Ignatz

‘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.

Farida Amadou

FARIDA AMADOU is a self-taught bass player based in Brussels, Belgium. The electric bass has been her main instrument since 2011. In 2013, she has started to play a lot of different musical genres, including blues, jazz and hip-hop; soon she started to dive into improvised music, and was rapidly identified by local collectives and musicians. After a year (2017) as bass player in Belgian punk band Cocaine Piss, Farida decided to focus on her solo improvisation practice and collaborations with musicians such as Steve Noble, Thurston Moore, Peter Brötzmann, Terrie Ex, Lukas Koening, Pat Thomas and Julien Desprez, among others, occasionally also featuring with groups such as Jerusalem in My Heart and Moor Mother.

Ben Bertrand

Brussels composer/musician Ben Bertrand modifies his bass-clarinet melodies with a battery of effect pedals thus creating unearthly dreamy compositions that could rub shoulders with the best work of Gavin Bryars or Jon Hassell. Minimalists like Steve Reich and Terry Riley are never far removed.

Floris Vanhoof

Floris Vanhoof (°1982, lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium)
is interested in the hybrid forms of music, visual art, and film.
His first projections -experimental films on 16 millimeter- evolved towards purely visual experiences which questioned our viewing patterns.
Inspired by structural film and early electronic music, he builds installations, creates expanded cinema performances, and releases his music.
Vanhoof makes his own instruments to explore the border between image, light, and sound.
As media-archaeologist, he confronts the digitally-spoiled audience with flickering 16mm films and 35mm slide installations - formats doomed to disappear.
He often chooses analog technology because of the greater transparency of the workflow, and because of its rich dynamic range. Cut loose from all nostalgia, he experiments with what used to be considered "hightech."
Vanhoof searches for new ideas with old media. He translates sound to image and vice-versa by connecting different incompatible media. He is especially curious about the effects his work elicits in the viewer:
How does our perception operate? Which new perspectives appear?