Please get back to me if you want to set up a concert for one of them.
YAKUZA (US) + SYK (IT)
youtube.com/watch?v=wsh0oqtg2WA https://syk-official.bandcamp.com/
Availability: 3rd – 20th October
Territory: Belgium
The avant-garde jazz-influenced progressive metal band Yakuza will be finally touring europe, celebrating their 20th anniversary as a band.
They will be showcasing the band’s unique take on hardcore and metal, blended with other sounds and styles running the gamut from Tuvan
throat singing to free jazz saxophones to sprawling instrumental post-rock.
The band (SYK) was born with the idea of steF and fed (members of the avant grind noise band psychofagist) and the union with the singer Dalila Kayros. and Luca on bass. Their music is complex, tight, sharp, groovy, intense and it goes in every unknown direction.
TAÏKOPHONIC (France/Belgium)
Availability: On request
Territory: Europe + UK
Wood meets waves, tradition meets innovation. Taïko Drums meets Monotrons
This duo is a unique meeting between one of the most traditional (and iconic) japanese drums and analogic instruments.
Despite the incongruity, their universes get along. The project is carried throug experimenting, improvising on silence, feeling both emptiness and fullness : two musicians combining and mixing their multidisciplinary experiences.
« a brand new project between world music (Far East) and contemporary arts (Music & Dance) »
« an original blend of sacred drumming, slow motion and acousmatic climax »
Maïa Aboueleze a French musician, actress, dancer and writer with Tunisian roots.
She has been playing Taïkos (Japonese drums) for years in France, Japan, Spain, Germany, UK and Belgium. She teaches master classes and workshops in Brussels & Marc Van Eyck a Belgian musician, performer, composer and producer within the extended family of the noise-based music makers. He studied music, movement and motion in several academies, universities and high schools and worked in sounds laboratories while playing in a lot of (rock and non rock) bands
DORA BLEU (USA) + PERIKLIS TSOUKALAS (from BaBa ZuLa) (TURKEY)
https://dorableu.bandcamp.com/
Availability: 1st – 10th October
Territory: Europe + UK
Through the echoes of an acoustic guitar and vocal expressions, Dora Bleu explores intimacy as the place where the capitalist war state replenishes itself. Her work is neither fully compositional nor improvisational. The songs follow an inner sense of narrative time, and are simultaneously tonal and atonal. The guitar is sparse, tense, atmospheric, suggestive of without enacting melodies, sometimes droning or dissonant. The vocals contribute to contrasting compositions filled with stark silences and bent notes. The songs intend to violate the concept of genre, to erupt trauma within storytelling, and to evoke vulnerable and dreamlike states.
She can also perform together with Periklis Tsoukalas on electric oud and electronics with sparse, haunting arrangements by herself on guitar
DARKHER (UK)
Availability: 12th, 13th and 16th September
Territory: Belgium
DARKHER is a haunting trip through the mind and spirit of founding member Jayn H. Darkher whose powerful, captivating music is characterised by doom-laden riffs, spine tingling vocals, soul baring songs, layered with storm clouds of lead & bowed guitars.
AMM (UK)
Availability: On request
Territory: Europe
More than any other group creating spontaneously improvised music, the members of AMM have a calm certainty about them, a serene sense of unhurriedness. There appears to be no doubt that whatever musical element is brought to light during their performance, it will prove capable of both generating beauty on its own and assuming its place as a structural element with what has preceded it. This live recording is in many ways typical of the group in its most common configuration of the ’80s and ’90s: Keith Rowe on guitar and electronics, John Tilbury on piano, and Eddie Prévost on percussion. The emphasis of the hour-long piece is on the quieter end of the spectrum, sometimes with Tilbury contributing mellifluous, subtle patterns, other times Prevost and Rowe ticking and scraping away so that one feels inside an old, quietly humming factory built for some arcane purpose. When the trio thinks it appropriate, the sounds fade away to near silence, with perhaps the faint buzz of Rowe’s amplifier providing the only audible element. Later in the piece, Prévost begins worrying some bell-like objects and Rowe’s guitar assumes a more aggressive posture. But, unlike any number of improvising ensembles whose performances tend to follow a standard quiet-loud-quiet structural arc, AMM routinely foil expectations, here subsiding into muffled bells and soft, keening sighs from bowed guitar strings. As in recordings such as Newfoundland and The Inexhaustible Document, the group once again demonstrates why they have been the pre-eminent freely improvising ensemble since their inception in 1965. A beautiful album. ~ Brian Olewnick, All Music Guide.
Availability: On request
Territory: Europe + UK
Sura Solomon (BE, USA) and Amber in ‘t Veld (ES, NL) have grown together into Las Lloronas (The Criers ) in the wintery streets of Brussels in December 2017. Through the experience of busking, in a few weeks they put together a set that met lots of enthusiasm. Inspired by musicians such as Lhasa de Sela, Noname, Billy Holiday, Devendra Banhart, and influenced by different world folk and bluesy songs, Las Lloronas started to compose their own tunes. Their music, accordion, guitar, ukulele and voices, reflects their experiences, giving birth to intimate feminist poetry. They put forth, in their melodies and performance, their vulnerable and powerful authenticity.
IAIN CHAMBERS (UK)
Availability: From October onwards
Territory: Europe
Iain Chambers is a composer and producer whose music often deploys field recordings and location sounds as musical material. His work is heard live in concerts, radio, sound installations and multimedia.
Iain’s feature-length symphonies of industrial sounds have been commissioned by WDR Cologne and ABC Australia. He staged the first concerts ever to be given in Tower Bridge’s Bascule Chambers in 2015, turning Tower Bridge into a huge musical instrument. The concerts have become an established annual event within London’s greatest hidden space.
