Bram Stadhouders, born 1987 in the Netherlands, explores the borders between ambient, contemporary electronic music and free improvised jazz using guitar and electronics. He leads the six-piece ensemble Korps, has performed with ice-musician Terje Isungset on a guitar made of ice, and since 2010 has had a trio with Norwegian singer Sidsel Endresen and American drummer Jim Black.
His Suite X is a partnership with Baroque Orchestration, a Flemish baroque ensemble known for its collaborations with indie pop acts.
It might sound a long shot, and I feared the worst – but in fact this unlikely collaboration works to refreshing effect. Baroque and jazz improvisation are musical styles four centuries apart, but Stadhouders and his colleagues have ensured that they come together in some wonderfully varied and eventful music.
Dyx is a plangent duo of harpsichord and recorder; Dux sounds like the full ensemble in raunchy baroque-rock. Trix is a haunting dirge; Prix is a lively dance with prominent sackbut – an early trombone – and harpsichord. Ix begins with muffled bell sounds against unaccompanied guitar, joined shortly by what sounds like prepared harpsichord; Mox has Philip Glass or Terry Riley-influenced keyboards, against a melancholic trumpet solo. These tracks have the most radical avant-garde sound, in what is a most unusual and compelling stylistic synthesis.
Discography
Dyx; Ax; Dux; Trix; Lax; Prix; Ix; Mox; Rox (50.18)
Stadhouders (g); Onno Govaert (d); Pieter Theuns (theorbe); Lambert Colson (cornetto); Jon Birdsong (cornetto, t); Bart Vrooman (sackbut); Nathan Wouters (b); Raphael Collignon (hpsch, org). DAFT Studios, Belgium, 27-28 April 2022.
Challenge Records ZZ 76138
