Sat 28 September 2024

Why The Eye (Album release)

Why the Eye

On the 28th of September Brussels’ prehistoric techno group, Why The Eye, will present their highly anticipated album 'Inspirex' which will be released on the 4th October via Exag Records.

Why the Eye is an experimental masked quartet from Brussels that propels bodies into trance during its live performances. All instruments are DIY and played in real time, without loops or sequencers. Fans of The Residents, Société Étrange, Autechre, Boards Of Canada, The Meridian Brothers and Fulu Miziki could easily relate to their sound.

Having formed in 2013, the band's first scheduled gig was for Carnaval Sauvage – an illegal, alternative carnival held in Brussels, hence the masks – where participants dress up in homemade costumes, often made from recycled materials, then dance through the city. The concert never took place, but everyone had cobbled together their own masks, feeding a new freedom in their musician's bodies; it became an integral part of the band's identity.

Following the release of a self-titled debut album in 2017, Why The Eye has performed on numerous stages across Europe, including Magasin 4, Brass, Les Ateliers Claus, Rockerill, Dour Festival, Sonic Protest, La station in Paris, Festival Hop Pop Hop, Baignade Interdicte, Cave 12, Urvakan… and so on.

“The album is live music based on energy. It has a chaotic side. How do you convey the chaotic, wild, animal energy of live music on record? My point of view is that to achieve this energy, you have to do exactly the opposite in the studio. A lot of layering. Lots of overdubs that we can't do live. It’s all these elements that give the album its wildness.”

The Inspirex album is composed and performed by Damien Magnette, Nico Gitto, JP Domb (instrument designer) and Thomas Giry, who has been replaced since 2024 by Jean-Philippe De Gheest.

photo (c) Hugo Boutry.

https://whytheeye.org/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH_bYfr9bIY

+ tbc

Thu 3 October 2024

mes lèvres & number fate with matthieu ha, cayo, alice george perez, joey wright

Two Brussels based bands make an exit and head to ALBION on tour! They will kiss you goodbye at Les Ateliers Claus on the 3rd of October 2024

A little more expatriate than international. They combine harmony-driven avant-pop, and operatic vocals soaring through accordion refrains and layers of honeyed electric guitars.

Number Fate (Alice George Perez & Joey Wright) & Mes Lèvres (Cayo van Breugel & Matthieu Ha)

You can find all their music in the link below:

https://linktr.ee/bruxelles_excite

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NUMBER FATE
Alice Perez and Joey Wright created Number Fate to hang out with a like-minded friend and fellow musician, but quickly found as they carried out their absurdist musical fantasies, that it made far more than just an outlet. Number Fate is a collage of their two converging musical approaches as songwriters, resulting in an ever-growing collection of harmony driven, banjo laced avant-pop song cycle, and they’re currently working on their first EP (with new arrangements as a four piece band)!

MES LEVRES
Mes Lèvres (formerly unknown as van Twolips) is a vocal duo from Brussels featuring a guitarist and an accordionist. The use of their instruments is the fruit of an imaginary music, of a time forgotten or not yet arrived.
The lips of this binomial pair belong to:
Matthieu Ha, accordionist who created his own musical universe with a luminous voice, able to align several vocal registers (haute-contre, romantic baritone and tenor rockailleux).
Cayo who superimposes her velvet voice strangely euphonious to her electric guitar, bringing poetry and natural sensuality to the songs. They have just release their album “Ton style c’est tes lèvres”

https://www.instagram.com/mes4levres/

https://www.carolinescheyvenphotography.com/

https://linktr.ee/bruxelles_excite

Sat 19 October 2024 > Sun 20 October 2024

Echoes of Dissent (Vol. 5): X-Ray Hex Tet

X- Ray Hex Tet

What could it mean to practice politics by performing music? How could musical improvisation – as a process of collectively searching for sounds and for the responses that attach to them, rather than thinking them up, preparing them and producing them – reconfigure our sense of the world? How can we experience and understand music not simply as what presents itself in the context of sound-phenomena-organized-in-time-and-exchanged-for-cash within the factory of post/industrial capitalism, but also, as an aesthetic-poetic-political mode of enquiry, a mode of perception, a way of learning and sharing – in and outside of the vibrations of sound or the marks of language?

