★KRAAK
Syne Vuyle Hoeck
*300 copies limited edition* The Ghentian skyline has low peaks and hides its horrors in full view ~ walk streamside and you’ll quickly be confronted with façades that leer with their tales and secrets, the angels and demons that built this city holding up its mortar and stone in an inextricable embrace. It is within this incongruous backdrop that Benoît Monsieurs has fostered the Venediktos Tempelboom persona. Using the 12-string guitar as his main instrument, the self-taught musician creates p…
Sumer Is Icumen In
Orchestrating vivid rites of polished futures.
s/t
The power of duality is an inscrutable thing: we’re endlessly fascinated by the interplay between light and darkness, East and West, voice and silence, our senses tingling from the compelling synergies that thrive in perceived opposites. Drawing from an urbane Antwerpian upbringing and a Moroccan family lineage, the Brussels-based multidisciplinary artist Younes Zarhoni, embraces these very dualities in all of his projects, exploring those murky areas of contrast and bringing all their ambiguous…
Knækket Smil
In an exhilarating convergence of sonic exploration, experimental noise guitarist Nina Garcia and danish trombone virtuoso Maria Bertel have teamed up to create a heavy-hitting, collaborative record that pushes the boundaries between extreme improvisation and harsh noise. Both renowned in their respective fields, Garcia and Bertel bring their unique styles and influences to create a masterpiece of collaborative improvisation.
Knækket Smil (meaning „broken smile“) is a living, breathing, moving e…
Hypnagogic Walks
Like a descent into the dark waters physical and psychic, Hypnagogic Walks is Eve Aboulkheir’s sonic rendering of liminal states. In it, a search for the space between wakefulness and misty somnolence, those wily environments seeped in speculative auras familiar yet intangible. Synthetic palettes and found sounds articulate these landscapes, with alien voices that warble amid swooshes and pulsations that surface and subside like muddled dreams. With these eight tableaux vivants, Eve Aboulkheir s…
Ideas Flotantes
Hallucinogenic sigils wafting into a fog of transcendent repose.
2
Fonal Records and Kraak Records are proud to co-release the long awaited second album by Olimpia Splendid titled “2” on 17th March 2023 on vinyl and digital platforms. “This is Olimpia Splendid and this sound is solstice air, sharp wire on moss-dampened drumbeat, wood fire throwing shadows on all the warehouse walls. It is a whisper from the back of the throat, a chorus in the fog, a growl feeding back in triplicate. To hear it better, ride your bike or take the bus to the second-to-last stop on…
Blooming
First LP from Donna Candy, the bass-vocal-drums trio trawled from the sub genres of experimental rock and busy pushing to the front of heavy music. Nu metal bass riffs, switch-pitched fuzz vocals and big, splashy drums layer over unsettling narratives and extreme loops to bring a bit of the pit to the dancefloor.
Begun as an off the cuff party band with the idea of finding a live sound that would fit between 4am trance sets, the trio soon found themselves addicted to the euphoric sludge they cre…
No Mathematics
Hailing from Geel, Jef Mertens has been researching, documenting and subtly exploring the experimental music scene in Belgium and beyond for the better part of two decades. As a filmmaker, he’s dug deep in the realm of Flemish primitive fringe (Dronevolk) and chronicled the makings of giants like Sonic Youth and Borbetomagus. After running the now-defunct free tape label Dadaist Tapes, Mertens comes with a release of his own: No Mathematics, the first record collab between KRAAK and Feeding Tube…
Milli Mille
KRAAK is proud to present the first LP by Bloedneus & de Snuitkever, Milli Mille. Finally in wax, it’s Lukas De Clerck’s musical vehicle for his explorations with the aulos, that ancient reed instrument that mainly satyrs and archeological enthusiasts found beguiling. Equipped with his handmade pipes and the artful sense of devotion of a true modern-day aulete, De Clerck has dug deep into the technical and cultural peculiarities of this long-silenced instrument, paying it the kind of attention a…
Undone Shal
Brooding psychedelic revelations from the Stavangerian outsidercore. The uncanny is never out of bounds in the debut release by shadowy Norwegian duo Firmaet Forvoksen. Gaute Granli and Thore Warland, two archetypes of the Stavanger experimental scene long active through solo work (Gaute Granli’s recent Ultra Eczema notoriety, for one) and other collaborative projects (Thore Warland’s ongoing drum devolutions with Golden Oriole, for another), have joined forces under multiple configurations over…
Ravi
*In process of stocking.* Dreamy hazes of swirling melodies from a master imagineer of the Rhône-Alpes! A true and prolific veteran of the French DIY scene as a member of outfits like Omertà and Balladur, key editor of the cult zine Fond de Caisse and one of the heads behind the compelling Echos festival, Romain de Ferron has paved multiple paths for himself with ever-surprising outcomes. Solo, he’s been going at it for years, becoming renowned for melodies that evoke utopias of differing scales…
Het Vuil Volkske
Ghent-based wanderer Benoit Monsieurs has been exploring the many routes paved by the primitive folk guitarists of legend and is now carving out his own path as Venediktos Tempelboom. These seven tracks straddle the Eastern and Western codes that so infused the hazy Americana pioneered by the John Faheys and the Robbie Bashos of this earth, with the always-haunting Flemish landscape unmistakably lining the contours.
