoman), not bad but not my thing

Lucy Railton & Farida Amadou: duo improv, now with Farida jumping in on electric bass, but to much the same result, some great parts and some awkward wandering; Farida's bass techniques aren't something I think I've seen before though, it was interesting at least for that

Jana Rush: angular footwork DJ, complex percussive music with some atmospheric sections too, Jana was looking mysterious with sunglasses on and a stern face while the dancing crowd in front of her kept stumbling on those stuttering odd-metered beats; unfortunately I had to leave early to catch my train (every night of the festival...)

day tawu

Frederik Croene: last minute replacement for some industrial beat project that got the c'roonies, this was actually very interesting, he just had his keyboard (with laptop) to trigger a wide load of samples, including church bells, swirly industrial sound effects, grand piano notes, and most notably a single bar of a hip hop beat, all of which he would play in a kind of classical pianist way, with loose rhythm, very intentionally slightly throwing off the rhythm of that beat bar etc., quite cool

Bitchin Bajas: a group from the '00s free folk/hypnagogic/cassette drone scene, now playing a set of deep, mid-length pieces on a bunch of vintage synths and what looked like an electronic cornet (??); they put up chairs so you could nicely dream away to those heavenly drones, though some more beat-oriented pieces were a bit dull, also apparently it was a tribute to Sun Ra, which I could only vaguely recognize in the music because they mentioned it...

Wu-Lu: a tight, hip British band with a kind of hybrid post-rock/post-punk/post-hardcore/indie sound, not too surprising cuz I think they apparently had Black Midi's drummer (he was good), and later on they suddenly swapped to some straight-up hip-hop and dub tracks, which was fun but odd

Arsenal: I missed these guys on the first day but now they performed again as another last minute stand-in (Circuit des Yeux had voice issues) and I'm glad I actually saw them, it's another Nyege Nyege thing, an East-African percussion trio that grooved very hard and non-stop, with occasionally some wordless yells/chants which almost seemed improvised but also couldn't have been (I was left wondering how they could memorize such a long, dense performance a lot, with how tight every transition went); sadly the chair stage was left there from before, because the groove got some people to get up and dance in the isles on the sides, and I even saw a guy in front of me who was shaking back and forth in his chair as if he was severely mentally disabled, but it was in fact just from that groooooveeeee

day torree

Vula Viel: artsy, jammy band, kind of a post-punk basis with flowing improv and odd percussion, not the tightest playing but it worked well enough for what they did

Flock: I'm not sure who Flock was but they were listed as 'featuring' a lot of other artists, but it seemed like it was just Vula Viel again with three extra musicians, including some spacey synthesizers, making for a tastier mix than just Vula Viel, a few long, rich jams with the six of them that worked well

More Eaze & Seth Graham - I knew More Eaze from an album with Claire Rousay, and this performance too was reminiscent of Rousay, soft, tingly sound design ambient with very creative splashes of manipulated vocals, sax and electric violin from More Eaze, while Graham was quietly twisting knobs on the side; some 'oddly satisfying'-type videos also played in the background and overall it was a very pleasant experience

Catherine Graindorge: drone pieces on mainly violin, but with the help of a loop pedal, a harmonium, some vocals and another guy helping out on organ & electronics, perfectly fine for what it was

Jenny Hval: kind of the headliner of the whole festival, the last to play on the main stage and with the biggest crowd, I had heard of her but hadn't heard the music and I quickly realized that my prior intuition was right on that, it was a bunch of cutesy quirky indie pop that I do not care for at all and so I got an earlier train home

overall Brussels was also nice, interesting that you really hear equal amounts of Dutch, French and English in the center at least, it seems like every other Belgian city than Antwerp is actually nicer and prettier... either way I'm planning to move back to NL this summer for my work contract so f**k 'em Antwerpers

tweazel out

also, epic post count agi