For over twenty years, KRAAK have built relationships with artists from all over the world, giving them the space they need to develop or to try out new things. A hybrid organisation, moonlighting as promoter, label, publisher and fixer, they are bound to no city in particular, taking full advantage of Belgium’s central location in Western Europe.

According to KRAAK’s Gabriela González Rondón, what unites the releases on the label, all quite disparate in style, is “an immense honesty in all of these records, something that makes them relatable and straightforward, no matter the genre”. This set of tracks is meant as a companion to October’s Unlimited Editions column, featured in issue 440.

Bear Bones, Lay Low
“A Fourth Ring”

Bear Bones, Lay Low is the main project of Brussels based Venezuelan Ernesto Gonzalez. His second album for KRAAK, 2012's El Telonero, saw him veer away from his earlier drone-heavy noise jams, into the layered kosmische sounds that have since become distinctly his own.

Ignatz
“All Your Love”

Bram Devens has been performing as Ignatz for the better part of the last two decades. II, his sophomore release from 2007, is a sidelong glance at folk and bluegrass, with his interplay of frayed guitar licks and existentialist vocals managing to be both compellingly lumbering and urgent.

Köhn
“Döhre”

Jurgen De Blonde, aka Köhn, is a KRAAK veteran and possibly the artist with the most releases on the label. Released in 2002, Koen is his third album for KRAAK. Starting with dense electronic drones in the late 1990s, De Blonde eventually worked his way into the transcendental electronics of his later work.

Orphan Fairytale
“Gallerina Waltz”

Eva Van Deuren, aka Orphan Fairytale, is a stalwart of the Antwerp music scene best known for her sometimes sweet, sometimes haunting electronic psychedelia. Her upcoming album, Tune In Tree Ears, her first for KRAAK, is composed entirely of her recent harp pieces. Folksier than her previous work, it retains the endearing honesty that characterises her music.

Razen
“Reaper”

Taken from 2016's Endrhymes. This is KRAAK's second release by multi-instrumentalists Brecht Ameel and Kim Delcour, before they turned Razen turned into a full-fledged band. Improvisation and an exacting focus on the properties of sound itself come together, turning the act of listening into a fully immersive body-mind experience.

Sea Urchin
“Bloaji Badejo”

From Yaqaza, Francesco Cavaliere and Leila Hassan's debut as Sea Urchin released in 2016. Satisfyingly imprecise drums, cupboard-rattling low-end and muffled electronics converge with Hassan’s half-sung, half-whispered vocals and underpin the duo’s rich, invented mythologies.

Vica Pacheco
“Symplegma Y Micromegas”

Taken from the imaginative debut album by the Mexican-born, Brussels based artist. The backdrops to Symplegmata, released in 2020, are field recordings and moody, angular computer music. Her synthesised (un)natural worlds are often pushed to the edge of entropy, refraining just inches from giving in to it.

Read Kurt Buttigieg's Unlimited Editions article in The Wire 440. Subscribers can access the feature via the digital archive.