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2LP
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ZORN 086LP
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A sprawling collection by Belgian loner blues savant Bram Devens aka Ignatz encapsulating the mystery, murk, and melancholy of his uncanny craft at its most windswept and wayward. Originally issued via Goaty Tapes in September of 2015, this long-anticipated vinyl edition expands the saga with an additional 17 minutes of archival material. Deven's palette remains constant throughout: feathery fingerpicking, modal loops, and intuitive six-string navigations interspersed with candlelit passages of mournful voice, alternately whispered, mumbled, moaned. His is an aesthetic of embers and resin, cracked masks and distant lights, of what's left behind and what lingers on. I Live In A Utopia was recorded following a relocation from his longtime base of Brussels to Landen, with a second child due soon: "I remember the weather being nice and having just bought a hammock." The change of scenery seeded a promise of slower days and lighter times -- no utopia perhaps, but a sense of faint hope glowing on the horizon. The songs slide between loose acoustic spirituals and smoky basement ragas, late afternoon haze and midnight moons, a seesawing restlessness reflected in the titles ("I Have Found True Love", "Time Does Not Bring Relief", "We Used To Smoke Inside"). The fidelity is grainy but vivid, refracted by tape warp and Flemish dust. As always, Deven's playing is deceptively elegant, raw but precise, attuned to resonance, radiance, and negative space. Echoes of Fahey and Jandek reverberate in certain moments but ultimately the world Ignatz maps is one incomparably his own. A landscape both doomed and dawning, weary but undefeated, tracing outlines of lengthening shadows. "I walk in the sunshine," he sings, uneasily. This is music of a rare inner wilderness, poised at cryptic crossroads, devoted to its ghosts. I Live In A Utopia stands as an apex work by one of the underground's most veiled and visionary talents. Double album in gatefold sleeve with artwork by Zully Adler. In co-production with House Rules. Edition of 500.
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LP
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FTR 253LP
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"For the last decade, Belgian guitarist Bram Devens has been releasing solo recordings under the name Ignatz. A couple of cassettes have come out in the States, but most of his releases have been elusive imports. Thus, we have taken it upon ourselves to do a public service and release a domestic version of an LP that will appear on the (K-RAAK-K) label in Belgium. This must be something like the sixth or seventh studio album Ignatz has cut, and it's a remarkably solid slab of mysto-folk/blues invention. There are more vocals than noted on previous Ignatz slabs we've encountered, and they manage to remind us of everyone from early Townes Van Zandt ('The Watertower') to Karen Dalton covering 'Play with Fire' ('People in This Town'). The way Bram's voice lazily combines with the loose guitar playing sometimes makes the album sound like a mutant hybrid of early Jandek and mid-period Hurley. The rhythms and melodies go in and out of focus with a beautiful irregularity that demonstrate them to be the work of a true original. Playing what sounds like a mix of acoustic and lightly amped guitars, Ignatz hits Krazy Kat square in the bean with this one. And we all see stars. Tell Officer Pup the news." --Byron Coley, 2016. Limited edition of 500.
