Rock, Avant-garde and progressive rock are mixed with jazz. 

​Excellent and beautiful music to meditate, to relax and to heal your body and mind. 

Beautiful vocal harmonies, beautiful melodies, sublime arrangements result in 11 amazing Americana songs. Highly recommended!

With their own versions of Presley's hits, The Mike Eldred Trio brings a great tribute to the ‘leather jacket Elvis’. Highly recommended!

Eamonn McCormack shows with these two diverend styles that he is a master in both musical genres. The sound is very good and deep warm. A pleasure to listening. Replay please! 

Hamster Axis is a collective of talented artists, curated by Mauro Pawlowski. Gregory Frateur, Roland Van Campenhout, Johannes Genard, Josse De Pauw, Pascal Deweze, Tijs Delbeke, Sjoerd Bruil and of course Pawlowski offer the listener eight regular songs, and eight bonus tracks. Pascal Deweze takes ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’ (the brilliant ditty by my personal hero Michael Jackson) for a spin and doesn’t make a fool of himself. Johannes Genard covers his own ‘Black Dog Panting’ (together with ‘Trophy Wall’, ‘The World Is Gonna End Tonight’ and ‘Cursing Let Me In’ the best School Is Cool has made so far). Actor and national treasure Josse De Pauw monologues and plays the raconteur in ‘Fix and Finish’. You’d expect arty-farty navel-gazing, but the results are touching and beautiful. Starman Records’ Felix Huybrechts, expertly balancing between commercial excess and integrity, still knows how to cherry-pick the goods.
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Bellemont consists of musicians that have earned their stripes in various Belgian bands, plus American singer and actress Tracee Westmoreland. She has very pleasing pipes that remind me of those of Petra ‘Pitti’ Polak. ‘Live Or Lavish’ is a special package: two discs, two times the same set of songs. One ‘live’ outing – warts and all – and one ‘lavish’ edition in the studio with guest musicians. The liner notes say it’s up to the listener to build his own Bellemont experience, and come to a favourite playlist. I prefer the live treatment, which is spicier, bolder and better overall. Bellemont is one excellent live band, make no mistake. The best song is ‘Don’t Wanna Know’, driven by an extremely groovy country hook. ‘Did You Ever’ is another highlight, with the excellent lyric ‘You ride a one-trick pony down the avenue’. Most of the time, a person will be called a one-trick pony, but here, the saying is used as an actual beast of burden or vessel? Nice. Bellemont doesn’t necessarily reinvent the wheel, but only a sourpuss will complain - because ‘Live Or Lavish’ is quite the accomplished release.
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The friendly, passionate and talented Stef Kamil Carlens is one of my favourite musicians. I had the pleasure to interview him twice, most recently to talk about the release of Zita Swoon Group’s ‘Nothing That Is Everything’ Zita Swoon Group. It’s no public secret that the multi-instrumentalist Carlens loves to alternate between genres in an effort to defy conventions. ‘Stuck In The Status Quo’ is no Zita Swoon record, but a full-blown solo effort, with the appreciated aid of Alma Auer (harp and vocals) and Nicolas Rombouts (upright bass) amongst others. Eight tracks (shame there was no 8-track release, then) for a total of 36 minutes. He always had a knack for writing lovely sentences: ‘It left a hole like a lunar crater’, ‘A melancholy moon and a trumpet tune’, ‘I lost sight of the shore and away I swirled’ and more. The lyrics are deeply personal, but the songs speak to everyone. They walk the fine line between swinging, introspective, melancholic and hopeful towards the future. Carlens digs arrangements that are out in left field, and that’s perfectly awesome. ‘After I’m Gone’, for example, is a glorious ode to life, disguised as a veritable gospel. A recommended album.
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