Maquillage - ArMOR (2025)

I love cases like this: a band I'd never heard about coming to my playlists with such a verve and glam that they leave me choice but to stay silent and get showered with their sound propositions. This time the situation is provided by the Belgian outfit called Maquillage lead by You, Nothing's vocalist Gioia Podestà. Wow.

So, first of all, this is indie rock music but with a strong bias toward the airy and dreamy vibes. But they draw from these without giving up the insanely catchy melodies and paces. This music is so much fun! Every other song on their debut (!) album is of the kind that you need to start humming together with the singer almost immediately. And the whole thing (and each particular song) is rather short, adding to the feeling of a short but powerful breeze going through your life, living it slightly more colourful.

But the airy bit is absolutely here. Songs like my favourite two: Are You Safe and Desire certainly benefit from the almost whispering choruses that are simple but also simply stunning. The lyrics feel slightly unnerving in some places, but overall what strikes you is the warmth of the sound and the catchiness of the repetitive phrases. Short synthy passages or sound samples only make their compositions richer without obscuring the main thing: the ethereal fun.

ArMOR costs 7 EUR.

Check: Desire 

Country: Belgium

Genre: melodic dream pop

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Pothamus - Abur (2025)

The sophomore album that is even better than the debut? It's how it is with the Belgian doomgazers/ sludge metal heads of Pothamus who released their new album via Pelagic making it the most interesting post-metal release of the beginning of the year. The psychedelic meeting the heaviness? Count me in!

This repetitious, tribal-like pace is certainly what strikes the most while listening to Abur. The flow of the tracks is unbelievable, you can start listening to the first track and suddenly realize that it's been almost an hour and you sit mesmerized by the guitar psychedelia. And this doesn't mean that the album is monotonous, quite the opposite, there is space for dance-inducing, high voltage parts and for meditative, musical mantras at the same album.

An important part of the band's philosophy is the way it looks to the Eastern cultures, which can be spotted even by complete laymen in the title of the first track (and I assume the following ones as well). The spiritual component of the Belgians' music is so important for them that the band describes themselves using the phrase "mixing music and metaphysics" as the starting point. In other place, they say about this album that "[the songs] are vessels of meaning and ideas, meant to be carried, reshaped, sung back into the air". For me, the mesmerizing, tribal-like rhythm certainly invites some self-reflecting states.

Abur costs 7.99 EUR.

Check: Zhikarta

Country: Belgium

Genre: spiritual doomgaze

Label: Pelagic Records

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Wilson Trouvé - One Life (2025)

The Belgium-based artist, Wilson Trouvé, released an album filled with beautiful soundscapes of intimate and dramatic music, that has all the features of a movie score, the positive and negative ones.

he artist created the album as a "hypothetical film score or documentary on human life and existence" and the structure made of short tracks is meant to reflect the structure of human lives that are, in reality, made of short moments. Those moments are constructed with the help of a range of live instruments, making the whole album feel very close to the audience and especially immersive. I love the music and while I appreciate the idea behind it, I'm not a fan of movie scores, precisely because of what is captured here: the tracks are, basically, too short. I'd love to hear the director's cut of this album!

One Life costs 8.5 EUR (7 GBP).

Check: Day 1

Country: Belgium

Genre: neoclassical soundscape

Label: Bigo and Twigetti

Wilson Trouvé & Wil Bolton - Escape (2021)

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Battlestations - Memoirs of Once (2023)

As you can already tell, I'm a big fan of this mysterious project from Brussels. Their music can be called many things but orchestral ambient is probably the most interesting one of them. Their new take on the curious music is called Memoir of Once.

The Belgian artist(s) combine various genres into one coherent soundscape. There are long fragments of ambient beauty that slowly but surely becomes louder and louder until it reaches the level of almost-post-rock music. But there are also bits and pieces of dark ambient and sacral ambient (so great in The Disappeared) as well as full-blown electronica and neoclassicism. The whole thing is like a mystery for the audience to uncover bit by bit, note by note. This music has a lot of focus-inducing and self-reflective abilities, but it definitely can be actively enjoyed as well.

Memoirs of Once costs 7 EUR.

Battlestations - Inform (2020)

Battlestations - Vixit (2017)

Check: The Ghost of Lady Farewell

Country: Belgium

Genre: sacral ambient

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TAKH - TAKH (2023)

While TAKH is technically the debut album from the band, the artists behind it are known from the The Black Heart Rebellion and here are joined by Annelies Van Dinter. Together they have recently released their self-titled debut album and promoted it during this year's Dunk!Festival.

