An Evening With Crammed Discs 8.12.2016 At Brass (Brussels)

The Brussels-based label presents four of its recent signings, four excellent and diverse artists who are all in the process of releasing an EP or an album on Crammed: AQUASERGE (FR) LE TON MITÉ (US/BE) FAUNA TWIN (FR/UK) ROZZMA(EG)

AQUASERGE

The brilliant experimental pop band has been a subterranean driving force in the international music scene for the last few years, inspiring and influencing countless musicians. Originally formed by three friends (Julien Barbagallo, Julien Gasc & Benjamin Glibert) in the south-western French city of Toulouse, Aquaserge soon became a shifting collective involving many collaborators (including mainstays Audrey Ginestet and Manon Glibert), while knitting an extended web of connections by collaborating with the likes of Tame Impala, Stereolab, Melody’s Echo Chamber, Acid Mothers Temple and Aksak Maboul.

Aquaserge’s resolutely polymorphous music draws from sources as diverse as original psych pop, free jazz, noise, vintage French lm music, pataphysics, and the most adventurous side of ‘60s/’70s rock (say, from kraut to Canterbury to cult Gallic bands). All absorbed and playfully transmuted to create their own unique, cinematic sound. Their tracks include instrumental excursions, intriguing harmonies, and pristine pop songs, always ready to joyfully burst at the seams. The band is is wildly creative in the studio, powerful and exciting on the stage.

“Guerre EP” – out October 2016 New album “Laisse ça être” : out Feb 2017

Clip AS / Les Zouzes : https://youtu.be/MvyDW_OpiWA

AS / 1st album teaser FB : https://www.facebook.com/aquasergee/videos/vb.237308518668/10154718619543669/?type=2&theater

LE TON MITÉ

Le Ton Mité is the project around eccentric and highly original musician/visual artist/poet McCloud Zicmuse, an American expatriate in permanent residence in Brussels. Having left the United States in the mid-noughties on a European sojourn that never ended, McCloud wound up in the Belgian capital in the fall of 2008. Half a decade on, a time in which he has embedded himself in European life via puppet shows, archery guilds, folkloric events, theatre projects and a catalogue of idiosyncratic solo and group works (perhaps most recognisably the 2011 Hoquets album on Crammed Discs called Belgotronics), McCloud returned to the States, to revisit places he had not seen, in some cases, for 15 years. His upcoming album is a soundtrack of this voyage, a finely woven double album patchwork of 50 songs. On one level a joyous testament to the fast-evaporating wonders of cultural pluralism and roving human spirit, “Passé Composé Futur Conditionnel” is, at heart, a swan song to McCloud’s motherland, a place that never will exist again. It is the battle cry against nostalgia, and the fruit of years of work from a true nomad artist of our culturally flatlined times, the liberation of knowing that home is no longer a place, but a state of mind.

New album “Passé composé futur conditionnel” out Feb 2017 on Crammed’s mythical MADE TO MEASURE composers’ series

Clip LTM / Space Needle : https://youtu.be/-iOqwgEsy9w

FAUNA TWIN

This very young band is based around French singer/songwriter Claire Jacquemard and Welsh musician Owain Ginsberg (We/Are/Animals and Hippies Vs Ghosts).They started out by circulating a couple of unfinished tracks which have elicited great reactions from the BBC6 and several online media across the UK, US and Canada, all obviously intoxicated by FaunaTwin’s melodies, atmospheres and dramatic percussions, and by the beauty of Claire’s voice. Fauna Twin claims multiple inspirations ranging from Queen to King Crimson by way of PJ Harvey, Fiona Apple, R.Stevie Moore and Radiohead, to create what they describe as a kind of hybrid shoegazish-drama-pop. UK mag The Cone sees their debut EP as containing Ultra-suave pop arrangements, Lynchian imagery and the roar of the city coming together in one attractively patterned jungle.

“The Hydra EP” out October 2016 Debut album in 2017

Clip FT/ Water on Mars : https://youtu.be/wXF9v1xDacQ

ROZZMA

This young electronic music producer and MC creates greats beats & sounds in his bedroom studio in Egypt, and has a great sense of humour. He originates from a budding micro-scene in Cairo. Broadly-speaking, he operates in the field of bass music, and describes his sound as a crossover between firetruck engine sirens and a sound system on fire. He was discovered by Acid Arab, and his debut EP will also be the first release on the brand-new imprint started by the Parisian band with Crammed.

Debut EP in 2017

Clip Rozzma / Baby : https://youtu.be/qotY6B7TZ44

CRAMMED DISCS

A reminder: blazing trails since 1981, wandering from day one between pop, electronic music, left eld rock and so-called “world music”, the Brussels label has discovered/accompanied artists as diverse as Bebel Gilberto, Tuxedomoon, Balkan Beat Box, Taraf de Haïdouks, SKIP&DIE , Yasmine Hamdan, Konono N1, Acid Arab and many more. Marc Hollander, founder of the label and of Aksak Maboul, is responsible for the label’s ever innovative musical directions.