“I am happy to announce the new Bram Cools album ‘We are civilised!?, a collection of new folksongs, weird rattling rock-ballads, abstract electronic instrumentals, a few notes of crappy grunge-lofi and a completely misguided attempt at folk-electro that almost ended up like disco-pop. Maybe there are even a few seconds in which I do sound poppy.
Maybe I’m exaggerating with that last sentence. But check it for yourself. You can stream and download it here on BandCamp, as well as on my own wix-site. And tell me what you think about it if you like it, or share it with people who might like it.
For more background: In an impulsive moment I decided to take the RPM challenge this year, which means to record a complete album of at least 10 songs or 35 minutes of music within the month of February. I’ve did this once before, in 2007 when I recorded a weird liturgical concept album in more styles than I knew I could play, based partly on old Christian liturgical texts in different styles. The electronic ‘Kyrie’ that features on various collections including ‘I am the Belgian Christian lo-fi scene’ originates there for example.
So now there’s We are civilised!?, a brand new collection of music that was born in exactly one month. This year I had no real concept to start with, and thus not that much coherence. But I started with some instrumental tracks (both guitar-based and electronic) and wrote a lot of lyrics, and I’ve put them together. I also added a few older songs that I never managed to finish and record before. (Note that without them I would already have 35 min and 10 minutes) And then the bad luck kicked in when my recording console died so some instrumentals never received their lyrics, and some songs that were written on guitar never got recorded before the end of the month. (They might resurface later though)
Find the other albums on my bandcamp and the experimental feed on soundcloud if you like to hear something else.
That’s all for now.
Peace and love to all of you!
Bram Cools”