Uma Chine

Belgian dream pop six-piece Uma Chine craft unusually bewitching music. The band has two albums under its belt - the debut self-titled (2019) and Changes (2021) - which have been beautifully received by the music press in the Benelux and beyond. The most eye-catching endorsement yet has come from Belgium's godfathers of synth music dEUS. dEUS asked Uma Chine to play at their party in Antwerp, which is a pinch yourself moment for any purveyor of futuristic music through analog gear.

 Uma Chine being at the forefront of the Belgian alternative scene comes partly thanks to frontwoman and principal composer Nele De Gussem. De Gussem has been in some of the country's great modern bands before -- BRNS, Maya's Moving Castle, Future Old People Are Wizards. But it's in Uma Chine you hear an artist embarking on their most personal work to date, whilst conceding that the idea of the self is perhaps an egoistic social construct, and that truly divine ideas pass through you.

 "I believe that the most important ideas come to us, they want to impose themselves on our consciousness. The only thing we can do is listen quietly and examine them without fear, " says De Gussem, with the air of a Victorian auteur.

De Gussem comes across, ultimately, like the luckiest composer in the world to have such enigmatic co-singers in her presence in sisters Rana and Sherien Holail Mohamed. Meanwhile, the band musicians Simon Raman (drums - Ivy Falls, Steiger), Nils Vermeulen (bass - Jukwaa) and Gilles Vandecaveye-Pinoy (Steiger, Peenoise) all pull in the same musical direction to make this a perfectionist psychedelia, with everything feeling like it's justified as a texture on a trained musical level, with the puzzles worked out in her dreams.

This blend of articulate classicism with truly tasteful production ideas will see Uma Chine blast far into orbit and remain one of THE bands to know in 21st century music.