Arts Centre Vooruit, Ghent, Belgium

Journey through a burning brain
Genres and musical definitions seem to create a dissension between music journalism and the actual music scene more often than to be an adequate description for a certain sound or style. Many times these so-called genres are the product of all too arduous authors, label bosses or blog-nerds trying to spread their sudden enthusiasm. But they lead to general distribution by promo machines worldwide that abuse it to shove their awful music up the naive listener’s ass. The last couple of years we got to digest new weird americanism, folktronics, weird punk, shitgaze and dozens of other genres and subgenres in an amazing tempo. Now, with one of the many re-emergences of the German synth and rock movement from the seventies, terms like “krautrock” and “kosmische musik” are re-appearing in reviews and articles, both appropriate and inappropriate. This evening is a middle finger towards genre-thinking, a middle finger towards ourselves and mostly an evening full of mind expanding kosmokrautdroneambient and a little fx driven psychedelic industrialweirdosludge.

KÖHN
Jürgen De Blonde (BE) is known to be the gothfather of Belgian electronica. Although it seemed like he has been covered in silence after his epic double-cd “Koen”, he merely focussed on music for theater and dance productions. But suddenly he popped up again with an amazing come-back lp entitled “We need more Space in the Cosmos”. On this album he declares his love for his old idols, being a.o. Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schülze and Jean-Michel Jarre. The result is a synth-driven album, that has as much to do with eighties electronic music as with the whole Köhn universe. On Pauze festival he presents this new synth fetisj period for the first time to the public.

SWORD HEAVEN
Sword Heaven (US) originates from the flowering scene of Columbus, Ohio which was already represented at the Kraak Festival in March this year with performances by Pink Reason and Psychedelic Horseshit. However, the music of two-piece Sword Heaven has little correspondence with the new generation of lo-fi punkers, but rather focuses on slow, tribal and rather physical noise. Think of a more percussion oriented version of Yellow Swans or Lightning Bolt after swallowing an overdose of valium supplemented with distorted death cries and a tonal mush of sound effects. Their sound is often compared to the early work of industrial rock bands such as Swans and Godflesh. Be that as it may, Sword Heaven in any case is one of the most interesting contemporary musical vehicles when it comes to bloody noise.

ARP
Alexis Georgopoulos (US) once was a founding member of the band Tussle, but in 2006 he decided to concentrate on his personal artistic activities. His fascination for the search of spontaneity in electronic music lead to his his album “In Light” (Smalltown Supersound), a brilliant record on which he creates a synthesis of Alice Coltrane experiment, minimalism and seventies synth music. Like a 2008 version of Manuel Göttsching and Dieter Möbius. Arp is one of those new contemporary musicians that want to bring back the early spontaneous feeling of the seventies and early eighties into todays electronic music.

WOODEN SHJIPS
Wooden Shjips (US) is one and all love. For these new born hippies, the summer of love isn’t a time document, but rather a way of life. Their self titled debut-LP on Holy Mountain Records convinced psych lovers all over the world that psychedelic rock can also be dance music. Their music has all the ingredients needed: repetitive drums, funky bass licks, fuzzy guitar solos, far-out vocals and lots of delay-ay-ay. Wooden Shjips are the best ever cross breed between the Doors and Spacemen 3 in the year 2525. After a very short après-ATP tour this summer, they are finally touring the whole of Europe. In the Benelux exclusively on Pauze festival.