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CD
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FR 091CD
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In 1910, the illustrator George Herriman created the Krazy Kat comic strip. Ignatz, a vicious mouse, was Krazy Kat's arch enemy, and his favorite pastime was to throw bricks at Krazy Kat's head (who misinterpreted the mouse's actions as declarations of love). Brussels-based artist Bram Devens uses Ignatz as his alter-ego, and comes armed with his own pile of bricks; sparse, emotive songs born of the human condition, wrapped in effects, corroded by tape, driven forth by improvisation and spontaneity. Can I Go Home Now? is Ignatz's first Fonal release, but it is his fifth full-length album -- his seventh if you count the Kraak 2011 cassette compilation and 2010's Mort aux Vaches live LP on Staalplaat. Recorded in Schaarbeek, Brussels, Belgium between 2011 and 2012 on four-track and computer, the album sees Devens shift his focus toward more exclusively song-based compositions, cut largely from unabridged electric and acoustic guitar. Ignatz's songs stem from a familiar stripped folk framework, with Devens' delivery recalling the louche primitivism of V.U. or Henry Flynt -- but these songs sound inverted, cast adrift, their cool touch belying a stymied heat beneath the surface. Where Devens' fretwork is adorned, it is executed with a refined coarseness. Autonomous loops entwine each other. Songs brush past percussion, bass notes, or a scant keyboard motif. A voice recedes from the heart of the song into a dislocated, cracked drawl. And yet if Ignatz does occasionally recall the ghost of Jandek, there are moments of warmth and beauty, as sunlight glistens on the ice. Devens' personal experiences echo throughout the album's artwork and the title itself, as well as the music. "The artwork is a drawing of a dog, a boxer called Gibbe. It is a drawing by myself from 1994 made in Budapest, Hungary, just after Gibbe died at the age of 13 from meningitis. A family holiday went bad. Because we did not want to leave him in Hungary we decided to wrap him in plastic and tie him on the roof of the car and drive back to Belgium (which took us 2 days and the body started to smell). This was the last holiday I spent with my parents, and this moment defined the end of my childhood, more than any other." Ignatz has toured Europe, the United States, Canada, and Japan, playing with, amongst others US Girls, Ducktails, Six Organs Of Admittance, Heatsick, Sir Richard Bishop, Chris Forsyth, Es, LSD March, Greg Malcolm, and Bridget Hayden.
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LP
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FR 091LP
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LP version. In 1910, the illustrator George Herriman created the Krazy Kat comic strip. Ignatz, a vicious mouse, was Krazy Kat's arch enemy, and his favorite pastime was to throw bricks at Krazy Kat's head (who misinterpreted the mouse's actions as declarations of love). Brussels-based artist Bram Devens uses Ignatz as his alter-ego, and comes armed with his own pile of bricks; sparse, emotive songs born of the human condition, wrapped in effects, corroded by tape, driven forth by improvisation and spontaneity. Can I Go Home Now? is Ignatz's first Fonal release, but it is his fifth full-length album -- his seventh if you count the Kraak 2011 cassette compilation and 2010's Mort aux Vaches live LP on Staalplaat. Recorded in Schaarbeek, Brussels, Belgium between 2011 and 2012 on four-track and computer, the album sees Devens shift his focus toward more exclusively song-based compositions, cut largely from unabridged electric and acoustic guitar. Ignatz's songs stem from a familiar stripped folk framework, with Devens' delivery recalling the louche primitivism of V.U. or Henry Flynt -- but these songs sound inverted, cast adrift, their cool touch belying a stymied heat beneath the surface. Where Devens' fretwork is adorned, it is executed with a refined coarseness. Autonomous loops entwine each other. Songs brush past percussion, bass notes, or a scant keyboard motif. A voice recedes from the heart of the song into a dislocated, cracked drawl. And yet if Ignatz does occasionally recall the ghost of Jandek, there are moments of warmth and beauty, as sunlight glistens on the ice. Devens' personal experiences echo throughout the album's artwork and the title itself, as well as the music. "The artwork is a drawing of a dog, a boxer called Gibbe. It is a drawing by myself from 1994 made in Budapest, Hungary, just after Gibbe died at the age of 13 from meningitis. A family holiday went bad. Because we did not want to leave him in Hungary we decided to wrap him in plastic and tie him on the roof of the car and drive back to Belgium (which took us 2 days and the body started to smell). This was the last holiday I spent with my parents, and this moment defined the end of my childhood, more than any other." Ignatz has toured Europe, the United States, Canada, and Japan, playing with, amongst others US Girls, Ducktails, Six Organs Of Admittance, Heatsick, Sir Richard Bishop, Chris Forsyth, Es, LSD March, Greg Malcolm, and Bridget Hayden.
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CD
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MAV 066CD
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Belgium's Ignatz contribute to the Mort Aux Vaches series. "Acoustic songs wrapped with effects and driven by improvisation and spontaneousness."
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