VANDEWOLKEN, LINUS - HET VLIER, EEN HOMMEL OP AARDE (2X10")

"What you are listening to is the sound of a forgotten instrument. It has existed since the middle ages, but the earliest example still intact is from 1608. Traditionally it was strummed with a goose feather & notes were made by sliding a hard stick with a handle, from fret to fret on the melody strings leaving the drone strings ringing openly. The constant hum of the drones is where the name of the instrument comes from: bumblebee, which in Flemish, is a hommel. I do not play in a traditional way: I pluck, fingerpick, tap & bow amplified flat wound electric guitar strings. I change the notes with my fingers, metal sticks, bottlenecks steel tubes & the hard stick with a wooden handle, which has a special name : the vlier, which is a more local, Flemish Brabant, name of the instrument itself. I play in a tuning to be in harmony with the tin whistles you hear from time to time & occasionally play shakers I made by hand from branches, wire & bottle caps. The songs in this collection are not traditional either, they are inspired by cycling around Flanders & the landscape that surrounds my home in Niemandaal, a small village in the Pajottenland of Flanders, not far from the capital city, but isolated enough to not hear the constant hum of the highways. It's a nice place to relax, filled with what I would call elegant micro-landscapes: simple combinations of fields, grass, streams, small farms, rolling hills... Sometimes called the "Tuscany of the North", wine is replaced by lambik, a naturally fermented sour beer & it is well-known as being the place where Pieter Bruegel the Elder would set up his easel." (Linus Vandewolken)