Iain is a founder member of the UK’s leading musique concrète composing / performing ensemble, Langham Research Centre. LRC give ‘period’ performances of electronic work by 20th century composers, alongside their own new material composed for an instrumentarium of obsolete Cold War era technology.
Availability: On request
Territory: Europe + UK
Tunnel Hearing is a performance in which sound and image occur mutually, in a metaphorical sense and very literal. The mysterious quality of the relationship between the two persists even when the physical basis of their interaction is established in the mind and in the eye of the public. Thus, the sound becomes a flicker of light and the shadow a timbre shift.
The performance lasts about 20 minutes. The sound of the saxophone is slightly amplified, textures and soundscapes are created live using a loop station and also by the use of backing tracks composed by the musician. A video camera is inserted into the body of the instrument and the image is projected on a screen.
JAEHO HWANG (South Korea)
Availability: On request
Territory: Europe
Jaeho Hwang is a London-based, South Korean composer and visual artist inspired by the Buddhist concept of impermanent selfhood, his first EP combines dark, industrial club beats with traditional Korean instruments and samples. He explores his sense of identity in the digital age as refracted through the Buddhist concept of anatta, or non-self—the belief that there is no unchanging, permanent soul or essence in living beings.
Please find here under a couple of artists who will be touring soon.
Feel free to get in touch with me if you want to set up a concert/gig for one of them.
ARIEL KALMA (France)
Availabilities: 13th – 25th June 2019 + possibly in September
Territories: Europe
Ariel Kalma is inspired by rhythms, melodies and grooves from various cultures, ambient atmospheres, modal music, native instruments and nature. Ariel likes to experiment with music: mix traditional sounds with modern arrangements, use electronica and special effects, play circular breathing on winds and didgeridoo, create original sounds from synthesizers. Ariel blends styles of music to produce original compositions with flavours of his own. His songs touch deep feelings of the search for simple truth in a metaphorical poetry.
During his study of Electronics, Computer Science, Music and Art at Paris University, Ariel Kalma was also performing with several bands and touring the world, visiting Asia, Africa, Japan, Canada and Europe, always listening to, sometimes playing with, the music and the people: different scales, colours of sound, timing and rhythms.
MARIE (Austria)
Availability: March 2020
Territory: Belgium
Marie – such a simple name, yet behind its facade lurks an immense bandwidth of musical talent. The young musician with roots in Carinthia and Tunisia has been studying Jazz and improvised music at the Anton Bruckner private university in Linz.
Her music consists of Hip-Hop-heavy drum-sets, with strong influences from Electro, Soul, and Jazz. Her profound lyrics meet feminist topics, somewhere in between functioning in society and morbid lethargy. Genres have little meaning when making music and they all come together in the epicentre of contemporary music.
AVAILABILITY: AFTER THE SUMMERTIME
TERRITORIES: EUROPE + UK
_Notably, Warsaw Village Band have revived several musical
traditions that were all but lost in Poland. The band use
instruments rarely heard in modern music: frame drums, the
hurdy-gurdy and the suka, a Polish folk fiddle from the 17th century
stopped with the fingernails rather than the fingers, similar to the
Bulgarian gadulka, the sarangi, or the rebec. The suka was
practically unknown to the Polish people until member Sylwia
Świątkowska began to play it in the band’s concerts, and, later,
on their albums. Additionally, many of the band’s vocals are sung in
a loud and powerful style remarkably like the « open-throated »
singing styles in Bulgarian music, called biały głos (white
voice). This style of singing was used by shepherds in the Polish
mountains to be heard for long distances._
_Warsaw Village Band have also used modern elements in their music.
Wykorzenienie contains scratching by the Polish hip hop artist DJ
Feel-X,[7] most likely as a nod to the phenomenal popularity of hip
hop in Poland. The same album also includes electronic siren sound
effects by the band’s sound engineer, Mario « Activator » Dziurex,
leading to a peculiar juxtaposition of new sounds upon old
melodies._
_Eleh is an American electronic/drone musician who began working in
1999 and whose first release was in 2006. He has so far been
reticent about providing any public information on his identity.Eleh
has released music on Touch Records, Important Records and Taiga
Records._
AVAILABILITY: 28TH + 29TH SEPTEMBER + 6TH OCTOBER
TERRITORY: BELGIUM
_YOTC hails from Seattle, WA. Their debut full length album, « In the
Shadows Below… », was released on 10/28/16 to high acclaim. The new
record was produced, engineered, and mixed by Billy Anderson (High
on Fire, Sleep, Melvins, OM, Neurosis, etc.)._
AVAILABILITY: BEFORE AND AFTER 27TH MARCH 2020
TERRITORY: THE NETHERLANDS, LUXEMBURG, BELGIUM
_MacLeod is known for his superb songwriting, guitar wizardry, warm
soulful vocals, wit and unforgettable live performances. At the
heart of a Doug MacLeod performance is his knack for storytelling,
bringing characters-from the faceless to the legendary-to strikingly
real life.Doug is a multiple Blues Music Award winner, most recently
the 2018 Blues Music Award for Acoustic Album Of The Year ‘Break
The Chain’ and the 2017 Blues Music Award for Acoustic Artist Of
The Year._
_Litter frog is the musical alter-ego of Kurdish artist Mattina
Hiwaizi. They combine experimental electronic noise with ambient
flute to create surreal soundscapes. Death Is Peaceful, Life Is
Harder, is their debut EP for London label TT, (fka Tobago Tracks)._
Thanks for reading.
I look forward to hearing from you asap.
Regards.
Alain
Some Noise • Rue Timmermans, 16 – 1190 Brussels, Belgium
Debloque's Weblog 