These and other questions will be explored over two days through the practice of X- Ray Hex Tet – an ongoing collaboration between:

Billy Steiger – celeste and violin
Crystabel Riley – drums
Edward George – words and music
Pat Thomas – piano and electronics
Paul Abbott – drums and synthetic sounds
Seymour Wright – alto saxophone (actual and potential)

Six musicians of different backgrounds working at the margins of what is (to many) acceptable in terms of music, genre, technique, interpretation, history and ‘tradition’; a set of subjectivities, energies and philosophies who, in dialogue together, venture and probe the awkward wealth and friction of investigation, finding pleasure (and treasure) in searching for the hidden, secret, and mysterious at the edges of music and meaning.

Their debut album will be released on October 15th via Reading Group (New York).

https://readinggroupcompany.bandcamp.com/album/x-ray-hex-tet

Pat Thomas is a UK-based pianist who has been performing and recording in a stunning range of contexts. Active for over 30 years, he has collaborated with Derek Bailey, Eugene Chadbourne, Rhys Chatham, Lol Coxhill, Wadada Leo Smith and many others, and is part of the groups اسم [Ism] and أحمد [Ahmed] and more. He studied classical piano but has always been interested in approaching music from a variety of different vantage points. Different traditions, from dub to improvisation and jungle, come together in the sound world of Pat Thomas. His research, both in his music and his occasional writing, is dedicated, among other things, to rethinking the history of jazz, in light of the underrecognized contribution of West African Islam.

Seymour Wright is a saxophonist from the UK who has released several solo albums and collaborated with groups such as أحمد [Ahmed], @xcrswx, GUO, XT and lll人. The various practices he has engaged in throughout his life – improvisational performances, writing about music, teaching – are all linked by his curiosity and desire to learn. He grew up the son of a concert organizer and spent much of his childhood immersed in music and other art forms, but developed his music practice as part of a weekly improvised music workshop led by AMM percussionist Eddie Prévost. From there, he also grew a dissertation that used the AMM collective's practice as a case study to explore how people develop creative practice together, as a situated and collective form of learning.

Edward George is a London-based writer, broadcaster and photographer. A founding member of Black Audio Film Collective, he wrote and presented, among others, the seminal essay film Last Angel of History (1996), which helped pave the way for contemporary thinking around Afro-futurism. George was part of the multimedia duo Flow Motion and the electronic music project Hallucinator. His ongoing radio series The Strangeness of Dub and The Strangeness of Jazz intertwine a broad musical selection with different geographical musical histories, African/Afro-diasporic knowledge and critical theory from queer and black studies. His work includes Dub Housing, a project exploring how dub music articulates a different consciousness of people and place, time and geography, history and architecture, race and metropolis.

Paul Abbott is a London-based musician, drummer and writer. He explores music as ecology, in which the interaction of sounds, signs and the physical body allows real and imaginary music to grow. His work often focuses on creating practical and fictional structures to enable improvisation and experimental musical play. Recent and ongoing collaborations include: XT with Seymour Wright; RP Boo Trio with XT; The Creaking Breeze Ensemble with Nathaniel Mackey; yPLO with Micheal Speers. Abbott recently finalized his PhD at the University of Edinburgh, entitled Playing no solo imagination: synthesising the rhythmic emergence of sound and sign through embodied drum kit performance and creative writing. He is currently conducting research at the Royal Conservatory/Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. He was also co-founder and co-editor of Cesura//Acceso, journal for music, politics and poetics.

Crystabel Riley toured Japan and Europe in the late 2000s with drums, electronics and make-up in the power-noise trio Maria and the Mirrors. This was the beginning of her interest in shapes and patterns on skins - both human and drum. An interest in dimensional patterns on (and of) different surfaces, aesthetic, biological and historical, has continued to develop by exploring the idea of ‘care and uncare’ of different skin surfaces. Crystabel has long collaborated with Sue Lynch, who welcomed her into the Horse Improvised Music Club and later played in the London Improvisers Orchestra. She is currently working, among others, on the multi-format duo project @xcrswx with Seymour Wright.

