Dervish-like guitar spirals by Ghent-based musician Benoît Monsieurs, following two excellent releases on Kraak under his Venediktos Tempelboom moniker. Ecstatic music that takes cue from psychedelism, modern and ancient - from Hildegard von Bingen to Vincent le Masne et Bertrand Porquet. Splendid stuff.

Unlike France, Belgian underground scenes never ceased to be consistent since the early 1970's and onwards, constituting vast, sprawling networks, that reaches present days via very active labels like Kraak or venerable institutions still in activity like Crammed Discs. Much like in Japan or the UK, Belgian avant-garde musicians nonchalantly dug endless rabbit holes, often temporally overlapping, like this tape, that could have been released in 1977, 1998 or 2025.

A maze in itself, harmonically-pleasing earworms, Venediktos Tempelboom's stretched guitar ritournelles are very welcoming entryways into that gigantic labyrinth of experimental Belgian music, leading both into the extremely large Kraak catalogue and Ghent's current vivid scene, as showcases by cultural entities like Lise. The two or three songs (depending how you see things) that compose this Anxthelic Onghesont tape, are all building up towards climaxes without ever reaching them. But then who needs  climaxes when music music offers you much more, a support to ponder on things and lives - one may call that a meditative state. Music rooted in the oldest musical tradition that ever was, extremely crucial in a time when all forms of spirituality are so violently under attack.