CHASSOL (Fr.)
If Frank Ocean’s ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ (working title) ever sees the light of day, his sound will be very strongly coloured by Parisian composer and pianist Christophe Chassol – who spent quite a while with the sweetly-voiced Odd Future-member in London’s famous Abbey Road studio to work on Ocean’s brand new album. He’s done the same in the past too, with compatriots Phoenix, Sébastien Tellier and Gotan Project. They were all impressed by what Chassol calls his ‘ultrascores’. Let’s just call them: a fusion of video and rhythmic audio bundled into a hypnotic experience.

So last year there was the release of ‘Big Sun’, the final piece in a unique trilogy that Chassol recorded during his travels through New Orleans (see: the album ‘Nola Cherie’), India (see: ‘Indiamore’) and his motherland Martinique (see: ‘Big Sun’). The result? A musical cocktail of film and experimental jazz compositions spiced with the hypnotic ambient background sounds of the local fauna and flora.

DE BEREN GIEREN (b.)
We found ‘One Mirrors Many’, the third album by De Beren Gieren, to be one of the best Belgian albums of last year. That was also confirmed live during our brand new indoor festival BRDCST, where they impressed as opener for GoGo Penguin. De Standaard summarized their skills like this: ‘Gedetailleerd spel, een meeslepende piano, forse rockachtige injecties, verstilling en een fikse climax.‘

That’s how ‘One Mirrors Many’ sounds too: from experimental piano melodies & dissonant sounds to improvised jazz to funky contra bass rhythms. Pivotal figure is definitely pianist Fulco Ottervanger, who arrived in Ghent from Holland via Brussel, and who we also know from Stadt en Beraadgeslagen (the duo he has on the side with Stuff.-drummer Lander Gyselinck).