The band's music is this kind of prog rock, psychedelia, folkish post-rock music that I automatically associate with Crippled Black Phoenix. The music layer is made of heavy and crunchy guitars and well-audible drum pulse, but, while noisy, it's far from the metal-like wall of noise. This is combined with clear, rock-like mixed (or choral) vocals and results in heavy but also very much melodic compositions. It feels like heavier, darker folk rock and I appreciate this approach very much (especially in Azure Blue!). This makes it sound primal, very natural but also unnervingly gloomy with the potential for the songs to be big hits at the same time.

TAKH costs 10 EUR.

Check: Azure Blue

Country: Belgium

Genre: psychedelic post-prog-rock

Label: Consouling Sounds

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aMute - Days of Light & Let Go (2023)

aMute is a music project with a long history. Now Jérôme Deuson's solo project, it used to involve more people and debuted almost 20 years ago. Now, Deauson released the 8th album under this moniker and Days of Light & Let Go and it's as strange and moody as its cover art.

It's very difficult to label this music. It's safe to say that from the look of the cover art, you'd expect some kind of metal music, but it couldn't be further from truth. The compositions here are not loud, they are more into creating a particular kind of atmosphere, but you couldn't say they are slow or dragging. They are made of more or less subtle electronica with a great deal of organ-sounding keys (so great in Complaints & Thoughts). But most of the time here we spend with the darker kind of ambient music with or without vocals. There's a lot going on here genre-wise but everything is filtered with the same unnerving but interesting, horror-like but self-reflecting lenses and I appreciate it a lot. 

And once again, because I love it so much, the cover art is what draws attention to the album with the photography taken by a talented visual artist with a really cool name: Mothmeister.

Days of Light & Let Go costs 8 USD.

Check: Complaints & Thoughts

Country: Belgium

Genre: gothic electronica

Label: Hopedrive Editions

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The Haunted Youth - Dawn of the Freak (2022)

Led by Joachim Liebens, the Belgian outfit The Haunted Youth delivers fun and airy indie pop rock that checks all the marks for catchy and easy-to-fell-in-love-with music. Dawn of the Freak is their debut and it feels very fresh and exciting.

The band is already well recognized with both MNE and KXP praising their music. No wonder, the melodies here are mesmerizing, the carefree guitars extremely soothing and the airy vocals very moody. But if this is not enough, the omnipresent synths transform the dreamy music into danceable, psychedelic disco that can be enjoyed by everybody. This is all combined with gloomy, melancholic (and emo) lyrics which makes the whole thing both enjoyable and touching. This all culminates in my favourite track here: Coming Home that is both painfully real and filled with the heaviest melancholia, as well as ridiculously catchy and ready to be hummed from the first listening session.

Dawn of the Freak costs 8 EUR.

Check: Coming Home

Country: Belgium

Genre: psychedelic dream pop

Label: Mayway Records

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ROOK - Infinite Empty (2022)

Just before this year's edition of dunk!festival, dunk! label is showing us a new, pretty impressive work of one of its artists: the Belgians of ROOK. It's the band's second full-length album and most certainly best one yet with its gloomy and heavy atmosphere spreading all around the listener.

The Belgians' music is centred around Billie's spoken word and more traditional vocals with a hint of folk flavour to them; vocals that sound unfazed by the dark madness that goes on around her all the time. The guitar noise the band prefers to put in the backgrounds ranges from dark ambient's pure despair to noise-filled jazzy passages up to the louder, post-rock-like pieces. This one-of-a-kind atmosphere boils throughout the album, reaching the peaks in the post-metal fragments of The Shoulder and surprisingly electronica-heavy, horror disco in Ruis. This track transforms into the most mesmerizing fragments that bring together the psychedelic guitars, tribal tunes and chanting vocals and I'm here for it.

It's no wonder that the musicians aim for the genre-fluidity, as the label locates their music in the place where "genre becomes a nebulous concept, and the uncanny impressions formed by the music demonstrate a powerful synergy between the visceral and the ethereal". I bet this is the kind of music that is particularly impressive live so I'll be happy to see this spectacle on the dunk!festival next week!

Infinite Empty costs 7 EUR.

Check: Ruis

Country: Belgium

Genre: spoken word guitar noise

Label: dunk!records

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Ohio Mark - Whoever (2022)

Ohio Mark is a Belgian trio whose music is all about the post-rock's noise with heavily ethereal atmosphere around it. The wittily-named band have just released their second EP called Whoever and the content here is interesting to say the least.

