Dirk Descheemaeker / clarinet Jan Kuijken / cello Jean-Luc Manderlier / keyboards Pierre Narcise / tabla drums Daniel Schell / Chapman stick
Last album to date, Gira Girasole is yet another good album, but the tendency is to give the synths more and to reach ever wider in the cultural roots of European music, but the artistic approach is sometimes a bit hollow because it sounds rather forced. I must say that I would much rather like those ever-present synths to be replaced by acoustic instruments, mostly because that by 94, the sounds used were dating clearly from 80's synth sounds, which any progheads will agree was not the best generation. While there are some interesting tracks, such as the Spanish-sounding Francesca and the Eastern-inspired are more than interesting, but the whole thing seems to reach a certain level, but always content avoiding to surpass itself. And Schell's Chapman stick is hardly noticeable anymore.
If I can advise to start with any of the other two albums and delve into this one only if you are fully convinced by the others.
This second album is well in the musical alignment of its predecessor (that means pompously that it sounds a bit like the one before it;-) although with a slight Tango twist (this means that you could dance with your grandma to this album) with some flabbergasting meanders towards more modern classics (this meaning that your jaw drops to the floor and your ears melt and your mind orgasms)
The album's centrepiece is clearly written for century to come is the 8 min+ Soit Ilot with Haut-Voltige choirs. Of course in such an Oeuvre (yessssss!!!!! With a capital if you please ;-), we are not listening to rock anymore, but never mind those details, every symphonic rock will simply love this stuff. A little weirder are the next two tracks with their Asian feels not successfully translated to synthesisers, but Le Voyageur clearly brings back the splendid atmospheres to fall on the other major work: the BLWCH mini-suite cut into four distinct movements - these guys take Univers Zero's music yet another step towards perfection. The last two tracks being strictly classical and rather downplaying the excitement built-up just before.
Relatively uneven, this is one of those albums that could give your musical adventures a real twist and not necessarily the way you would expect it.
After the demise of Belgian fusion/Canterbury group Cos, its leader Daniel Schell took a couple years to reform a new group but he changed direction wanted a more acoustic and third world sound. From his love of the early 80's KING CRIMSON 5this was quite obvious in the later Cos album such as Pasiones) he had learned to play the Chapman stick (which bassist Tony Levin was the first one to play to a wider audience). He had recorded a duo album with Brussels-based Dutch singer (but French-singing Dick Annegarn), but was determined to do something quite different than previously.
In 86, his album If Window They Have moved somewhere between JULVERNE's classical "prog" music and UNIVERS ZERO's more acoustic music and OREGON's unique folk-jazz fusion - although one can still detect a few Fripp-Levin influence, the music has nothing to do with KING CRIMSON anymore.
By 90 his second album The Secret Of Blwch, had been recorded - including a more permanent line-up (including buddy of mine Pierre Narcisse on tabla drums UNIVERS Zero's Dirk Descheemaeker on winds and ex-Magma Manderlier on keys) - and is one of the best example of the Belgian chamber prog scene. The third Gira Girasole is still in the same mode, but the mood is even more jumpy/happy but the synths are more present. Since the mid-90's no new recording from this line-up , but the first two albums are certainly the best kept musical secret from Belgium.
This debut album really sets the tone for the rest of the albums to come. Somehow picking up on the mode of music Oregon and Julverne, this amazing record was quite unique back then (even if by today's standards they sound somehow a bit common) and they were at the forefront of Continental Europe's experimental music (all acoustic except for Manderlier's synths) - listen to the weird Bijna Zomer En Ik Loop mixing continuous loop with classical music (layered by Chapman stick arpeggios) or the succeeding Listen To The Short Waves where didgeridoos accompany cellos and the clarinet. But to me, on this album, nothing surpasses 3 Moustiquaires (a pun on the Three Musqueteers) with Narcisse's superb percussions leading the way to repetitititititive heaven. The "Clou Du Spectacle" is definitely the 14 min+ Tapi La Nuit which take its time to develop and meander through your ears filling them with haunting melodies. The whole thing being ended with the superb final number Logs with some astounding cellos - synth drones underlined by some out of this world wooden blocks percussions, grandiose.
All the tracks being composed by leader Daniel Schell (except one co-written by Cos vocalist Pascale Son), this album is a thousand miles away from any Cos album, but somehow it is very much exactly what you would expect from him. Much more than a curiosity, this album is simply a delightful discovery of what Belgian prog chamber can bring you.
This is a record I recently rediscovered, hiding in a stack of records I haven't played in ten years. This is timeless! Very clean recording - could be used for soundtrack applications or just for great listening. Kind of a cross between Brian Eno and The Blackearth Percussion Ensemble. There are some snappy numbers as well. Highly reccomended!
