Soundtrack by DJ Zeal

8:00 pm

Astronaute (b)

We'll be opening with Myrthe Luyten from Leuven, who is blessed with a striking voice. She says that she deals in ‘acoustic sounds, strange rattling and many flights of fancy’. Her free, digitally downloadable EP ‘Myriad’ is stunning and made us Astronaute fans for life. Eat this Dirk Frimout!

8:45 pm

Ólöf Arnalds (Iceland)

This Icelandic violinist / guitarist / classically schooled singer, ex-Múm member and cousin to Ólafur Arnalds, played her first Belgian concert ever in ’08 at the Feeërieën. Those who saw her then – or recently during her living-room concert in Huis 23 (AB) – are still impressed by her disarming presence and unique voice.

She has already recorded a number of songs with countrymate Björk and we consider her albums ‘Viđ Og Viđ’ (’06), ‘Innudir Skinni’ (’10) and ‘Sudden Elevation’ (’12) to be essential gems. Add to that, live, her witty & naive banter between songs and a series of unexpected covers of the likes of Springsteen, Dylan or Caetano Veloso and there's no living soul who'd not be moved.

10:00 pm

Frank Fairfield (us)

We recently became acquainted with Frank Fairfield thanks to Jack White’s Third Man Records. We were instantly triggered by his profile photo, which didn't exactly fit in with the spirit of the times. Now see: this LA-resident fiddle, guitar & banjo player would also seem to be blessed with ‘a broken soulful voice’ that could have appeared on ‘The Anthology of American Folk Music’ - that essential folk-collector released by Harry Smith in 1952 (!) via Folkway Records.

We immediately went out and bought two albums – ‘s/t’ (’09) and ‘Out On The Open West’ (’11) – via the excellent Tompkins Square label (see too: Ryley Walker, Daniel Bachman,...). We also decided, just like Pitchfork, that: “Fairfield sings with the sort of human moan that you can hear in Doc Watson's blues or any number of Alan Lomax's field recordings.” Fairfield is a troubadour of the purest sort.