Music in a massive and amplified state as a locomotive for a space of constant tension. The Canadians Big Brave integrate a dome of unique names in the contemporary experimental music scene, despite the recurrent perceptions to the noisy experimentalism or even the most extreme and raw divagations of the dark landscapes of doom. Since Feral Verdure, debut album edited in 2014, Big Brave create a wide atmospheric space swayed by a corpulent electric intensity, but also by times of serenity and almost sonic absence.

A Gaze Among Them is not a paradigm shift in the band’s journey, although the production has relied on precious elements to deepen the ambient layers attached to the harsh riffs in contrast to Robin Wattie’s soft intonations. There is on the recent album a certain return to the original pillars of the Big Brave concept: space, tension, minimalism and voice. A slight revisitation of the trio (Mathieu Ball, guitar, Robin Wattie, guitar and vocals, Loel Campbell, drums) to the sonic intentions of the past, with the collaboration of key session musicians such as Thierry Amar (GY!BE, Thee Silver Mt Zion) on double bass and Seth Manchester on synthesizers. Despite their bold, perhaps daring sound, endowed with sludge or doom metal connotations, Big Brave return with a full-bodied record, but of minimal elegance and above all cathartic. A debut that promises to make the aquarium stage tremble, in what will certainly be one of the performances not to be missed in 2022, at ZDB. JH

Fågelle creates music where layers of noise meet pop melodies in an exploration of rhythms and the subject of power. With pedals, synthesizers and samplers, she dives into the sounds, experimenting until she finds what will come together with poetry to create a compelling song in the middle ground between sound art and pop. Her sound world consists of everything from field recordings from the Moscow subway to roaring guitars and tormented synthesizers.
In collaboration with the producer Henryk Lipp (Blue for Two, Anna von Hausswolff, Union Carbide) the ideas are grown into sound worlds, pop songs, storm clouds. From the smallest text fragments to the rolling in of the biggest thunder. With lyrics in Swedish about our current times in micro and macro-perspective and about power and powerlessness. Her music has been described as “a soft punch in the face”.