With his third full album ‘III’, Bram Devens alias Ignatz, has once again surpassed himself.
In his usual brain-melting futuristic blues folk psych, he’s calling the ghosts of Bukka White, Sleepy John Estes and Robert Pete Williams, as seen by a adolescent Lou Reed.
‘III’ suggests a fictional, unclear and vague story about the deaths of musical genres. It’s breath cold, raw made of carbon and gas. The smell of a wet dog or a badly dried towel. The musical assiociations are reduced to a minimum, unless they contribute to the fictional line, where the tragic is enclosed in the crackling, atonal and repetitive melodies.
This album breathes a more sentimental atmosphere than it’s predecessors by Ignatz’ wailing voice, not unlike Skip James. A tormented soul that after the last song is over; liberates the listener from a personal journey and leaves him dazzled. ‘III’ projects the times of the Alaskan Klondike gold rush and the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog to the modern times, dominatd by technology. So, this album bears testimony to a sincere melancholy that popmusic these days hasn’t know in a while.
Ignatz forces us to look at the pure essence of his music: to translate raw emotion into sound and to reach an essential beauty.
text by K. Berckmans
www.ignatz.be
In his usual brain-melting futuristic blues folk psych, he’s calling the ghosts of Bukka White, Sleepy John Estes and Robert Pete Williams, as seen by a adolescent Lou Reed.
‘III’ suggests a fictional, unclear and vague story about the deaths of musical genres. It’s breath cold, raw made of carbon and gas. The smell of a wet dog or a badly dried towel. The musical assiociations are reduced to a minimum, unless they contribute to the fictional line, where the tragic is enclosed in the crackling, atonal and repetitive melodies.
This album breathes a more sentimental atmosphere than it’s predecessors by Ignatz’ wailing voice, not unlike Skip James. A tormented soul that after the last song is over; liberates the listener from a personal journey and leaves him dazzled. ‘III’ projects the times of the Alaskan Klondike gold rush and the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog to the modern times, dominatd by technology. So, this album bears testimony to a sincere melancholy that popmusic these days hasn’t know in a while.
Ignatz forces us to look at the pure essence of his music: to translate raw emotion into sound and to reach an essential beauty.
text by K. Berckmans
www.ignatz.be
Ignatz: The Water