Billy Steiger has been causing a furore on the London improvisation scene for several years. This Irish violinist's non-idiomatic approach can be experienced in projects such as Frîdd Newydd, a solo recording of his ‘magical-realist violin music’ accompanied by drawings and photographs of his trip to an imaginary village in Wales. As a visual artist and musician, his practice evolves as a kind of writing by ear. He is inspired by the work of Clarice Lispector, mainly her book Água Viva, which always seems to be in suspension between interior and exterior and impression and expression. His music resonates in some ways with her work, which engages less with the cerebral or knowable realm of words, than with the unknowable moment of experience. He has played with David Toop, Daniel Blumberg and O YAMA O, among others.

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In the context of the research project Echoes of Dissent (KASK & Conservatory / School of Arts Gent). In collaboration with Courtisane, Auguste Orts and In vitro, with the support of Flanders State of the Art, VGC (Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie) and Q-O2.

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Entrance: €12

les ateliers claus
Rue Crickxstraat 15
1060 Brussels
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Graphic design by @randevos

Thu 7 November 2024

Tara Clerkin Trio + Sergeant + Julia Robert

Tara Clerkin Trio

Tara Clerkin Trio are Pat Benjamin, Sunny Joe Paradisos and Tara Clerkin, three musicians involved in a number of cult Bristol bands over the years before confidently settling down in triangle formation. They are inspired by and borrow from jazz, trip hop, electronica, psychedelia & minimalism, twirling the non-pretentious strands of these threads together into a trippy green winged-cloak, adorning Arthur Russell and dripping in blue jam.

https://taraclerkintrio.bandcamp.com/album/on-the-turning-ground

https://taraclerkintrio.bandcamp.com/album/in-spring

https://taraclerkintrio.bandcamp.com/album/tara-clerkin-trio

Sergeant

Sergeant is the Brussels abstract punk band of composing cineast Benjamin Cools, search-singing actor Ferre Marnef & sonic angle Geraldine Vanspauwen.
With scissors and flutes, Sergeant composes his sampled self around the abyss of pop music. Like editing a movie, they cut sonic scenes into new adventures.
On stage, they string the krauty music to experimental heights, influenced by improvised flute skats and performative sing-alongs.

Sergeant's self-titled debut was released on STROOM last year, where they will also release a follow-up next year.

https://stroomtv.bandcamp.com/album/sergeant

Julia Robert

In alètheia (ἀλήθεια in ancient Greek) which means “unveiling by veiling”, Julia Robert unveils her music through the viola d’amore and the voice, instruments that she veils and diverts in order to reveal other listening points. This organic facet of her musical writing will also be found into her use of repetition and trance music. alètheia meaning as well “being-true”, Julia Robert decided to face her argentine heritage and through the process of unveiling, arranges and works with traditionals songs from the Mapuche community.
A highly trained and professional violist, Julia Robert is currently developing a multidisciplinary language of performance, integrating the theatre and the body into her practice. She is the founder of the company Leidesis, EXIT duo, IMPCT Quartet and collaborates with ONCEIM, Garth Knox …

https://juliarobertmusic.bandcamp.com/

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In collaboration with moli del tro records.

Why The Eye (Album release)

Sat 28 September 2024

Why The Eye (Album release)

les ateliers claus

doors: 20:00

tickets

concert

mes lèvres & number fate with matthieu ha, cayo, alice george perez, joey wright

Thu 3 October 2024

mes lèvres & number fate with matthieu ha, cayo, alice george perez, joey wright

les ateliers claus

doors: 20:00

tickets

concert

Echoes of Dissent (Vol. 5): X-Ray Hex Tet

Sat 19 October 2024 ⟹ Sun 20 October 2024

Echoes of Dissent (Vol. 5): X-Ray Hex Tet

les ateliers claus

doors: 20:00

tickets

concert

Tara Clerkin Trio + Sergeant + Julia Robert

Thu 7 November 2024

Tara Clerkin Trio + Sergeant + Julia Robert

les ateliers claus

doors: 20:00

tickets

concert