Carte Blanche – On the wings of a rabbit, day 1

An old fashioned welcome…
Aarich smuggled a Decap organ into the hall/bar of the venue, and it played all the classic 50’s and 60’s tunes you (or your parents) might have danced to back then. Aarich also wanted to add some Zita Swoon songs to the computer operated ‘machine’ but time got in the way (it would have been nice).

.

The Golden Glows (myspace)
Antwerp based trio with a repertoire of music from the first half of the previous century. Yesterday they added Jon (or John) Burton (something like that), a British cornet player to their line up, which worked very well. I loved the voice of singer Bram van Moorhem.

.

Prima Donkey (myspace)
To be honest: I was amazed by the number of musicians on stage. It’s rather a collective than a band – with members of DAAU and Laïs, Rudy Trouvé, leader Gunter Nagels and others. They’re playing the kind of ‘antwerp jazz’ you like!
… and Stef joined them to close the set with a cover of Bob Dylan’s Winterlude.

.

Intermission-act: The Robots
I really don’t now what to think of it, but I’m always in for some good old Belgian surrealism. 1 male and 2 female robots doing some funny dancing.
(The male robot made me think of Futurama’s Bender)

.

Rodaan Al Galidi (website)
A poet. A poet with a great sense of humour. As an Iraqi he uses the Dutch language in a very original/fresh way. Attack you local bookstore!

.

Cheval Blanc
This French singer-songwriter seemed a bit shy or uncertain, but his music sounds real, and that’s what it is about.

.

The Gates of Eden, Stef Kamil Carlens plays Dylan (setlist)
It was the third time we saw them this week. If quantity is your thing, the try-out in Leffinge – and his long setlist – was your place to be. If you wanted to be close to Stef and his friends you would have loved the Crossing Border-gig.
Here in Brussels you were given quality. Sound quality.
On the downside: Just as during Prima Donkey the gap between the band and the audience seemed a little too big. (or maybe we were spoiled before. Were we?)

about the band:
One can only have the greatest respect for this musicians. We saw Serge Feys (piano/keyboard), Mirko Banovic (bass), Thomas Vanelslander (guitar) and Sam Gysel (drums) on Monday at the Radio 1 session playing 3 hours of Arno music. One day later they were playing Dylan music. Over there in Leffinge Geert Hellings (Stanton, Guido Belcanto, Brazzaville…) joined them on guitar and lap steel.

Advertisement