Our country has gained a mischievous ball orchestra, and Green Crow Collective is the name. The band around singer-guitarist Roeland Vandemoortele, who has been impressing audiences for several years, is coming out with "Hard Drive Error," a mercilessly groovy debut that will make you say dada.
Vandemoortele toured for ten years both domestically and internationally with the electro-punk duo Too Tangled, and since then has been involved in theater productions with artists such as Rick de Leeuw, Wim Opbrouck, and Otto-Jan Ham. His dream was a new, slightly obscure group capable of making a venue steam with lustful pleasure in no time – think Mano Negra, T.C. Matic, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, and 16 Horsepower. He searched and found companions in the multi-instrumental violinist Andries Boone (Guido Belcanto, Mandolinman, Tijs Vanneste, also solo active), bassist Mathias Moors (Mr. Paul & The Lowriders, The Antler King), and drummer-actor-photographer-what-not Bert Huysentruyt (Gorki, Het Zesde Metaal). The kind of men one wonders: where do they find the time to start a band?
What they create, they call EuroDada. The music is based on Western rock, Eastern scales, and perhaps most importantly, Belgian surrealism. A song in West Flemish with a hint of "In een klein stationnetje." A track called "Valse Mélancolique" which is neither melancholic nor waltzes. A bold wink, "Putain Putain" for crying out loud, to their great hero Arno. A sample from the news about the Panama Papers, at the beginning of this single "Holdup."
Because if you think Green Crow Collective is absurd, know that ordinary life is even more absurd. And so it should and must also be about the madness of war (Monkey Say, Monkey Do), the homo sapiens influencis (Coolcats), and other characters who declare their own bullshit to be high art (Sauerkraut). The wonderfully derailing songs are elegantly raised middle fingers against the rules in life and in music. Not against anyone else, but in favor of so much. Freedom, joy of play, and amplifiers at eleven.
When the band sent a rehearsal tape to De Muziekgieterij in Maastricht, only asking to play there, the Dutch venue promptly offered them a record deal in collaboration with V2 Records. The result is "Hard Drive Error," take it or leave it.
