This is the fourteenth edition of KRAAKfestival. Please join us for a mind melting trip through the dark nooks and crannies of modern music. This year we explore the deconstruction of punk music, insightful approaches in the domains of musique concrète and sound poetry, exotic marimba lumina compositions, deep and authentic song writing, performance art, audio visual synaestheticism and retardo wave pop. The blessed Cinema Nova people took over the film program, and it's also the last day of the expos by Vincent Meesen, Lidwien van de Ven and Mohamed El baz. Open your senses and hang loose!

Line-up: Alvarius B / Amen Dunes / Angels in America / Darksmith of California / Paul Dutton / Peter Fengler / Girlseeker / Sally Golding / Hieroglyphic Being / Keijo & The Rambling Boys / Lukas Ligeti / Roscoe Mitchell / Räjäyttäjät / Rodger Stella / Joris Van de Moortel / Wild Classical Music Ensemble

Pre-fest shows:
Darksmith of California plays March 1 at Günther, Antwerp. 
Räjäyttäjät plays March 2 at Kinky Star, Ghent. 

Post-fest show:
Roscoe Mitchell & Sheldon Siegel plays March 4 at Archiduc, Brussels. 

http://kraak.net/festival2012/

Fourth installment in our split 7” series, God Damn I Hate the Blues , presents splendid new work from Amen Dunes, Marisa Anderson, Ignatz, Nathan Bowles, Warm Climate and Bridget Hayden.

When we first heard the seductive sounds of Meghan Remy’s U.S. Girls in 08, we immediately fell in love with both the music and the persona. For her third full length “U.S. Girls on Kraak”, this astonishing muse of modern pop music extends her old lo-fi aesthetics into what is her most melodic and radio friendly output so far. Remy’s vocal abilities get a major stress on this record, clearly laying bare her sixties girl band and nineties R’nB influences, without losing touch with her early roughness en experimentalism. In barely thirty minutes Remy moves from the hit parade flavoured ‘Island Song’, over her sublime cover of Brandy & Monica’s ‘The Boy Is Mine’, to an actual classic country song. This is all intertwined with her usual talent for shortsong-writing and raw esoteric scapes. “U.S. Girls on KRAAK” is probably Remy’s most accesible work to date, and a highlight in her oeuvre that might mark the end of her ‘early years’.

After his exploration of the kosmische territory, Köhn reprogrammed his his brain to dive into another early synth passion of his: minimalism. Drawing inspiration from great masters such as Philip Glass, Steve Reich and Terry Riley, De Blonde recorded four late night ‘variations on a theme’. These are pure transcendental improvisations, meditations on minimal patterns and shifting arpeggios. Random Patterns lays bare and celebrates Köhn’s limitations a s a keyboard player, exploiting the deep core of instant composition. All four tracks show a dynamic relationship between observation, evaluation, action, reaction, acceptance and attempt, provoking sudden moments of musical insight or even feelings of genuine inner tranquility. Random Patterns is a wonderful piece of synth music that is completely disconnected from recent revivalists and painstakingly focussed on the personal bond between man and his instrument.

Listen, Feta is the Greek traditional goat cheese. That’s a fact that is right. And that again is a tautology, a style figure derived from the Greek ‘tauto logos’.

The record itself is not that complicated though. Musically Gerard Herman started his career with a noise cd-r that he couldn’t sell, dropped his carreer and picked it up as the sax and found objects player in Belgium’s youngest and most extraordinary free jazz combo Sheldon Siegel. With a combination of off the hook poetry, Suicide beats, field recordings, home made instruments, excerpts from his radio shows and other musique concrète Herman gave us the weirdest, funniest and most arty KRAAK debut till today. This year the man with two first names will graduate from Ghent Art Academy as a master in the Graphic Arts. This limited edition LP is a part of his graduation project. All art, including an offset printed poster, is made by Herman himself. The cover photos are by Sine Van Menxel. Fêta Justice is a great portrait of the artist as a young man, exploring new avant-garde territories in an uncomplexed Flemish fashion.

