Everything moves slowly with Belgian artist t’Geruis, yet the impact of his music reverberates endlessly. He makes these warm repetitive pieces that just settle within your soul. These hissy tape loops, with weird beautiful barnacles hanging off them that at times threaten to overtake the piece itself.
I first heard his music via his debut LP on Lost Tribe Sound, Various Thoughts And Places, and was so taken with his music that I felt like I needed to speak to him. (You can read that interview here).
At the time he said “There are so much melodies, rhythms and textures around us, and it feels like magic to be able to catch these.” And you can hear these attempts to capture the magic in this music, in the seductive warmth of his loops and the audaciousness of his melodies. What would you call this? Gentle ambient noise? It’s designed to soothe with simple repetitive melodies, yet also its also quite texturally complex – yet somehow this juxtaposition is endlessly satisfying. Listening to Slow Dance on Moss Beds I’m reminded of everything from Bohren and Der Club of Gore to William Basinski in both mood and technique. There’s a stillness here, but also a real spirit of experimentation. The gentle reverberant notes of the piano, the synthetic drone of the synth and these weird unidentified warbly sounds that may or may not be field recordings, are nothing short of entrancing. This music feels worn, it’s been processed and altered, but in a way this degradation has revealed an essential beauty that may not have been apparent before.
Slow Dance… feels somehow bolder than Various Thoughts and Places, it definitely moves beyond the repetition, and it explores melody in a non repetitive manner, which is quite fascinating, particularly on the almost middle eastern inspired ‘verzengend’ – which when the repetition does come is incredibly powerful. It’s these kinds of experimentations that makes Slow Dance…so rewarding, t’Geruis really does have his own unique approach, and his refusal to rest on his laurels and continue to experiment is not just reassuring but inspiring.