Their music is ethereal and airy but also quite fast-paced and energetic. Think more SOM and Astronoid than Immanu El. The noisy backgrounds are extremely catchy and intriguing at the same time; the drums dictate the fast pace that is filled with thick guitar noise to the point where it fits the dispersed vocals, making it a homogeneous whole. The music is said to be "thoroughly rooted in a hazy kind of reverb, distortion with an ever present eagerness to radically shift moods". It's noise made pretty with the help of similar means as My Bloody Valentine did but in a more post-rock attire. 

Ohio Mark are playing at dunk!festival this year and I'll make sure to catch them live.

Whoever costs 5 EUR.

Check: Class of '88

Country: Belgium

Genre: shoegaze post-rock

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Georgeson - The Solitude of an Endless Sky (2022)

Joris De Bolle is better known as the member of the Belgium post-rock outfit Celestial Wolves, but since recently, also as a solo artist creating his music under the moniker of Georgeson. With the ties to the Belgian post-rock scene are known, it's no surprise that De Bolle's debut album, The Solitude of an Endless Sky, was released by dunk! records.

And the album is as far from the heavy guitar music as possible. It is filled with neoclassical sounds of piano that are both melodic and moody for the whole duration of the release. No wonder that there are so many references to the Far North and the snowy landscapes of solitude. Melancholia fills the album from the start to finish. Finish which is, unlike what I wrote at the beginning, gravitating towards post-rock with Les Feux Follets de la Somme ending with very loud and very raw-sounding guitar noise.

The Solitude of an Endless Sky costs 7 EUR.

Check: The Ballad of the Ninety-Nines

Country: Belgium   

Genre: piano soundscapes

Label: dunk!records

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ASHTORETH - Rites III​-​IV (2021)

Peter Verwimp released his Rites I and II in 2019. Since then he was involved in other projects and cooperations but it's finally time for the followup in the form of Rites III-IV, making the Cyclic Law's release one of the highlights of the ambient music at the end of the last year.

As Ashtoreth is "the preeminent goddess in the Bible, and the plural Ashtaroth is a generic term for goddesses", it's no wonder that Verwimp's music is all about the pagan-sounding, sacral and dark ambient. It is a sea of gloomy, minimalist electronica that is filled with horror-like, unnerving whispering vocals and distorted instrument sounds. The soundscapes he produces sound mystical and very mysterious and are supposed to explain people's "interconnectedness with nature as a whole and the necessity to acknowledge and use this connection as an amplifier of thoughts, ideas and emotions". One thing is certain, this is one of the darkest ambient pieces of the year.

Rites III​-​IV costs 8 EUR.

Check: Rite III 

Country: Belgium

Genre: dark ambient

Label: Cyclic Law

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Hemelbestormer - Collide & Merge (2021)

Hemelbestormer is one of the bands that define the heavy music scene in Belgium, one that never disappoints fans' expectations when it comes to the overwhelming guitar noise compositions. Three years after their third album A Ring of Blue Light, they are back with immersive and absolutely massive Collide & Merge.

This extremely long album (physically existing as double CD/LP) is filled with long and slowly developing (or even developing and diminishing and then developing again within one track) very much guitar-oriented compositions. They seem to last forever while the storm of guitar noise comes and goes, making this feel nature-like epic. There are traces of electronica here, but the focus is solely put on what can be achieved with a wall of guitar noise - and the results are so impressive! The blizzard of sound they can generate is fantastic with the noise parts in Collapsar (or rather somewhere within Collapsar's complicated soundscape), the first seconds of In Praise of Sun and in my favourite Void that constitutes almost a quarter-of-an-hour-long love letter to loud music.

But there's more to this music than only the crushing quality of noise. There's a lot of space for moody atmosphere building, drone ambient-like passages as well as for skillful guitar riffs. I love those mysterious spoken word/whispering bits in Quasar as well. In general, the whole album sounds like it was carefully designed to reflect what's the best in instrumental guitar music.

Collide & Merge costs 6 EUR.

Hemelbestormer - A Ring of Blue Light (2018)

Check: Void 

Country: Belgium

Genre: massive post-metal

Label: Ván Records

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Cecilia::eyes - Sore Memories Always End (2021)

For Cecilia::eyes, Sore Memories Always End is their fourth album already. But somehow I have never really gotten to know them, perhaps because the last album was released in 2014. Now, seven (!) years passed and their new dose of ridiculously ethereal post-rock came to make this winter more mysterious and beautiful.

I can't help but compare the Belgians' music to what we know and love Immanu El for. It's the same vibe of slower but carefully developing, epic but intimate, and massive but cozy post-rock. It gives the feeling of not hurrying anywhere, much rather slowly progressing from one audio wonder to another. The guitars build up slow but steady, making the walls of noise overwhelming and crushingly beautiful, but it never feels like it's meant to crush the audience - quite the opposite, the melancholic sounds have rather an uplifting influence on you. Especially when the vocals hit - again, coming back to Immanu El, their pitch is completely different but they convey the same exceptionally ethereal and very sad expression.

