From Metaphon comes "Rails and Other Tracks", an absolute revelation from the Belgian underground / history of post-war avant-garde sound practice. The first ever release attending to the work of Jan Bruyndonckx, the two sides of this beautiful LP comprise seven mind-blowing compositions, created between 1958 and 1965, that hybridize musique concrète, electronic sound collage, and sound poetry in truly singular and striking ways.

Working at a slow, meticulous pace, for a decade and a half, Metaphon - the Brussels based imprint run by Timo Van Luijk, Greg Jacobs and Marc Wroblewski - has continuously illuminated fascinating trajectories within a number of historically neglected contexts of electronic music and sound art. Primarily focused on work produced in Belgium, their root criteria of personal taste has guided them well as they've produced an incredibly important body of albums that endeavor to respect and support the music and those who make it. Their latest, “Rails and Other Tracks”, the first ever release by Belgian underground sound explorer, Jan Bruyndonckx, continues this grand tradition, gathering autonomous compositions, music for film and documentary, all independently recorded in his private studio between 1958 and 1965. Resting at the outer reaches of concrete, electronic collage, and poetics, it’s an astounding listen that further highlights the crucial contributions made by Belgian artists to the field of experimental sound, and brings them singing into the present day.

Of Jan Bruyndonckx, we know almost nothing. Metaphon’s release of “Rails and Other Tracks” is shrouded in mystery. You have to wonder how the label stumbled on such an important artist hiding in the shadows, and how he has remained under-appreciated for as long as he has. As far as we know, Bruyndonckx is alive and well, and working away, but we can’t say for sure. When faced with his sounds, all other questions fade away.

Launching in with startling force, the album’s first work, “Rails”, is also the earliest and arguably most aggressively avant-garde. Across its eight-and-a-half-minute duration, vocal loops foreshadow the techniques deployed by Steve Reich for works like “Come Out” and “It’s Gonna Rain”, resting within a palette of manipulated recordings of train sounds and electronics, rumbling, chattering, and whizzing into a collective body that achieves a startling sense of aural abstraction, as the sound sources shift in and out of focus.

It’s possible that the revelations that occurred when creating “Rails” had a central impact on the development of Bruyndonckx’s practice. Across the album’s remaining works, created during the following decade, its echoes are palpable, becoming more refined and controlled, one after the next. Each of the following works incorporates elements of spoken texts and poetry written by Paul De Vree and recited by Julien Schoenaerts, into a series of adventurous and mysterious sound evocations that feel entirely of their moment, while having no equivalents then or since. In some it’s clear that the vocalizations are the guiding and central force, from which all else follows. In others, human utterances are folded within a maddening body of the industrialised world, as one actor among many, creating a striking sense of range, possibility, and interplay across the album's length.

An absolutely stunning body of wizardry at the juncture of technology and creativity, Metaphon’s release of Jan Bruyndonckx’s “Rails and Other Tracks” is nothing short of a revelation of huge historical importance. Not only does it markedly expand our understanding of post-war experimental sound practice in Belgium, but also doubles as a long overdue introduction of a hugely talented and sinfully neglected figure from that scene. Bubbling with brilliant textures and wondrous approaches to the human voice, it leaves you on the edge of your seat from its first sounding to its last.