Along with Marc Hollander and Daniel Denis, Daniel Schell belongs to the most talented Belgian musicians of the generation that arrived in 1970s, but managed to outgrow the stylistic constraints of that era. He debuted in band Classroom, which subsequently transmuted into Cos. This highly revered Belgian band commingled European fusion and Zeuhl influences, which were often saved by Pascale Son’s airy, sensually modulated yet permanently girlish vocalizes. In later years, the band retained its name but slid towards perilous eclecticism, desperately seeking new audience.
Schell later dabbled in several idiosyncratic projects before discovering the charms of Chapman Stick, which underpinned the rhythmic pointillism of his band Karo. His cheery, exhilarating bacchanals engendered an early form of arithmetic chamber rock, delivered with freshness and disciplined fragility of a musical origami. The result was often comparable with the then flourishing Swiss ‘Alpine’ avant-rock.
Schell has since focused on film music and little of his compositional talent has been documented in a form available internationally. His overall output, considered allopatric and uneven, reflects an extraordinary range of moods and styles – from deeply reflective to almost buffoonish, from confidently pragmatic to nervously frequentist. In one case, described below, he realized a minor gem of conceptual folk-rock drama. In this venture, Schell was supported by Dick Annegarn, a popular Dutch singer who returned in recent years with a tribute to Jacques Brel.
UD
If romantic Greeks looked up to Theodoros Kolokotronis and the Poles dreamed of Konrad Wallenrod, then the Flemish reminisced about Egmont. This 16th century prince was a vassal of Carlos V and Felipe II, but opposed Spanish invasion of the Low Countries. The story was immortalized by Johann Wolfgang Goethe two centuries later. In Goethe’s play, the tragically beheaded hero leaves behind a mourning mistress, who eventually takes her life. Dick Annegarn and Daniel Schell built their homage to this romantic edifice through a deft juxtaposition of ancient and modern, acoustic and fusion ingredients. The record opens with short, crisp notes polished delicately by Schell on oud. Soon enough, an image of a village party emerges, as if transposed directly from Bruegel’s folkloric scene. A Breton circle dancing could be the closest comparison, with its light stomping time, purely acoustic setting and simple accents on shakers.
Piume al vento
Dirk Bogart, formerly of Pazop, presents this traditional song in Italian with a light, raspy vibrato. The verse repetitions increase in velocity, maintaining all the proportions and a steady pitch. The main theme is reciprocated with acoustic guitar and alternating male and female vocals, but these quasi-instinctive reactions become patchier when the thematic repetitions plunge with an intemperate pace. This estampie closes with a savage howl and metallic clutter. And we learn that the hero “sa che vincera – pui non tornera”.
Nelle
Dick Annegarn sings this hesitant ballad in French to a homely accompaniment on acoustic guitar. Then a flaming guitar transition imports an unassertively pastoral fragment. But the melodic lead vacillates and soon defaults to the stammering intro. A dustier, chewier secondary theme is brought up by Schell’s 12-string guitar, hummed along satirically. The lyrics mock foolhardy patriotism, the pace is slow and consensual, the articulation affiliative and supple.
Sabina and First Variation
“Sabina” is the first act of the trilingual, polyphonic Souterlied performed by Dirk Bogart (tenor and bass) and Pascale Son (soprano and alto). The medievalism of this metric psalm – composed by Egmont’s contemporary Clemens Non Papa – is subverted by Son’s quartzite, pre-puberty chorus. Sabina sobs over her imprisoned husband. A short solo on acoustic guitar adds some alteration to the basic cantus firmus.
La ballade du Zwin
This is a more archetypal singer-songwriter ballad, cushioned by the chamber-like purity of a duo of Daniel Schell on 13-string guitar and Michel Berckmans of Univers Zéro on oboe. The slight echo added to Berckmans’ double-reed distracts it from Pascale Son’s parallel vocalize. The translucent airiness of the passage evokes Kay Hoffmann’s unforgettable “Floret Silva”, which bathed in similarly medieval moats around the same time. Here, Pavel Haza’s cello adds a disciplined improvisation with an appropriately solemn, pining intonation.
Geuzenlied
Dick Annegarn sings here a 16th century Flemish poem. The elegiac theme, proclaiming that “Egmont is dood”, is allocated with the elegance of a spangling acoustic guitar and vernally wooden sticks. It is this pliant, lissome percussion that recalls Schell’s compatriots Aksak Maboul. Félix Simtaine’s constantly shifting percussive toolkit switches gear between the stanzas. Half way through the song, a Nordic solo on sinewy electric guitar materializes, packaged by a suddenly menacing bass (Jean-Louis Baudoin). The boreal guitar, commonly associated with Terje Rypdal’s groundbreaking recordings earlier in the decade, adds unexpected suspense to the narrative. Félix Simtaine’s adroitly impressionistic hi-hat work sets the stage for a seductively symmetrical flow. “Godt zal die wrake verhalen van die grave van Egmont – God will remember the count of Egmont”.
