Antwerp native Younes Zarhoni has been consistently performing and making music for just about a decade now. A longtime staple of the local electronic music scene with his hypnotic techno outings as YZ, Zarhoni’s latest focus is on the compositional power of pure harmony and silence: namely, his polyphonic renditions of medieval mystical poetry, sung in multiple voices and left to solemnly radiate beyond their given spatial grounds. Stripped of all instrumental accompaniments, what you get is Gregorian chant meets Boyz 2 Men, sparse stanzas that tread under an elusive referential threshold, conjuring visions of architecture and archaism, madrigals and MTV, the sacred and the profane ~ ostensibly disparate elements that seamlessly fold themselves into the radicality of the compositions.

Longtime sound explorers Nina Garcia and Maria Bertel collide in a fever dream come true. Nina’s guitar-based excursions as Mariachi push the limits of audible experience to the brink, using movement and modulation to sculpt inventive noise formations; Maria, both in her solo activities and in collaborations with multiple figures in the larger improv world (Johns Lunds, the aforementioned Jooklos, the many talents of the Selvhenter ensemble), uses the trombone to blare out distorted drones for an explosive sensory overload. As a duo, textures and rhythms come alive through burning amp bulbs, guitar and trombone reacting and refracting, a powerful complementarity slicing through roaring blasts. Their album KN​Æ​KKET SMIL came out this February, a co-release by No Lagos Musique, Otomatik Muziek and KRAAK.

The Norwegian duo of longtime friends Gaute Granli (one half of Rump State whose most recent solo output was released on Feeding Tube) and Thore Warland (of Staer/Golden Oriole and innumerable other musical constellations) has existed in multiple informal iterations before finally manifesting as Firmaet Forvoksen. Their 2022 debut album Undone Shal is an unfurling tapestry of erratic guitar pickings, muffled percussive conjurings, barging synths, and moans that are part lamentation, part incantation. In their current live setup, altered percussions, wayward synths and layers of mercurial vocalizations evoke a liminal space of certain psychedelia, taking the listener to areas which are unsettling, luminous and unshakably affecting.

GG Rondon (Cachilapa) and Dylan Belgrado (Tuutuuttuut) are the current KRAAK capers doing most of the driving and entertaining, but they’ve also been known to step behind the decks and duke it out with their clashing tune proclivities. Canon meets camp and distention meets dissonance, whatever any of that means - they don’t know it themselves!

The three touring records + a GR*ZE KRENT for only 45 buckos! 4 items shipped for the price of one ~ you can score this limited deal over here in our Bandcamp or in one of our shows this upcoming season! Offer runs until end of September or until supplies start running low 🦭