Urpf Lanze is the moniker under which visual artist
Wouter Vanhaelemeesch plays his unorthodox solo guitar music. Currently playing a resonator guitar, which he plays on his lap, his set has evolved from half depressed downtempo noodling to uptempo and atonal demented boogie riffs augmented with his usual gradations of grunts, mumbles and whispers. Aiming to sound like Ali Farka Touré covering Slayer, he frequently fails and sounds likeTerry Riley covering Black Oak Arkansas, which might or might not be a good thing depending on the listener's point of view. Instead of trying to give an audience a good time or bad time while performing, Urpf Lanze aims for them to have an interesting time, yet promises nothing.
Urpf Lanze is currently recording a new album and has put out an LP on his own audioMER imprint called Procession of Talking Mirrors. Some words on the album from people who review music in a professional capacity:
Veering from insistent percussive batterings to bending slackened strings to finely articulated runs, he employs disciplined technique and the power of sloppiness in a way that few other guitarists would even consider trying.
By Mike Barnes,
WIRE
Paying lip service to blues, folk, and American primitivism along the way, the theme that remains constant across the board is a counterpoise between the roughness of the voice with the violent rattling guitar, and the emergence of subtle melodic and rhythmic patterns among them, perpetually being swept away by altered copies of themselves. It’s a work that wears its vision and artistic allegiances on its sleeve, from the music itself to the subtext in the track titles to the cover art with its shades of Hieronymous Bosch. For anyone with an ear for acoustic guitar music which puts raw humanity ahead of clinical studio treatment, look no further than this.
Scrolldust
