Very happy to have Ben Bertrand join us at the venue! Ben is on one of our favourite labels Stroom.tv Records and his latest record is another beautiful edition to their catalogue.
Ben Bertrand is a Belgian bass clarinetist and composer. With his instrument and countless machines, Ben creates his live sets with a hypnotic web of sounds.
The world he presents is a fusion of diverse influences built around traditional and ancestral music, and even current electronic music. Ben Bertrand skillfully bridges the gap between extreme modernity and references to the past.Listening to his music is like sitting at the sea, watching a slow motion of our crazy lives sailing by.
The occasion of possibility runs through Ben Bertrand's new album Relic Radiation. It is all backdrops and layers. Hints of the emotive and the distant. Confronting the classical with what is new, looking for an expressive space. Melancholy, not melancholy. Contemplation on a midnight blizzard. Dust motes in a sunbeam. Sand dunes and microwaves.
Ever since 2018 and the release of his first solo album, Ben Bertrand has been working up his own interpretation of the bass clarinet as an instrument of the avant-garde. Touching upon ambient and cosmic as well as earthy sceneries, his is a gentle musical paradox come to life. Let go of explicit pleasantries, Relic Radiation is the polymathic interpretation of a frozen intercom, of a subdued intent of contact. The music is competent and familiar, distant without being distant. There is no predefined form or context here. It is a different kind of colour.
As musical moments and modi become enormous, things break down into exploration. On the crystal shores of perception, Relic Radiation leaves a lot of space for interpretation. It is never loud, although it works loud. An at times almost sequenced feel to treated and overdubbed bass clarinet and clarinet notes adds to a feeling of paradox. Every voice, every gesture indicates a way in. The electron is now an immeasurable wave.
w/
Gris Marguerite
Multi instrumental/objectal sound and film splice from Leeds
and
Microgram
Lush drones and tones
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