Tuesday 28 June 2016, 8pm
Double-header from the Kraak roster, featuring Portugese duo Calhau! and Ignatz, ahead of his new album on Kraak – The Drain.
Please note that Shetahr will no longer be performing at this event.
A true gem from the Portugese underground. Sparse electronics blended with mystic vocal-ism — think Ghédalia Tazartes on the coffee by Diamanda Galás.
Deep in the Portugese underground Calhau! is con-structing an absurd universe in which nightmares, rural Catholic mysticism and surrealist spirituality play the lead role. Performance, movie and music are contributing to one melancholic and cruel whole. The music is deeply rooted in Roman mysticism, using the dark hand of alchemy to beseech the insane 21st century.
The duo sounds like an updated verion of Ghédalia Tazartes and Throbbing Gristle, blending tape collages and sparse electronics, not unlike the PAN back catalogue.
Foremost, Calhau! are their own isle, at the point where the Old Europe disappears in the sea.
‘This has more to do with improvisation and its allied possibilities of transcendence and failure than running up and down 12-bar schemes at lightning speed.’ The Wire
Ignatz is the alter-ego of Bram Devens. With an acoustic guitar and a few effects, he creates his very own style of improvisation-inspired Euro blues.
In 1910, the illustrator George Herriman created the Krazy Kat comic strip. Ignatz, a vicious mouse, was Krazy Kat’s arch enemy, and his favourite pastime was to throw bricks at Krazy Kat’s head (who misinterpreted the mouse’s actions as declarations of love). Belgian artist Bram Devens uses Ignatz as his alter-ego, and comes armed with his own pile of bricks; sparse, emotive songs born of the human condition, wrapped in effects, corroded by tape, driven forth by improvisation and spontaneity.
Ignatz’s songs stem from a familiar stripped folk framework, with Devens’ delivery recalling the louche primitivism of V.U. or Henry Flynt – but these songs sound inverted, cast adrift, their cool touch belying a stymied heat beneath the surface. Where Devens’ fretwork is adorned, it is executed with a refined coarseness. Autonomous loops entwine each other. Songs brush past percussion, bass notes, or a scant keyboard motif. A voice recedes from the heart of the song into a dislocated, cracked drawl.
Apart from working solo, Ignatz plays with his band “de stervende honden” since 2013, after a friend (being tired of Ignatz’s solo concerts) suggested playing with Erik Heestermans and Tommy Denys.
