Christina Vantzou & ensemble - N°5 (album release) / EC Band • Studio STUK

• EC BAND
(live, 35’)

The EC Band is a collaboration between Luke Calzonetti (USA) and Stijn Wybouw (BE), both at the same time artist and musician. The duo brings improvisations with transcendental aspirations, supported by vast layers of electric bass guitar, haunting synth notes and sniffling percussion. Their first album will be released this Autumn on Meakusma.

• CHRISTINA VANTZOU WITH LIESELOT DE WILDE, BEN BERTRAND & JAB - N°5
(live, 50’)

Greek-American composer and filmmaker Christina Vantzou, who lives in Brussels, creates soft and highly refined music that floats between modern classical, ambient and sound art. Over the course of fifteen years she has built up her own audiovisual language and released four albums at Kranky (N°1 to N°4). Following recent releases like Multi Natural on Edições CN and Landscape Architecture with CV & JAB, Vantzou now announces her fifth album: N°5. Originating from a residency at STUK in February 2020, N°5 is based on recordings of no less than 17 musicians: from piano over winds and strings to synthetic music and field recordings. Vantzou interprets her role as composer as simply “one who joins things.” She describes how she, in close proximity to the Aegean Sea, worked mostly outside at a small patio table on the Cycladic island of Ano Koufonisi, to edit and mix the recordings. Between swimming sessions, something very intimate and autobiographical emerged, "almost like a first album". The Aegean sea water regularly sloshes against the rocks of her compositions, flanked by glottal groaning, uneasy, lyrical movements, glittering eddies of modular synth and languorous silences. Live, Vantzou (electronics, piano) brings the compositions to life together with John Also Bennett (bass flute, piano, synthesizer), Lieselot De Wilde (voice) and Ben Bertrand (bass clarinet).

Ensemble:

Christina Vantzou: electronics, piano
John Also Bennett: bass flute, piano, synthesizers
Lieselot De Wilde: voice
Ben Bertrand: bass clarinet

N°5 will be out on Kranky on 11 November 2022