FROM OUR WAVE TO YOURS BY Mathilde "I'm The Hug" Luijten

WAV’s ‘FROM OUR WAVE TO YOURS’ is a various and ever-expanding selection of favourite tracks, albums, labels, artists and more, put together by the WAV team and family.

You can call them charts, or staff picks, but we like to refer to them as WAVES, connecting us to you and back.

We love music, we want to share what we love, but we don’t assume that sharing should be at the expense of the artists.

That’s why we link all our WAVE-lists to the bandcamp pages of the artists or labels (if they have one), and that you can view our evolving selection on our WAV’s Buy Music Club Page.

If, in doing so, we can raise more awareness about properly compensating the music makers, then we consider ourselves a little closer to riding the perfect WAVE.

This is a selection by Mathilde Luijten. She is the bossywoman at Overlast making waves at WAV and vibing at VI.BE.

En toen werd de hand geschud. De koffie gezet.
Op het moment dat de kamer kleiner werd en de muren te hoog om op te lopen.
Met zoete mazout besloot De Nooit Moede de schijn hoger te houden.
Als een bleek excuus voor rock zonder roll, als de grijns zonder grol.
Want is het aan het eind van de dag niet de dwaas die het groenste graast?

Very happy to share bontridders’ first sonic solo explorations. She will make you dance and giggle. From cold, but grooving beats, to sonic landscapes guided by her washed out vocals and reverb soaked instrumentation.
A rough compilation of things you should absolutely listen to now and look out for in the future.
You might know her as the front of brorlab and the occasional side of Hoffman.

This collection of sounds and approximations of music was created by HOFFMAN, bontridders & vlerk during 1 week in Het Bos in Antwerp.
The focus was experimentation; trying and failing and learning. The result is a reflection of that.
Mainly recorded on Raf’s tapemachine.
All profits go to Boysproject. boysproject.be/en/
All tapes are recycled so every one is unique.

For our third instalment, San-Kofa presents a Latin-American inspired EP by Ão. The eight-track debut is a soothing, yet fascinating story about their search for connection, intimacy and the absurdity of life. With their combination of English and Portuguese lyrics as a critical element, and additional elements of contemporary pop and electronica, they have created a fresh and diverse range of sounds.

Brenda Corijn’s unique, delicate voice leads you through Ão’s intimate world of estrangement and saudade. Her elegant words are accompanied by Siebe Chau’s Brazilian and Argentinian inspired productions.

The A-side tracks were written during a pre-lockdown time, when Ão could still perform live, shaping their tracks while performing. These songs are a collection of acoustic and raw live-recorded material. For the occasion, they have invited Mart Flecijn (violin) and Gielis Cautaers (percussion) for additional production.

The B-side selection, on the other hand, consists entirely of tracks that Ão wrote and recorded during the quarantine. For over six months, Brenda was stranded in Porto, while Siebe remained in Belgium. Their ideas and sketches were emailed back and forth, building on each other’s recordings in an Ableton-collage like pen pals. This different process of experimenting gave birth to a whole new sound and gave their music another dimension. The EP concludes with an ambient remix by Empty Apartments (aka Jolan Decaestecker), a dear friend of the duo who was involved since the very beginning.

This album was born out of a prolonged stay in Japan after Covid-19 slowed down the earth’s going abouts and airlines stopped flying.

When I found out that our return flight was delayed for a few weeks, I bought a second hand keyboard. While fiddling with it, I started recording little bits and pieces.

As our return kept getting delayed and the weeks turned into months, I started gathering a stack of these little ideas and began to make an album of the fragments. With my phone, I recorded Kyoto sounds and combined these field-recordings with the little songs, to try to make some sort memento of this time.

All of the music and lyrics were composed or improvised, recorded, mixed in different locations around Kyoto, as well as a wooden cabin in the mountains north of the city.

A very big thank you to: Kinny for the feedback; Sean for the feedback and mixing tips; Bert Indre and Willem for taking care of house back home; Rinn, Tam, Chikako, Yasko for double checking; Harufumi for having a thumb piano in your -wonderful- guesthouse and for borrowing me your guitar for so many weeks, and most of all to Keiko and Kuroda-San for your endless kindness and generosity.

This album is the result of isolation. The first coronavirus lockdown was a well of time for producer and musician Alan Van Rompuy, who used it to build a home studio in the basement. Build is hardly a right word for it. Let’s say he dumped some electronic gear in a humid sad little place underground. Long sessions of recording were alternated with outside meditation and walks in the park. The impressions of those outside expeditions to the self and beyond echoed in the little cavelike basement.

Echo Park doesn’t want to tell a story or impose an idea or concept. It simply is an album. This, in itself, is almost a statement. A safe and good place for art and culture is where it simply can grow and be nurtured. That way it can be an enrichment, a consolation, an expression, an impression or whatever it wants to be without it having to justify itself.

What’s in a name?

A name embodies the concept of your being, your personality and your self. When you hear a name, you might smile or cry; you might laugh or be unable to speak. A name holds power and a name is close. You might hate it, you might love it, but at the end of the day, it’s your name and your name alone.

My name – my real name – is Youniss. However, this hasn’t always been the case, due to peculiar circumstances I was given a name by the local government when I was born. A name that wasn’t mine. For 24 years I had to figure out how to live in acceptance with the fact that I was living some kind of double life. To the government, schools, employers and anything official I was Robby. To my friends, family, partners and, most importantly, to myself I was Youniss.

The duality of living and switching between names felt like wearing masks. Over the years, I had come to accept Robby. He grew from being an unwanted visitor that overstayed his welcome to a necessary part of my growth that I had come to respect. The masks slowly began to fade and made room for who I really am. The day when Youniss & Robby became one officially wasn’t a celebration but the next step in a long process of identity searching.

That’s what this record is about. This album is not just a collection of songs; it’s an exploration, a road map of my personal identity and the perception around it. Every song is a part of me and how I’ve experienced the growth of my identity, before and during the writing of this project. The people I have invited to feature on this album are people that share my vision or have contributed to it.

There was no better way to continue my career than going by the name I fought so long to claim as my own.

A name holds power.

Thank you for reading; I hope you enjoy listening.

Youniss