Nuits Botanique 2022

Aksak Maboul were an Avant-prog band from Belgium, founded in 1977 by Marc Hollander and Vincent Kenis who were active in the Rock in Opposition movement. They made two studio albums, Onze danses pour combattre la migraine (1977) and Un Peu de L'Ame des Bandits (1980). Aksak Maboul were one of the last of the original RIO bands. In early 1979, Hollander invited Chris Cutler and Fred Frith of the recently defunct group Henry Cow to join Aksak Maboul on their next record. Read more on Last.fm

Antoine Wielemans is one of the 2 founders / composers / singers of Girls in Hawaii. As he emerged out of a marathon tour with his band, a small voice prompted him to rewrite, slowly, differently. The result of a long process, of a journey, the words he began to write came to him in French, his mother tongue.

Alaska Gold Rush is a free folk garage duo from Brussels, inspired by American folk songwriting.

Since 2019, Goth-Pop singer Mathilde Fernandez and Casual Gabbers’ Producer Paul Seul have been working together under the alias ascendent vierge. The unique sound they create through their collaboration is a progressive but distinct hybrid between Gabber and Pop featuring Mathilde’s ethereal vocals in French.

Read more on Last.fm

From the medieval and postmodern corners of Brussels come BRNS, a mesmerizing experiment in dusk, dance, and the fullness of sound. Like the dark-yet-vibrant images of Brussels artist Yardz, this quartet of talented multi-instrumentalists weaves together tunes that are mystical, moody and insatiably catchy. From the visceral and danceable 'Mexico', to the choir echoes turned pulsating anthem of 'Here Dead He Lies', BRNS is ceaseless in their ability to unfold haunting ambience into chest-pounding beats, and then back again. Read more on Last.fm

Combining electronic music, hip hop, European and African influences, M I M I always finds a way to raise the temperature on the dance floor. She is a member of the LDC (Lait de Coco) collective, where she plays alongside Labok and Jeune Clyde, as resident DJ at The Word radio or on tour with Martha Da’Ro.

Leticia Collet temporarily leaves aside Dan San and Noa Moon and takes off with her enigmatic solo project, Condore. On her first EP “Jaws” she delicately unfolds an intimate universe and a strong identity. In a hypnotic flight, Condore describes in four titles a concise lo-fi pop made of keyboards, atmospheric and a bewitching voice. From the songs, to the artwork and the handmade album jackets, she wants to be involved in every aspect of her musical project. Each piece is a sound transcription of her personality as sensitive and fragile as it is saturated with rage and passion. She is fully committed and reveals a part of herself through this creative process, she externalizes her worst demons in the most gentle way possible.

Similar to Stereolab, tUnE-yArDs, Everything Everything and Yeasayer, Belgium-based art-pop collective FUGU MANGO deftly mold broad musical traditions into a singular artistic vision. Their pendulous African grooves, multi-layered vocals and technicolored sound textures combine to form a cool, futuristic pop aesthetic. The frenetic group FUGU MANGO came into being in 2013 in Brussels thanks to a shared love of groove, African rhythms and Indie pop. Once they had set foot on stage, the quartet, three boys and a girl, were transformed into gurus of dance, able to remind you that Kinshas’s sidewalks weren’t far from London’s pop power. Something between Talking Heads and ESG.

Geeeko is one of the most promising young rappers hailing from Brussels. With his roots firmly established at Ivory Coast and influences such as Burna Boy, Saint Jhn, and JuiceWRLD, Geeeko is a bright reflection of contemporary youth.

Glauque are not the first band attempting to blur the frontiers between electronic music and hip-hop, and doing so with a French-speaking voice. Many contemporary artists in France and Belgium have chosen these two genres to make music and express themselves, and some of them have even had great chart success. Glauque do their own thing, though. It’s perceivable in their keen sense of aesthetics, in their poetic lyrics and of course in their music itself, which is dark and tender, intimate and rebellious, atmospheric and striking.

Illiona is a Belgian singer, songwriter, producer, keyboardist, born in Brussels.

« A childhood passed in the theatre amongst actors, musicians and craftsmen gave Ivan Tirtiaux his first taste of music.

Sung in his deep, supple voice in his native french he has created a unique kind of ‘folk nouveau’ drawing equally on chanson française, folk, blues and latin music. Both chiselled and organic, poetic and precise, a rich spectrum of experience is refracted through his sparse narratives.

After « l’Envol » in 2015, Ivan Tirtiaux now presents « L’oasis » (out on the 3rd of may 2019), a new album of worldly and other-worldly reflections distilled into 8 shots of knowing tenderness, light and shade.

His voice of brandy and torn velvet stands comparison with John Martyn, his melodic sophistication and harmonic depth with Jeff Buckley. The whole is imbued with Tirtiaux’s meticulous lyrical vision and feline grace, and laced with delicate orchestrations that shimmer like ice palaces in the sun ».