Nauhoi
* In process of stocking * A new and long-awaited revival of the Fonal/KRAAK siblingry, this time on the occasion of the first LP by that multifaceted sorceress of sounds and visions we’ve known and loved for many a year: the inimitable Heta Bilaletdin!🌧Heta Bilaletdin is an artist working with many mediums: experimental music, moving image and installation. Since early 2010s she has been active in multiple roles in the experimental ug of Helsinki, playing in bands like Olimpia Splendid and Myt…
You Can't See Me
A shining talisman sent by the trusty lo-fi gods to beam a path out of darkness - good ole Ignatz does it again. By now he’s gone beyond the moniker to represent a near-disembodied entity, a humble personnage dwelling in spectral zones where ghost birds float attuned to the primal resonance of loner blues. You Can’t See Me, Ignatz’s latest outing on KRAAK, fully lays bare the vulnerability that has been an illuminated thread in his music, cultivating the kind of sparsity which hints towards ine…
Plz tell me
As part of legendary groups such as Avarus, Hertta Lussu Ässä and Olimpia Splendid, Jonna Karanka has been a key player in the Finnish underground for most of this century. Through her Kuupuu alias, she dwells among an illustrious generation of Finn sound wizards which includes Tomuttontu/Jan Anderzen, Tsemba/Marja Ahti, Lau Nau et al. Through the collaging of warbled acoustic instruments and looped-up electronics, Kuupuu has long been carving out her own lines into this post-free folk/neo-psych…
Tune In Tree Ears
Eva Van Deuren has been wayfaring as Orphan Fairytale for the past 15 years and counting. With her electronic psychedelia that deftly teeters between the bubbly and the eerie, Van Deuren is a prolific presence in our spheres and her music is a constant which irrefutably touches and enchants all those who encounter it. Over the past few years she has integrated the Celtic harp into her repertoire, crafting new sounds that seamlessly meld into the narrative of her unique sonic trajectory. Tune In…
Nervous Rattles
**Limited edition of 300** KRAMP is the solo project of Stijn Wybouw, a young artist involved in many visual and musical projects that often overlap and which share an unflinchingly honest approach as well as penchant for crimson hues. As KRAMP, Wybouw assumes a red-faced identity to unleash raw machinations that take on ceremonial underpinnings through coarse compositions, murky drones, and warped vocalizations, all churned through the marshy fuzz of various tape recorders.After a slew of self-…
Symplegmata
**Limited edition of 300** Hailing from Oaxaca, Mexico and currently based in Brussels, Vica Pacheco crafts a rich sound world that comes alive in surprising manifold turns. On the heels of Vocamorphosis, her stunning electroacoustic piece commissioned by France Culture where Ferrari-esque divagations venture into the untamed fancies of an imaginary wilderness, her debut record Symplegmata transposes a continuous exploration of unearthed sound narratives into briefer vignettes that, together, al…