brunk – winter ep
Si les 4 titres de cet ep ont été enregistrés en février 2008, on imagine très bien l’endroit où s’est passé l’enregistrement entouré de vastes entendues neigeuses tant la musique développée ici nous ramène invariablement à l’hiver. 4 titres ambient et contemplatifs qui sont signés du belge brunk/Bert Vanden Berghe. Avec une poignée de sons enregistrés, sa guitare et quelques effets, le flamand a su restituer une certaine ambiance, fortement évocatrice, dans une Ep intense et bien agréable à écouter. [8/10] (Netlabels Revue)
brunk – winter ep
brunk es Bert Vanden Berghe, amigo de este blog y músico residente en Ghent, Belgica, que lleva experimentando y grabando música desde 1998 y cuenta con trabajos en WM Recordings (donde acaba de lanzar otro album) o Dog Eared Records. En su primera vez para Resting Bell ofrece un álbum bello y calmado, con un sonido muy desnudo, melancólico y contemplativo. Las piezas están basadas principalmente en acordes y toques de guitarra mezclados con distintos microsonidos y texturas. (Netlabels & News)
brunk – winter ep
From Belgium is Bert Vanden Berghe, born in 1977, who released before on WM Recordings and Dog Eared Records. He plays guitar and sound effects, along with some field recordings. It opens with a nice drone like piece, in which the guitar is remotely busy in the back. In the other three pieces of this twenty minute E.P., the guitar plays a more dominant role. Using e-bow, chord changes and field recordings, his music is quite a common place for ambient in the good old Brian Eno sense, but also a bit old fashioned in a Robert Fripp solo style, which is not really my cup of tea, although I must say its not bad either. The twenty minutes on offer is quite alright for moody, atmospheric music. (FdW – Vital Weekly)
brunk – sept 2003
“No nos dejemos llevar por las apariencias, pese a la portada este album es cosa seria.
Eléctrico, acústico y electrónico, lleno de imaginación y creatividad. Gran esmero en los arreglos y una innegable habilidad para cambiar de género en los catorce tracks sin perder coherencia como album. El dialogo entre la guitarra y el bajo destacan por su destreza y riqueza. Todos los tracks por Bert Vanden Berghe.” (Netlabels & News)
invertebrata 4
“Sounded too weird to pass on it -
I mean it is aprils fools day, so there might be other intentions. The description is bang on, the quality of the recording is excellent. Einstürzende Neubauten comes to mind, but more in a chamber than an abandoned factory. Less lyrics. Yes, I think that sums it up quite well.” (Ragnar Roeck)
brunk – insert coins to continue:
“Berts breakfast” -
I can only imagine Bert had a drumcomputer for breakfast, washed it down with some of the early Prodigys energy and a bit of Aphex Twins sugar while Mario fixed his plumbing. Then the sun came out and he wrote this music. (This is written to encourage you, not to repel, just to make sure!)” (Ragnar Roeck)
brunk – insert coins to continue:
“Bert Vanden Berghe (BVB) is a 31-year-old Belgian (Flemish) musician from Ghent who is known by his aptitude to get embodied into many aliases. brunk, invertebrata, Passive Cable Theory are the names as the most known ones amongst his other projects. He has also appearing in the lineup of such groups like Karen Eliot (with Luther Blissett), The Returns, and SkullyS LandinG. As summarized, all it is a very diverse stuff, ranging from the examples of alt-folk, straightforward pop punk and twee-pop to free form guitar improvisations and noise music.
Though Insert Coins To Continue LP has been released under WM Recordings this year, this is an old album recorded and completed between 2003 and 2006. In some sense it is a kind of trash one, because the ICTC at first started as a bunch of leftovers and unfinished ideas. For a while BVB didn’t have definite plans what to do with them, they didn’t fit onto any album he had worked on until then (the albums so lo so fi and none of the above are mentioned herein). He has done everything on his own, has played some acoustic parts, bass guitars, a lot of electric guitar parts, recorded and edited in all kinds of ways, using an mexican Fender Stratocaster and an modified Epiphone Les Paul, a cheap acoustic guitar, and a Squier Jazz Bass, also used some cheap dynamic microphones. Some recorded sounds and voices are also derived from TV. Some samples are taken from seven-inch vinyl recordings ofsome kind of library music – farm animals, car and plane sounds, weather sounds. In addition of it, there are also represented scratches, buzzes, crackling.
However, face to face with previous brunk albums it is the absolutely different one. First 20 seconds consist of a blend of defective electronica, acoustic guitar touch, spoken word and ragged guitar riffs which will predict us what will be happening next – it could describe as in a fashion anti-manifesto per se. A kind of destructive posture in reference to his previous works as brunk. Furthermore, some song titles are also marked bellicosely, or otherwise just have a meaning referring somehow to deflexion (got it!; carcrash; blitzkrieg; mechanical errors; berror; violence on tv). At never ever ever, the blasting attack by three first tracks will be displaced and changed into dreamy mood music, as if we were back to quiet and melodic brunk again. However, shifts (a mix of heavy metal riffs and dub guitar), flipperkast dubde wraak van de kiekens (similar to zip) is dominated by jazz guitar-alike sound and programmed beats. Indeed, it would be very good chill out track as well if it had much more longitude to come over us. The another possibility is just to push “repeat track” button on, and keep enjoying it… . There run also some floating bubblegum funk undercurrents (this should be played at high volume… preferably in a residential area!) being so characteristic to sampledelic or samplecore music that I am pretty convinced Bert Vanden Berghe has listened to Chenard Walcker and Felix Kubin a lot indeed. violence on tv reflects through its sonic aggressiveness and insane variability the meaning of the song title at its best. Furthermore, some knotty organ passages and a haunting orchestration segment have added some odd dimensions to it all. However, in broader sense, the only artist who might have some reminiscence to BVB`s recent work is a Russian avant-garde combo Burrito (especially their doings and tearings around on the album Fridtjof Nansen (2008/2009). (experimental-fashioned dub with guitar solos and wah wah effects – one of the best tunes on the album!).
At first sight the ICTC would probably seem to be sounding too harsh to your consciousness to get broken through to. Indeed, it is like the tzunami of overloaded information flowing on you at high speed, destroying and flushing all around you, letting you live and waiting with dread the coming of the next wall of noise. The one and only question which could be is – are you able to channelize all this information into understandable form for yourself? In fact, the more I listened to it, the more I enjoyed it.” 8.6 (Kert Semm – sonicspacefoundation.blogspot.com.)