Tunisian-born singer-songwriter Jawhar continues to explore the contours of melancholic folk. More and more intense, darker at times, Jawhar remains the apostle of a hybrid music, between folk, pop and mezoued. After “Qibla Wa Qobla” (Naff-2014) and "Winrah Marah" (62tv-2018), Jawhar is back with a new album - Tasweerah - تصويرة  - To be released in march 2022  (62tv Records/PIAS)

Following a passion for the empowering perreo that started in the 00s at her teenage parties in Galicia, Spanish MC and DJ Clara! blends revolt, sex and humor on reggaeton/rap mutant rhythms with a punk spirit and a feminist foundation. For this infectious and twisted take on the gender she joins forces with eclectic producers including Pearson Sound, Low Jack and Maoupa Mazzocchetti.

Her DJ sets consist of wide ranging, tempo hopping mixes, lead by her hispanic roots, a blind curiosity, fun and a deep love of dancing. Her iconic “Reggaetoneras” mixtapes compiled 100% female reggaeton MCs with rhythms from the ‘90s up to the modern day. Crammed with rude drums and hooks levered from major dance hits, and sandwiched with skits and personal edits.

Moji and Sboy are two childhood friends who grew up together in Liège, Belgium. Really considering themselves as two brothers, their symbiosis pushed them to get into rap by forming a duo, simply named Moji X Sboy. They released their very first freestyle at the end of 2018, gathering tens of thousands views on YouTube. Mainly inspired by American artists, their influences range from Emo Rap, from Lil Peep and Trippie Redd, to Machine Gun Kelly's Punk Rap. They released their latest 12 tracks-mixtape “Temps d’Aime” in June 2021

My Diligence are a Psych/Prog Rock trio, residing in Brussels, Belgium. For fans already in the know, the progressive rock aplomb of established acts like Torche, Helmet and Elder resonate wildly in their sound. Big, bold and high in intensity, the Belgian trio deliver a non-stop, ass kicking brand of no-nonsense rock ‘n’ roll. The band debuted with their self-titled album in 2015, following the 2014 release of the ep 'Who Killed The Driver'. Read more on Last.fm

Instinctive and avant-garde, Reinel Bakole is a multidisciplinary artist whose free spirit leaves no one indifferent.

Robbie Williams? Robin Williams? Robbing Millions? Well, what’s in a name? Fact is that the dreamy, psychedelic sounds, syncopated rythms, angular guitars and breezy lofi synths could not take you further away from the former Take That bad boy’s cheesy brand of pop. They do, however, share a sense of weird humour and nervous ticks that might click with the former Hollywood A-lister, although the one that starred in Terry Gilliam’s The Fisher King as opposed to the caramel-tears crying Patch Adams clown. Read more on Last.fm

From the psychedelic revival realm, Satchel Hart seizes the innocence of an endless summer and immerses us into an extremely effective cosmic pop !

Smahlo is a young rapper and musician from Brussels.

Tukan blends jazz and post rock music to take you into an organic and computerless electronic journey.

Surrounded by his own unique android of drums and electronics, Antoine Pierre is widening his already broad musical spectrum quite a bit with VAAGUE. For this brand new solo project, the Brussels based drummer and producer created a collection of samples to fuse organically — and manually! — with his own drum grooves.

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From pulsating synths over otherworldly vocal snippets to dark and dreamy droplets of sound: each electronic element is blending in perfectly with Antoine’s live played beats. Sometimes hypnotically captivating, then again thriving on downtempo dub vibes, but always inventive and surprisingly layered: this first collection of tracks presents itself as the colorful gateway into a new and exciting musical universe, which is clearly far from finished.

Yamila is Iras Fajro, a Spanish-Belgian composer and producer. Read more on Last.fm