ALL I SEE IS LIGHT | CASSETTE

“All I see is light” is the second release in our brand new cassette series. This c40 captures one of Köhn’s true cosmic healing sessions at the legendary house show venue ‘At Anthony’s’ in Ghent. In this set we hear De Blonde’s weirder side, combining his love for late 70s kraut in more abstract terms with the old school Köhn vibe. Think bizarre repetitive leads, eighties string work, oscillation paradises and other maneuvers in the dark. For those who liked “We need more space in the cosmos”, here he takes his nouveau brain sound even one step further. 

LIVE AT TWEEKLANK 2010 | CASSETTE 

At the first edition of Tweeklank festival Limpe Fuchs and Gerard Herman proved the universal and cross-generation language of improvised music. Coming from the revolutionary sixties freak scene in Germany Fuchs still plays with the same energy on her self-built instruments consisting of impressive bronze and stone sculptures. This concert evolves around Fuchs’ creatures, her viola, Herman’s diy duchampwheel, alt sax and expressive vocal interplay. A truly wonderful live experience captured for the cult archives. 

AN INDIFFERENT OCEAN | LP 

Previously found prizing atom splitting feedback through a horizontal guitar, Bridget Hayden’s solo experiments have more lately sought the brooding, layered blues that we find resonating in “An Indifferent Ocean”. A stripped down set up, featuring an out of tune, hand me down guitar, two pedals of similar origin – no delays – and a donated fourtrack port-a-studio found on the street, has converged to form a crafted storm of abyss kicking improvisation.  Best known for her involvement with the hypnotic, shambollic and critically acclaimed drone band Vibracathedral Orchestra, Hayden split in 2006, desiring change and a new vein to hone. She toured solo with kindred freaks such as The Aethr Method, Melanie Crowley-Delaney, Marcia Bassett and Sunburned Hand of the Man, later teaming up with The Telescopes’ henchman Stephen Lawrie to begin a noisy collaboration that continues to confuse and electrify. Here, in her first official and long awaited solo release, you will find a spectrum of somnambulist trances that seamlessly conjoin dense and frantic depth with delicate fracture. Relentless guitar shredding epics are interspersed with graceful, drifting melancholia that lull the listener back to shore with a warm, whispered dream after being crashed mercilessly against the rocks. 

MANOEUVERS | 7INCH - OUT DECEMBER 6TH

Manoeuvers 7inch with exclusive tracks by Rene Hell, Jonas Reinhardt, Jonathan Fitoussi & Bear Bones, Lay Low. Out on December 6th 

Manoeuvers, the new 4-way split in the KRAAK 7" series, offers four short trips through the great cosmic minds of Rene Hell, Jonas Reinhardt, Jonathan Fitoussi and Bear Bones, Lay Low. Although all four artists use analog synthesizers as the prime source for their repetitive, mind expanding compositions they show the broad variety in which retro-futuristic music has evolved in recent years. Hell opens the gates of modern trance meditation with some weirdly pulsating brain candy. It is followed by some eastern vibes in Bear Bones, Lay Low's track, bringing to mind a Turkish Alan Vega in liquid salvia fields. On the b-side French composer Jonathan Fitoussi injects the cosmic into minimalism with an almost Glassian atmosphere. Kranky-artist Jonas Reinhardt closes the gates again spacing on craftmanship in a slowed down dancey style kraut track with ethnic synth melodies, in the vein of some Sky-releases from the 80s. Four other-dimensional pieces, celebrating the lost sublime. Artwork by Floris Vanhoof. 

IGNATZ

SELECTED SONGS FROM CASSETTES 2005-2009 

‘What the hell’s wrong with this guy?’, that will probably be the first thought that goes through your mind when first listening to this mind frying fourth lp by Belgium’s most intriguing musician. 

Apart from the tree enigmatic vinyl releases on KRAAK Bram Devens also released a handful of tapes on different labels. This LP compiles the best tracks of his cassettes on Goaty Tapes, Bennifer Editions, Scumbag Relations, Imvated, Dreamtime Taped Sounds and New Age Tapes, plus a previously unreleased track from the Ignatz III demos, on which we hear the man as close as he ever came to the genious vibes of Lou Reed. “Selected songs from cassettes 2005-2009” shows Devens in all his different guises: from the crying sailor drowning in psychedelic mud to the melody addicted outsider balladeer choking on moonshine. This is Ignatz’ ultimate record and last step before his orchestrated concept album period. Cover drawing by Olivier Schrauwen