Hometown Heroes Spice Up Belgium’s Gent Jazz Festival

By Martin Longley I Aug. 22, 2016

The Belgian blues artist Roland performs a tribute to Moondog at the Gent Jazz Festival in Ghent, Belgium, on July 10.
(Photo: Jos L. Knaepen)

A week later, Ottervanger returned in a duo setting, teaming with Lander Gyselinck. Both of them deployed heavy electronics, facing each other as if doing battle, which is pretty much the way their set went. Ottervanger contributed manic vocals, declaiming texts while standing on his chair and distorting his voice with extreme effects. Some of the hard-funk rhythms the pair latched onto were among the most thrilling of the entire festival.

Roland (Van Campenhout) is a veteran Belgian bluesman, active on the international scene since the late 1960s. His unlikely festival project involved addressing the music of Moondog, a now-deceased street-composer and poet from New York known for his Viking-style garb.

Once the set began to unwind, it was clear that the marriage of Moondog’s clattering folk-art pieces were completely suited to Roland and his band’s stylistic tics. One of the leader’s most potent solos occurred once he’d picked up his electric guitar, as “Bird’s Lament” was delivered in a recognizable yet transformed fashion—horns cutting, a guiro scraping, a Baroque salsa bass line entering. “Aska Me” ambled along in a Balkan fashion, and “Enough About Human Rights” continued this trend, with woodblock, shaker and clavé creating a skipping funk with dark Moog-bass swirls and sitar sounds.

Belgian percussionist Isolde Lasoen was a strong asset to the group, not just for her expert drumming but also for her vocal harmony contributions to the Moondog chanting. This was an exceptional, and continually surprising, look at the strange outsider output of this unique American composer.

Earlier that day, Ghent-based jazz-rock outfit Nordmann opened the afternoon with sounds that would be more suited to the midnight hour. Doubtless in thrall to John Zorn, and possibly the more recent Gutbucket, their intense onslaught melded free-jazz and noise rock with an intricate complexity. Their mixture of jackhammering drums, brutal bass, effects-laden guitar and throttling tenor saxophone negotiated shape-shifting themes, with harsh, blowtorched textures. They climaxed with “Napoleon’s Penis,” where saxophone and guitar were united in unholy harmony, both going their own ways for subsequent solos.

Not strictly a Ghent band, the Carate Urio Orchestra is fronted by Belgian reedsman Joachim Badenhorst, who leads a pan-European membership. Most of the musicians were garbed in vests of varying lengths, projecting an aura of spiritual concentration as their soft drones commenced. The lineup of drums, two basses, guitar, violin, trumpet and bass clarinet/tenor saxophone leapt into a full blizzard, with text-intoning voices adding to the spread. Suddenly a song sprang into being, radically altering the mood, with sweetly sustained ensemble voices.

A sparse scrabble suggested the chamber palette of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble. It developed into a slow song, with Pascal Niggenkemper contributing an infectious bass line. Some of the vocals were superfluous, notably the other bassist Brice Soniano’s mewling. But ultimately the band’s ethereal sound recalled the music of Canadian post-rock collective Godspeed You! Black Emperor, with a ghostly storm of sound evolving into a thrumming horn vehicle.

The festival also presented excellent sets by The Budos Band, Max Richter, James Hunter and the superstar trio of John Scofield, Brad Mehldau and Mark Guiliana, but it was the local Ghent artists who made a very special impact in their home city.