harlemagne Palestine was born Chaim Moshe Palestine in Brooklyn, New York of a Jewish immigrant family from Odessa and Minsk in 1947. He began at six years old to sing traditional Jewish cantorial music in the synagogue.
In the 50s, he accompanied on exotic hand drums poets and musicians like Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Gregory Corso and Tiny Tim. He then became the Carillonneur of St Thomas Church next to the Museum of Modern Art where he began to invent a radical unique approach of bell sonorities which could be heard each afternoon on the street and in the sculpture garden of the museum from 1963 to 1969. At the New York University, he began composing electronic musics at the NYU Electronic Music Studio run by Morton Subotnick where he worked with electronic synthesiser oscillators and filters which he would name “Spectral Continuum”. Later Subotnick invited him in 1969 to relocate to Los Angeles and participate in the creation of a new radical school for multi-media, arts, music, dance and theatre known as the California Institute of the Arts. There he met happening artist inventor Allan Kaprow, video pioneer Nam Jun Paik, avant-garde composer James Tenney, fluxus artists Emmett Williams, Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles and Judson Dance Theatre member and artist Simone Forti with whom Palestine created a unique music and dance form called Illuminations in 1970, which they have continued to perform irregularly over the last 45+ years even just recently at Pompidou Center, Paris and MOMA, Nyc.  At Cal Arts he developed many different practices: electronic and acoustical sound works, body performance art, video art and multi-media installations. With Forti he was invited for the first time to Europe to perform in a festival in Rome in 1972 where he met La Monte Young, Phil Glass, Steve Reich, Terry Riley. With his revolutionary solo piano work “Strumming”, he was included in the new musical trend known as “Minimal Music”. 
In the 70s he became a celebrated and provocative Soho artist encountering and dialoguing with John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Claus Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, Len Lye, Merce Cunningham, Vito Acconci, Marisol, Dennis Oppenheim, Laurie Anderson, Gilbert and George, Trisha Brown, Gordon Matta-Clark… 

Eosine is a belgian dreampop band founded by Elena Lacroix. Their songs range from ethereal sounding to noisier shoegaze moments. Inspired by the warm atmospheres of bands like Slowdive and Beach House, Eosine’s melodies can be more tormented and full of vocal harmonies. Their music also brings out some darker, cold impressions, haunted by vaporous voices. Their debut single “Antares” was released on February 26, 2021.

Pierres is Pierre Leroy's solo project, launched last January and escaped from the band AZERTY just one year ago. Finalist that same year of the competitions 'des concours Du F. dans le texte et Parcours Francofaune'. He has since then revealed his universe made (according to him) of uncomplicated and intimate popette songs.

Scylla, born October 14, 1980 in Brussels, is a Belgian rapper. He was a member of the OPAK collective before pursuing a solo career.

ML, deux lettres, deux initiales pour Maria-Laetitia Mattern, l’un des piliers de Sonnfjord, trio de pop rythmée qu’elle monta avec son frère Aurelio Mattern, et un de leurs amis, Francois de Moffarts, dans leur ville natale, Bruxelles. Mais voilà, Maria-Laetitia, qui pourtant exècre le changement, avait besoin d’un nouveau souffle, de dire son moi le plus profond. Exit l’anglais des textes de Sonnfjord, place au français sur un premier EP solo. Comme une volonté de dire, enfin, l’intimité des doutes et des tourments dans sa langue maternelle. « Quand j’ai commencé à écrire en français j’alignais les métaphores. Puis jai précisé mon propos. Maintenant j’essaye d’écrire ce que je pense, pas de la manière la plus directe possible mais de façon assez simple. » Une simplicité toute en poésie, tournée avec acuité et sens de la mélodie. ML décoche des morceaux comme autant de flèches en plein cœur.

Ada Oda, a brand new band from Brussels, offers a binary and up-tempo rock that borrows as much from post-punk as from Italian variety. Somewhere between Sleaford Mods and Gianna Nannini...

Tessa Dixson (Brussels ca. 1998) is a Belgian alternative pop singer. She is the daughter of a Belgian mother and a British father. Dixson started playing the piano and singing at a young age. In 2014 she participated in The Voice Belgique. From 2017 she started to release singles independently and during that period she worked with Roméo Elvis and others. In 2018 she toured with Warhola. Dixson and Glints sing along on Warhola's single 'Look At Me' from 2019. Read more on Last.fm

Brussels-born and based singer-songwriter Judith Kiddo released her first EP, « Petit Chien », refreshing infusion of pop-synth and folk, fortified by childish yet sensual voices and a quirky sense of humour. Though formally trained as an actress, her love of signing and curiosity for any type of music goes back to early childhood. She has been fortunate enough to get help from Robbing Millions leader and multi instrumentalist Lucien Fraipont, who elegantly produced each one of her early compositions. On stage, Judith is surrounded by musicians spotted in Le Colisée, Aksak Maboul or Spookhuisje.

UNIK UBIK is a fourtet from Tournai/Lille. Including members of Adolina (Tom), Koffeee(Cheb), Louis minus XVI (Djibi) ,Maria Goretti quartet (Tom)& Kermesz à l'est (Max)

KOWARI is the project of violinist Damien Chierici and pianist Louan Kempenaers. Already well known on the Belgian music scene, they first collaborated on a film soundtrack before deciding to found KOWARI together.

An instrumental project with electronic influences and a cinematic universe.

Based on their classical training in their compositions, they decided to call upon the electronic music producer Jean Vanesse from GreenHouse studio to finalise their first album - due for release on 6 May.

Between acoustic and electronic neo soul, Stace introduces us to a special place of vulnerability, authenticity and femininity.