SLUMBERLAND

Since 2013, Jochem Baelus has been besieging the music scene with his re-engineered sewing machines and film projectors.

With its obscure, veiled songs, his self-titled debut album in 2013 on the experimental Dutch label 'De Zesde Kolonne' made an impression for its Lynchian atmosphere, prior to which he had already gained a reputation with bands including Echo Beatty.

It didn't go unnoticed by bands such as Tindersticks and King Dude, with whom he would later share the stage.

After several tours in Germany, Eastern Europe and Switzerland, a 'live' tape was released with collaborations from the 'Psychfest' festival Eindhoven and he was invited to take part in the compilation album 'I said no doctors' alongside the likes of Silver Apples and Dan Deacon, on the American label 'Dymaxion groove records'.

After numerous solo shows, in 2018, he decided to expand his band to a trio which Baelus immediately recorded a new full album with.

For Slumberland's second full album 'Sea, sea, sea, drifter / See, see, see, drifter' (Consouling Sounds), Slumberland crossed the Atlantic, making landfall in Montreal to work with engineer/producer Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, amongst many others known from 'Jerusalem in my heart'. As the unofficial sound guru for the Canadian label 'Constellation', he is right at home with the cinematic portraits and tribal realms of Slumberland.

With his help, the album was recorded in a former refrigeration unit amidst the colourful Dutch tulip fields of Voorhout. Though there’s little evidence of this cheerful decor.

The album was mixed at studio Hotel2tango, Montreal (known for Godspeed You! Black Emperor, among others...) and sounds murkier, rawer and more explosive than its processor. The songs unfold in a constant friction between tactile textures and spare melodies, with the inky voice of Baelus increasingly at the forefront in the role of master of ceremonies.

After Alfredo Bravo (Flying Horseman) left the band in 2019, now the two drummers Erik Heestermans (Steve Gunn) and Frederik Meulyzer (Stray Dogs) provide an organic, visceral counterweight to all that mechanical noise.

In this configuration, the band has made a name for itself as an intense live experience, entrancing audiences in a collective, repetitive, timeless ritual. Or, in the words of HUMO magazine: ‘Beautiful to watch, heavenly to hear’.

In 2020 Jochem Baelus set out to investigate how he could use his expertise to go into  dialogue with other cultures through his sound sculptures. His fascination for the use of the human voice as a means of communication within certain communities soon led him to 63-year-old avant-garde, voice artist Sainkho Namtchylak.

Namtchylak grew up in Tuva, an autonomous republic in Russia north of Mongolia. She is known as one of the first recognised female 'overtone artists', a privilege usually reserved for the male part of the population. She studied in Moscow and combined this with shamanistic Siberian chants, jazz, avant-garde music and worked with various musicians, from Evan Parker to
to Tinariwen. In June 2020 Jochem visited Namtchylak in Vienna where it soon became clear that their collaboration was full of potential. An encounter between 2 worlds, from which the interaction between the material and the immaterial, new music and audiovisual forms are distilled.

For their collaboration on Slumberland's third upcoming full album Lightkeeper Baelus worked with the Canadien/Lebanese sound engineer Radwan Ghazi Moumneh (Jerusalem In My Heart, Constellation Records), recording amidst the trees at Gam Studio in the Belgian Ardennes and mixing at Hotel 2 Tango in Montréal. The album was mastered by James Plotkin and was released on the 14th of November 2022 by Berlin’s Morphine Records (Senyawa, Pierre Bastien) founded by Rabih Beaini.

Slumberland and Namtchylak have been invited to play at CTM festival, ​Le Guess Who?, Rewire festival, Sonic City festival and will be part of the line up of adventorous music festivals like NEXTfestival, Saint Ghetto festival ​and Alternative festival.