Yves De Mey & Strange Meeting: Lukas Jouck – Christoph Götzen – Charel Maes – Ruben Verbeeck

Antwerp-based composer and electronic musician Yves De Mey (Grid Ravage, Sendai) takes on the challenge of performing with a live improvising ensemble for the very first time. The quartet Strange Meeting has the honor of putting him to the test.

De Mey has been a household name in the world of electronic music since the late 1990s. Although his first releases as Eavesdropper could still be called raw and unadulterated drum & bass, he soon expanded his field to more abstract forms of music, from dark, dubby techno with Sendai (his duo project with Peter Van Hoesen) to experimental electronics on several of his solo releases. De Mey also built an impressive career as a composer for theater productions or installations, and as a sound designer for film and television.

With one of his recent projects Grid Ravage (with cellist Gino Coomans and drummer Louis Evrard), he has been exploring the possibilities in the interaction between live electronics and acoustic instruments for several years. The trio’s debut album on the Antwerp label Dropa Disc, received unanimous praise.

During their studies, drummer Lukas Jouck, guitarist Christoph Götzen and saxophonist Charel Maes discovered a shared interest in free improvisation and experimental music. In January 2023 this led to a biweekly concert series at Witzli Poetzli called Strange Meetings – a platform initiated by Klankhaven to support young musicians playing adventurous music. During Strange Meetings, they invite like-minded young souls and perform a diverse program of adventurous music. The first meeting in that series – with Ruben Verbeeck on double bass – was an immediate hit and left a lasting impression. As the quartet Strange Meeting, they recorded at the old radio studios of the Antwerp Conservatory in February 2023 – under the auspices of Sound in Motion – for what might become their first album.

Ornella Noulet

After years of experience in bebop, West Coast and modal jazz, French alto and soprano saxophone player Ornella Noulet has devoted herself with great dedication and passion to free improvisation and sound research. Playing the saxophone since the age of seven and having spent more than 12 years in French conservatories, she is currently studying at the CRB in Brussels. This year, she was able to consolidate her duet with Belgian drummer Ferdinand Lezaire, playing a double bill with Farida Amadou & Moor Mother at Ancienne Belgique as well as a performance at the Summer Bummer Festival, sharing the stage with artistst like Han Bennink and Terrie Ex, Selvhenter and Mike Reed’s Separatist Party.