Belgian musicians Seppe Gebruers and Thijs Troch are known as pianists and both belong to the collective of musicians Troika who space for adventurous music. Maybe this is the explanation for their new album where they play the and with harmoniums. As you may know, the harmonium was a European invention where it was used as an alternative to the bigger and more expensive pipe organs in smaller churches. Gebruers and Troch free improvise on «harmoniums» as if they were composed and the other way around. The album was recorded at Gouden Hand in Destelbergen in December 2017 and live at Croxhapox in Gent in March 2018. Recently, Gebruers and Troch added percussionist Eric Thielemans to their performances.
This duo plays with our familiar concepts of reverent church music and patiently colors their reserved improvisations with darker, dramatic nuances with strong cinematic quality. The longest piece on «harmoniums», the 15-minute «Croxhapox 3», is the most experimental and often tense one, alternating between twisted. accordion-like folk melodies and weird, dissonant collisions, but always letting the ethereal sounds of the two harmoniums fill the space with their highly resonant, hypnotic vibrations.
Eyal Hareuveni
Seppe Gebruers (harm), Thijs Troch (harm)