The whole atmospheric melancholia type of mood is present from the very beginning of the album to its very end. But it's best tangible in the longest tracks that have even more time to get into the mesmerizing instrumental parts (the whole album is already a longer one, it takes some time to feel it to the end) like the ones in In a Blue Cold Cloth and, as one could expect, in the album's slow-crescendo finish in Frozen Sand. I can't wait to experience all this live during the next year's Dunk!Festival. 

Sore Memories Always End costs 8 EUR.

Check: Twin Mountains

Country: Belgium

Genre: ethereal post-rock

Label: dunk!records

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Catherine Graindorge - Eldorado (2021)

The Belgian violinist and composer Catherine Graindorge, known for her collaboration with Hugo Race on the 2017's Long Distance Operators, creates music that can be called an experimental take on neoclassicism. Her new album, produced by John Parish himself, Eldorado brings a unique experience for those who need something ambitious and aesthetically pleasing at the same time.

In her music, Graindorge makes use of strings, harmonium and electronica to create mesmerizing and one-of-a-kind compositions. There are parts in which her music sounds like your favourite neoclassical beauty but there's even more parts with less obvious, more experimental sound - like the noisy Eldorado for instance. There's also her voice present in some tracks and, especially the spoken word parts, it adds up to the mysterious ambiance of the whole release. The said ambiance gets darker and quieter the further you go through the album, the finishing tracks sound like the most beautiful instrumental drone with the atmosphere of melancholy and general sadness.

Eldorado costs 7 EUR.

Check: Kangaroos in Fire

Country: Belgian

Genre: experimental neoclassical

Label: tak:til

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Slow Crush - Hush (2021)

If you count this heavy and slow, multi-layered shoegaze without much of the noise pop/post-punk influences as a separate genre, it's clear that Slow Crush is one of the biggest names here at the moment. The Belgian outfit debuted three years ago with the spectacular Aurora and now it's time for a perfect follow-up with the ethereal bliss on Hush.

You could crack a joke saying that at first there's Slowdive and then there's Slow Crush, but in fact, you wouldn't be very far from the truth. The Belgian band couldn't hide their inspirations taken from the British icons. The atmosphere of their music is very similar, it is very close as far as the pace, the warmth, the vocals are concerned. There's little place for lively tunes here, it is this kind of music to dance in your mind to. The heavy sounds of guitars are so slow that they often sound like a heavy kind of ambient music, if it even makes sense; on the other hand, there are moments of fast-paced ethereal fun (Swoon is the perfect example here), but it's still not a happy-go-lucky noise pop - it's so much more. No wonder that the subtle melodies and heavy music are called "radiating moonlit warmth through a haze of abrasive whirling layered guitars".

The ridiculously airy atmosphere is partly achieved due to the vocals by Isa Holliday - they often sound more like a ASMR-type whispers or lullabies sung in bed. Those rather dark and sad vibes that rule over the whole release, may be the results of the trying times the artists had to come through during the pandemics (that included changing lineup and problems with labels). But they seem to be over with the problems and in 2022, the band is going to have another big tour all over the world, including two gigs in Poland, which I'm so excited for.

Hush costs 9.99 GBP.

Slow Crush - Ease (Deluxe Edition) (2019)

Check: Hush

Country: Belgium

Genre: heavy shoegaze

Label: Church Road Records

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Sonmi451 - Seven Signals in the Sky (2021)

Bernard Zwijzen, better known as Sonmi451, is present on the ambient scene for a decade now. To celebrate this fact, he released a brilliant album Seven Signals in the Sky with the help of people from the LAAPS label.

This is this kind of ambient music that strikes with peace and subtle atmosphere while at the same time presents a lot of things going on around the listener. It reminds me of a summer meadow where there's tons of tiny sounds around you which together create a symphony of peacefulness and beauty. In Zwijzen's music there are electronic samples with piano keys with ASMR-like whispers with ethereal backing vocals - and this is this kind of blend that makes me instantly fall in love with music. The whole album shows a variety of relaxing and beautiful sounds that together make a perfect whole.

Seven Signals in the Sky costs 6 EUR.

Check: Seven Signals in the Sky

Country: Belgium

Genre: relaxing ambient

Label: LAAPS

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Whispering Sons - Several Others (2021)

The brilliant Belgium band is back! Brussels-based Whispering Sons, a debut prodigies of 2018 when they released Image, follow up with a strong album filled with dark and uncomfortable compositions of extremely melodic and catchy post-punk. A must listen-to, no doubts.

