Editorial issue n° 8
DEAREST READER,
In your hands you hold the 8th issue of the Avant-Guardian. Whilst writing this, I picture your hands, thinking how much they tell about you. Maybe they are nice and soft, a result of visiting the manicurist regularly. I could see the hands of a labourer, full of scars and dust because you build houses or install electricity. Or your hands can be worn out by chemicals because you extinguish rats and unwelcome creatures living in the holes and crannies of a city. Hands can be seen as a pars pro toto — the form can tell you a lot about someone’s life and identity, without knowing him or her.
04 December 2016 |
AG 8
Group A
group A is a Berlin based Japanese duo that has been travelling from Tokyo to London, back and then to Berlin. Throughout their 80ties inspired sound and dadaeske performances they are seeking for freedom. Having found it in a big German city, they are on the verge of struggling with the consequences of being a free mind, that seems hard to pursue without the limitations full time jobs.
02 December 2016 |
AG 8
Ignatz
“I’M LIKE WATER, FOLLOWING THE PATH OF THE LEAST RESISTANCE’”. With ‘The Drain’, 38 year old Belgian psych folk musician Bram Devens made a traditional guitar/voice record. If only you could understand the lyrics, you could call it ‘classic’.
01 December 2016 |
AG 8
La Tène
La Tène is a French-Swiss band taking both the heir of minimalist music and traditional mountain music to induce an ascetic trance. Tony Conrad comes in the picture, but also long walks in mountains during which you become part of the nature, and your self-consciousness is getting lower and lower until it switches off.
01 December 2016 |
AG 8
Eddy Detroit
Ignatz presented his latest album 'The Drain' at Les Ateliers Claus on october 20th. To make his party a great succes Eddy Detroit cojoined this evening of loner psych, true weird americana and drone trance from the alps.
For this special occassion, Cristina Amelia Messer wrote a short portrait of this cult hero and true outsider.
01 December 2016 |
AG 8
Jeff Witscher
After having read about how the sound of crickets sounds like a sublime harmony of human voices if you slow it down multiple times, and after trying to decide which tea I should have after being overwhelmed by such sonic wonder I suddenly felt the urge to listen to Jeff Witscher his music. He is coming to Brussels on the 26th of september for KRAAK’s Yung Sheiks series. If the name Witscher doesn’t sound familiar, his alter ego Rene Hell might ring a little bell. He aroused 10 years ago from the LA noise scene and hasn’t stopped making electronic marvels ever since. I immediately sat down and emailed him some questions.
01 December 2016 |
AG 8
Capelo
MANIFESTATIONS OF THE PAST HAUNTING THE PRESENT. Michael Nyarwaya says in this interview Capelo makes music that looks like candy and sounds like an advert for perfume. Spot on.
01 December 2016 |
AG 8
Eric Frye
Jeff Witscher runs the label Salon Records, on which Eric Frye released the sparkling Some Consequences of Four Incapacities. The liner notes are saying that the record investigates new modes of perception and spatial cognition. Interesting words for mathematical beauty a.k.a. far out abstract techno, or the best post-millennial melancholia is currently offering.
01 December 2016 |
AG 8
75 Dollar Bill
“Tent music for tent People”, it must be the best description a band ever has written. 75 Dollar Bill wrote it on of their tapes. They are still the duo of Che Chen and Rick Brown, playing out there rhythm and blues, taking this dusted genre back to the streets, to tents, to your wedding party, to places where you can dance to it. Injecting Sun City Girls-like jams or West African based psych from the 70s, they creating an ultimate form of true American music, music in which traditions blend together in a new form of music.
01 December 2016 |
AG 8
Transparant
AN ESSAY ON SEA URCHIN AND SPENCER CLARK'S TYPHONIAN HIGHLIFE. In October 2016, KRAAK presented "Yaqaza" by Sea Urchin and"The World of Shells" by Typhonian Higlife. They were presented on a mindblowing and brain release event, in which alien lectures, underwater sculptures and martial arts choreographies will be setting the mood. Affiniado and close friend Lieven Martens Moana wrote on his terrace in Portugal an essay about their music.
01 December 2016 |
AG 8
Tomas Buckner
Tom Buckner is back in town! The man is a living legend, having worked together with all the great people alike Robert Ashley, Roscoe Mittchell, Jacques Bekaert and more. He will perform at Logos on November 3th, and give a masterclass at KRAAK’s new crib, the School of Arts.
01 December 2016 |
AG 8
Asmus Tietchens
NUANCES IN SELF-SUFFICIENT MUSIC. Asmus Tietchens – a name that popped up about 40 years ago for the first time on an album of ambient music by Cluster&Eno (1977) and can be found in various fields of electronic and experimental music ever since, mostly on the fringes of certain genres like industrial, synth-pop, acousmatic, reductionist electronic music or krautrock. It’s hard to fix his position to a specific scene, instead he seems more like a curious and peculiar mind working his way through all the spheres that catch his curiosity. Although he can be classified as a consistent solo-artist, quite a few collaborations have been exercised with people like the percussionist Jon Mueller, the reductionist electronic composer Richard Chartier, Chrysanthemums’ Terry Burrows or his duo Kontakt der Jünglinge (a combination of two the title of two early Stockhausen pieces) together with media-artist and composer Thomas Koener. He also appears on an album by the ephemeral Krautrock band-project Liliental (one of the few records featuring studio-wizard Conny Plank as a musician), probably the only real band he ever played in, not to mention his general dislike of most Krautrock.
01 December 2016 |
AG 8
Endrhymes Riddle
In the spring of 2015, Razen dropped their 2,5th LP on the KRAAK label, the astonishing Endrhymes. The sustained tones from their earlier releases sublimated into hardcore melodic minimalism and raw dystopian deep listening. The album proves — once again — the craftsmanship and dauntless approach of the collective. Both records as live shows shows a band that are more intense and focussed than ever. After one year hiatus, they are back in full force and will suck you into their end rhymes. They presented the record on August 21st at DRUUM, and old warehouse-turned-into-a-cultural-hub. Asmus Tietschens joined the bill.
01 December 2016 |
AG 8
