STROOM

Stroom hold a light to the delicious Belgy dirge “pop” of Adult Fantasies, sifting Nico-meets-Coil and Jonnine-esque gems from their run of late ‘80s/early ‘90s LPs for Antler and Sub Rosa. This label is all nostalgia for shit we never knew existed but which we feel like we’ve known intimately before - same thing we always say - a kind of unheimlich fuckry that's pretty much a genre all of its own by this point. If that’s too vague, give this a listen if you’ve ever found yourself bawling to Martin Gore’s cover of ‘Motherless Child’, Sylvian & Sakamoto’s 'Bamboo Houses' or Lena Platonos’ 'Bloody Shadows from Afar’. yeah. ‘Towers of Silence’ plays thru a dark dream of urbane ennui and poetic mood enhancers that have somehow escaped our attentions until now. Marbled with fine mycelium veins of lowkey audness that link back thru the label’s NSRD and Pablo’s Eye to Fred A and Hessel Veldman, the sound of Adult Fantasies is faithfully brooding and darkly sexy if you like that kind of thing, and all sequenced to perfection for a quietly oozing and woozy sensation of a record. Drawing songs from ‘8 Neo-Pathetic Scenes’ (1988), ‘For The Time Being’ (1989), and ‘The No-Sleeping Feeling’ (1994), the elegantly druggy vocals of Dirk Seghers blend with his keys and synths by Gerrit Valckanaers and guitars from Gerry Vergult in a late night dedicated style, all slowly paced and sculpted in-the-mix to exquisite degrees. We’re talking about treasures like the Coiled dirges of ‘Twilight’ and ‘Life In Transit’, or the icy minimalist elan of ‘Cage’, or the ideal opener ‘Under A Steelplate Sky’ recalling everything from The Velvets to Jonnine and CS + Kreme. Spot on, this.

A mysterious little release from Grace, with a cover of Psychic TV's 1983 track 'The Orchids' on the B-side. Most copies are being sold at concerts, with just a handful making their way into shops.

A cranky, poetic-esoteric nEuro vibe puts wind behind the sails of Inkasso & ML’s maiden Stroom entry and their transition from whispered nocturnes to slompy cyber-slugs. Flickering shadowy integers of post-industrial, trip hop, theatrical music and sound poetry, ‘Fashion Recession’ finds the trio of Inkasso & ML indulging their whims toward a sort of soundtrack-like fantasy that leads on from their respective works for the artful types at Kashual Plastik and Osàre! Editions. The combo of dank synths with blunted vox and squashed grooves tessellates ideally with Stroom’s roster of angular audities primed for late night listening. Historic shades of everything from Tuxedomoon to Geins’t Naït and contemporary analogs Thomas Bush or Sholto Dobie come to mind in the album’s sideways drift from smudged downbeats on ‘Soft Layers’ to blown-out bass thunder in ‘Rhythm is a medium of change’, the soured music box melody of ‘Ghosting’, and striking moments of ‘90s noir in ‘Algorithm Poetry’ that sees it off into the Novo Line-like thrum and acidic croak of ‘Disturbing Circles’. Reckon this would all sound ideal on a solo midweek holiday to Antwerp after a break-up, when trying to write that novel you always intended to do.

"4 more additions (under various guises around 1984) to the beautiful world of Jan Van den Broeke in response to the almost 10 year anniversary of `11000 Dreams` "

Settima Tacca's "A Cup, a Horse and Signs That Point at Wells" via Stroom. " “Everybody wants the map, but the correct one is not coming. This is understood, somewhere below language, by everyone who wants a map anyway. Meanwhile the map dealers, those slick druids and wizards, goddamn sell-outs, will try to seduce you with one. Don't buy from them. Their maps only show burned black fields. What passes instead between the ones still walking is smaller and does not require a subscription. A sign. Nailed to a fencepost, or to an unexpected streetlight surrounded by darkness. Left by someone who was thirsty on this road back when you were only a rumor. It says one thing: water, this way. So leave signs. Just mark the water you found and move along. It is one of the oldest customs - strangers keeping each other alive and hydrated on a long road.”