As their Bandcamp page states, the band decided to lose the debut's theatrical atmosphere to underline the "sheer, unpretentious intensity". And I have to say, I  d i g  the theatrical, especially that watching Fenne Kuppens on stage is like attending a touching performance on its own. But the core elements are all there anyway: the minimal, utterly post-punk music arrangements, mesmerizing melodies and, of course, Kuppens' voice. Not only it's unique and outstanding no matter what's around it, it also brings tons of gloominess and darkness to even the liveliest songs. Take Heat, the bass line of which is fast and energetic with fresh and eager guitars around it but the vocals (and lyrics of course) make it sound so depressing anyway.

Especially when the vocalist decides to occasionally raise her voice and start screaming, the effects are spine-thrilling. And a look into the lyrics only make the feeling of anguish more poignant: they sound extremely personal, talking about the psychological and the physiological aspects of being human in such a way it borders very painful grotesque, as in Screens ("she’s no longer a woman / she’s merely a body to look at / a monstrous body to look at"). Huge album, can't wait to see the Belgians live.

Several Others costs 10 EUR.

Check: Surface

Country: Belgium

Genre: dark post-punk

Label: PIAS Recordings

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MANTIS - Glint (2020)

MANTIS, the Belgian one, is a band that has been on the border of post-rock mainstream for some time now. I remember them from their debut LP called Magnolia but there was also a number of EPs. At the end of the last year, they came back with another LP called Glint, released by dunk!records, and proved they have everything to be more recognized in the world.

Complex but not hasty compositions on heavy, almost post-metal-like guitars with occasional violins and vocals (by Jacques Nomdefamille in quite ethereal Altamont with those shoegaze'y vibes) - this is their music. Big role of the bass line makes it very melodic in a darker way, something like math-rock meeting post-metal, the chaotic energy and heavy atmosphere together make their music roll. This feels best when the musicians give themselves more room to fully develop the compositions like it is in the longest tracks on the album. Especially in the already mentioned Altamont in which they reach some tribal-trance-pure energy levels or, though a shorter one, Hessian, flowing with loud and crunchy guitars and lively pace. It makes me wonder how awesome their live gigs, can't wait to see them somewhere in Europe.

Glint costs 7 EUR.

Check: Altamont 

Country: Belgium

Genre: heavy math-rock

Label: dunk!records

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Echo Collective - The Sea Within (2020) EN

Another this week position from Belgium. This time it's a neoclassical gathering of artists under the Echo Collective moniker. Up to this point, the band has been mostly known for their reinterpretation of Amnesiac by Radiohead on classical instruments in 2018 roku. If I understand correctly, they now released their in a way debut, talking about fully independent albums, called The See Within.

Despite the number of people who create their music here that would be enough for playing almost orchestral sounds, the band's music is basically instrumental ambient. There's not a lot of tunes and the artists are mostly focused on generating atmosphere of melancholy, peace and nostalgia. There's the spirit of experimentalism noticeable sometimes in the deluge of bass sounds that overthrow violins, pianos and trumpets. But usually it's the classical instruments with the main roles and they are the most beautiful probably in the touching The Witching Hour.

Unfortunately, The Sea Within is pretty expensive costing 11 EUR!

Check: The Witching Hour

Country: Belgium    

Genre: orchestral ambient

Label: 7k!

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Black Narcissus - Where the Flowers Grant You Wishes (2020) EN

Black Narcissus make a super modest duo out of Belgium who introduces themselves as "2-piece rhythm section providing intense and atmospheric tunes of monumental proportion". Modest because they are so much more than rhythm section what they prove on their second one, after 2018's Beyond The Whispers Of Common Men, album called Where the Flowers Grant You Wishes.

And of course I cannot shy away from the fact that it's yet another very much and very heavy guitar project from Belgium, this country has this thing for this kind of music. Anyway, the duo consisting of Thomas Wuyts and Jesse Massant, show a great deal of post-rock music with huge inspirations drawn from progressive rock and those monumentalism vibes - it's not only about their music, just read the track titles and study the cover art to get the notion of the atmosphere usually known from myths or fantasy literature.

The impression is further deepened by sampled spoken word sounding on guitar riff-filled compositions. This is this prog rock inspiration I usually don't appreciate that much but I'm ready to say that it sounds really good here. Probably because it builds up the very dark and very dense atmosphere of the album, ruling this music especially in the particularly good She Yields to None but Time.

Where the Flowers Grant You Wishes costs 8 EUR.

Check: She Yields to None but Time

Country: Belgium

Genre: progressive post-rock

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