Ignatz

After more or less 20 albums on guitar released since 2005 on LPs, cassettes and CDs, the first real album on piano by Belgian singer-songwriter Bram Devens aka. Ignatz. In 1910, the illustrator George Herriman created the Krazy Kat comic strip. Ignatz, a vicious mouse, was Krazy Kat’s arch enemy, and his favourite pastime was to throw bricks at Krazy Kat’s head (who misinterpreted the mouse’s actions as declarations of love). 

Ignatz is the alter-ego of Belgian musician Bram Devens. Since 2005, he has released around 20 albums accompanied by guitar, in LP, CD or cassette formats, on labels such as (K-RAA-K)³, Ultra Eczema, Fonal, Mort aux Vaches, Okraïna, among others. Ignatz has toured all over the world: Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Great Britain, Italy, Finland, Greece, Switzerland, Portugal, Lithuania, the United States, Japan, etc.

Since the beginning of his singer-songwriter journey, Ignatz has masterfully and mysteriously played with the combination of the similar and the unfamiliar, the repetition and permanent reinvention with slight shifts in accents... For two decades, when discovering his new songs, whether on record or in concert, his expressive and sonic universe can be recognized in seconds, and at the same time, he surprises every time. This is clearly the case with "I Don't Know," an album for which (after the cassette "Coffee, No Cigarettes," Taping Policies 2017) he trades his guitar for the piano.

In the mid-2010s, Ignatz inherited the family piano. As a self-taught musician, he explored the instrument and gave a piano concert in the small Flemish town of Geel, which was filmed by Jef Mertens (who also released the aforementioned cassette) and attended by Beata Szparagowska and Philippe Delvosalle from the label By the Bluest of Seas. After some years, it was in his home in Landen that Bram Devens recorded this haunted piano album, which is unlike any other piano record.

The LP is presented in a folded poster featuring - as with every release from the By the Bluest of Seas label - photos by Beata Szparagowska inspired by the musical universe of the record, this time printed in silver ink on black paper.