Home Rec. 
Aurélia : Hypnogol (B,2007)****
I often realized that in Belgium (especially in harbour city Antwerp and in the European political capital Brussels, pressed between the French and Flemish parts) we, and especially creative musicians are sandwiched between so many world influences it is easy and might even be better to adapt all of the personal experiences with it. Often I saw musicians play very well in one so easily but well adapted world music style and then, to prove their own egos and talents, and also, our own origin and grown talent throughout our historical evolution of Belgium, of a great ease with adaptation, switch swiftly to the next project (with the danger of a kind of musical cultural tourism fixing itself mostly on the superficial aspects of that culture, when not taking the time for deep integration). So I think : why not constantly adapt all what is near us, and what affect us really, all at once, and spontaneously enough to create our own middle expression and show this core creative vision immediately ? This is something which this trio did, ambitiously and with its open creativity. This is embedded in a cabaret and chamber-music concept which also works like a journey through all these visions, adaptations and consciously consuming processes.
The concept stands very much for the process itself, and is about a singer who, after realizing and disappointed that he is not the most successful talent in the world, goes adrift with his boat, and writes a blog about his travels with a ship. And even when this is only rather locally, on canals and rivers, it provides a wide world of experiences. With his mind blank, not predicting anything, not expecting anything beforehand, he really goes into the trance of events, and starts to hallucinate with exotic dreams. The same wild ego now forms his wildest dreams with a flair of the exotic that finds his true originality. All kinds of references are touches without always being identified with them. First track seems like associating itself with Kurt Weil’s cabaret, a German song. On another track it seems like the reference is to Tom Waits who also identified himself with his own late night café cabaret. Tom Theuns therefore made his voice convincingly his own form of a theatre piece. And of course, one Middle Eastern track is there too, with additional sitar, not too far away from those origins. Tom plays the harmonium elsewhere very cleverly like a barrel organ. Singer Aurélie just once sings a song as if taking a distance and singing about the story as if this is (about) literature. Also the percussion once gives a few exotic notes. Elsewhere a reference to Chinese opera is touched upon, but quickly changed, amongst many other things. The last piece also is great. “Let Me – Aria” obviously, but it is not mentioned, refers to a very dramatic part of one of Purcell’s operas, (a song in these times made again popular by Klaus Nomi). Also here the form is completely their own.
An interesting journey, which for me also says something about the essence of a Belgium quality in realisation to creativity.
