CAPTAIN CHEESE-BEARD

• captain cheese-beard: symphony for auto horns
      (2015, cd, bel, mottow soundz) - feat. robert martin

Introduction to Captain CheeseBeard by Joeri Cardon (English version)

To boldly go where no man has gone before…not only the classic and over-used slogan from an innovative TV-series, but also a phrase used by pleasantly surprised music lovers. We’re talking about fans and critics who want to reward an artist or band who make sport of straying from the well-trodden path of playing music that you will find on the playlists of the average ‘Fun and Hits’ radio stations. Bands like Captain Cheese-Beard for example….Captain Cheese-Beard? You already get the notion from the Band’s name that they are not going to be playing at Tomorrowland to foreign visitors who have flown in specially for the event.

To baptise yourself with a name like Captain Cheese-beard indicates not only a healthy ability to laugh at everything but also the desire to race through the current musical landscape with an ever present threat of adventure. This setup has been built to last in a world where music lovers want to feel the music in the hair on the back of necks, after they have been sent on a wild and amusing goose-chase.

Captain Cheese-Beard hails from Brussels, the closest thing to a metropolis that this drive through country in the centre of Europe has to offer, and that comes through in the music: Brussels, where cultures collide before embracing, where influences change with each bar or club that you pass. Where you can cycle from one musical neighbourhood to another equally exotic or uniquely enriched one, where silence is as unusual as hearing Synthpop on a Captain Beefheart Album (to praise another musical Captain). We are just saying: whoever is making music in the rest of Belgium, it doesn’t sound like Captain Cheese-Beard, not one bit!

So can we hear some of this Band’s music?

Yes! It took a while but this summer saw the release of Captain Cheese-Beard’s debut album “Symphony for auto-horns” (released on Mottow Soundz), It is a collection of music that when first listened to, leads to some delightful confusion. Nothing to come out of Belgium sounds like this album, the band’s leader and composer, Johan De Coninck, who is as unconventional as the music, sees it as his personal mission to supply us mortals with an insane and broody pot pourri of Progrock, solid funk, soul, funk rock, acid jazz, spacerock, dub, Zappalike Rock’n Roll and a handful of genres that your Grandmother might vaguely remember, which not only leaves you with a mellow feeling, but also the desire to listen to the whole thing again, then again and then again. From the ingenious opener ‘Avoid the humanoid’ through the instant classics of ‘Tash and a guitar’ or ‘Righeousness and wieners’ which take hold of you and don’t let go.

De Coninck has surrounded himself with 9 fabulous musicians, amongst whom a fantastic female singer (Vanessa Spay) and a boatload of horns. We mention this just to underline that as a live act Captain Cheese-Beard is a multi-headed monster that only leaves the stage when the collective audience has had their socks blown off. They have mainly been playing in Brussels but they are ready and able to ‘Boldly go where lesser bands fear to tread’… and rock the socks of the rest of the country.

Captain Cheese-Beard,…they are not likely to become chart-toppers, but as far as fun goes you will be spoilt by this highly talented and somewhat quirky, band. It won’t be too long before the first foreign fans are flying in specially for the treat of a Cheese-Beard show. Welcome them in a typical Brussels fashion: with open arms and unashamed quirkiness;

http://www.mottowsoundz.com/cs-symphone-for-autohorns