Carmen Villain – meakusma

October 30, 2022

Christina Vantzou & Ensemble N.5, EC BAND

• EC BAND (live, 35’)

The EC Band is a collaboration between Luke Calzonetti (USA) and Stijn Wybouw (BE), both at the same time artist and musician. The duo brings improvisations with transcendental aspirations, supported by vast layers of electric bass guitar, haunting synth notes and sniffling percussion. Their first album will be released this Autumn on Meakusma.

• CHRISTINA VANTZOU WITH LIESELOT DE WILDE, BEN BERTRAND & JAB – N°5 (live, 50’)

Greek-American composer and filmmaker Christina Vantzou, who lives in Brussels, creates soft and highly refined music that floats between modern classical, ambient and sound art. Over the course of fifteen years she has built up her own audiovisual language and released four albums at Kranky (N°1 to N°4). Following recent releases like Multi Natural on Edições CN and Landscape Architecture with CV & JAB, Vantzou now announces her fifth album: N°5. Originating from a residency at STUK in February 2020, N°5 is based on recordings of no less than 17 musicians: from piano over winds and strings to synthetic music and field recordings. Vantzou interprets her role as composer as simply “one who joins things.” She describes how she, in close proximity to the Aegean Sea, worked mostly outside at a small patio table on the Cycladic island of Ano Koufonisi, to edit and mix the recordings. Between swimming sessions, something very intimate and autobiographical emerged, “almost like a first album”. The Aegean sea water regularly sloshes against the rocks of her compositions, flanked by glottal groaning, uneasy, lyrical movements, glittering eddies of modular synth and languorous silences. Live, Vantzou (electronics, piano) brings the compositions to life together with John Also Bennett (bass flute, piano, synthesizer), Lieselot De Wilde (voice) and Ben Bertrand (bass clarinet).

Ensemble:
Christina Vantzou: electronics, piano
John Also Bennett: bass flute, piano, synthesizers
Lieselot De Wilde: voice
Ben Bertrand: bass clarinet

N°5 will be out on Kranky on 11 November 2022

Partner:

September 20, 2022

NUITS SONORES invites MATOMAH AGENCY & MEAKUSMA

Nuits Sonores has invited Meakusma and the newly founded Matomah Agency to curate a night of concerts and wayward clubbing. On the bill are live performances by Norwegian-Mexican artist and producer Carmen Villain, Kassem Mosse’s alter ego DJ Residue, Polish-born audio visual artist Wojciech Rusin and more tba. DJing before, in-between and after by Meakusma and Matomah.

Carmen Villain makes atmospheric music with field recordings, woodwinds, samples and synths, conjuring up her very own and very distinctive sound of the cosmos, integrating elements of fourth world, dub and ambient. She has released on labels such as Smalltown Supersound, Geographic North and Longford Editions. Her 2022 Only Love From Now On album was hailed as an unpredictable and extremely dynamic masterpiece, delivering on the promise her amazing catalogue always bore within.

Born Ayman Rostom, The Maghreban is a house and techno producer from Guildford, UK. He also makes hip-hop as Dr. Zygote and is a member of hip-hop project Strange U. He runs his own Zoot Records label. Fusing hip-hop, house and downtempo patterns with African and Middle Eastern jazz modes as well as contemporary club rhythms, The Maghreban’s sound dwells on a lifetime spent making beats for the club and for home. It is a versatile mix of influences and moods and modes modern and emotive, at times thrusting, at times soothing.

Kassem Mosse‘s DJ Residue project turns the warehouse perspective of techno music inside out, coming up with a stripped down version that integrates experiment, the 90s chill out room and intricate percussion patterns. Between introspective and far out, DJ Residue conjures up a tribute of sorts to the unorthodox end of club music.
Both an album and single have been released in The Trilogy Tapes.

Wojciech Rusin draws inspiration from alchemical and gnostic texts, early renaissance choral music and Eastern European mythologies. He has released on Café OTO’s Takuroku digital imprint and on Boomkat Editions/Documenting Sounds. His music has been featured on BBC Four and he has worked for The National Theatre, The Southbank Centre and National Theatre.

This event is a collaborative effort between Meakusma and the new Matomah Agency, run by former Les Ateliers Claus booker Tommy Denys and Martin Vernier & Marija Kudabaité.