Un instant sous la hache
The scene of decapitation is laid out by Dirk Bogart on flute and Daniel Schell on 12-string guitar. It is a classic chamber folk duo with predetermined roles; the volant flute exploits its structural freedom with ascending breathiness. Flickering hand drum dives into the guitar’s soaring arpeggios, but the resulting tension is quickly released by a sharpened, mid-flight flute section.
Granvelle
Dick Annegarn adopts here the half-spoken mannerism of Serge Gainsbourg, stressing his syllables with bored insolence – “I rebel against your second hand deaths”. The narrator eschews direct irony, even though Schell and Annegarn share their own vision of Egmont as a reluctant hero, an antithesis of Goethean creation. “Granvelle” is essentially a rock song with a slinky fusion backing, stenciled with a jazzy guitar and suppliant drumming. Pascale Son makes some harmonically consonant bypasses on oboe, leaving behind a somewhat hapless guitar solo. Her instrument is highly pitched and lyrical, but limited in energy and almost breathless in legatos. The long awaited Ilona Chale squeezes little more than a desperate proclamation of a life terminated.
Sabina and Second Variation
The second act of the “Sabina” triplet. We revisit here the polyphonic singing in French, Italian and Flemish with an ecclesiastical touch. Pascale Son’s innocuous voice has been deservedly likened to Haco’s. The theme closes with a solo guitar side-track.
Ein kleiner Mann
Parading her infantile innocence, Pascale Son declaims a nursery rhyme about a little man. This piece, a variation on a march from Wortel, collects pleasant verse suspensions and proceeds unassumingly aboard whistles and an electric guitar in its Nordic, nostalgic mantle. While the rhythm section syncopates, a jangly acoustic guitar wobbles drunken, as if parachuted from an ESP anti-folk recording. After this variegated interlude, Pascale Son returns, hushing out again the verses about the little Man who sacrificed his life.
Sabina
Back to the polyphonic voices, huddled somewhere under the architrave. Unfortunately, the somewhat strangled tenors marginalize the female counterparts into mere Nebenstimme role.
The ff BOOM
The tragic story is memorably rounded off by these 12 minutes of quintessentially European cosmic jazz. It is as if the final, Aristotelian catharsis provided a necessary closure for the tragic story of human misfortune. Jean-Louis Baudoin clutches his acoustic bass with deft fingering, in expression ranging from dry and pungent to semi sweet and voluble. Félix Simtaine opts for Jon Christensen-like cymbal ubiquity. Schell’s elaborations on electric guitar appear topologically simple yet highly fluid. Windy effects haunt us from the back until a synthesizer glissando interrupts this flow. Underpopulated by skin’n’cymbal rattle and distant groans, the trio audibly searches for clues. When Baudoin eventually re-establishes the ostinato, we face not one, but two guitar tracks – a funky quack, and a gnarly amp-distorted rock solo. Drumming has now become segmented and metronomically basic. Taking advantage of this hysteresis, the grimy guitar hashes up the remaining material until the gusty effects cleave the rhythmic procession.
The target of the new Lowlands label Musique Belgique Archive is to dig up forgotten treasures from the Belgian musical history. The first idea is to re-release the old vinyl from the 70's on CD. At that time, the major labels only released these albums (pressed in a maximum 500 copies) to prevent the musicians to go to other labels. Often there wasn't even a promo budget and the albums were thus soon forgotten. In the meantime these albums are very hard to find and have become 'collector's items' abroad, thanks to their originality. We think it's our duty to give these records the attention they deserve and to prevent that they are forgotten forever. Especially because they still sound fresh and timeless and represent a part of the rich Belgian musical tradition. The CD 'Egmont and the ff Boom' tells the history of the traditional polyphonic music from the Low Countries, using the personage of Egmont, Count of Gaasbeek (1522-1568) as a theme. All music was recorded in the 70's, all based around the unique and traditional polyphonic music of the 16th century, featuring, next to the two mentioned artists, an impressive range of guest musicians/artists. This CD contains the original Freebird production plus new pieces, based on the old ones. The digipack CD contains a booklet in which Daniel Schell tells about his search for the real traditional music from the low countries and about Egmont, who died on a scaffold on the Grande Place in Brussels.
