Evolving Beats: Interview with Spëcht

Last summer, I had the privilege of attending the A To Jazz Festival in Sofia on behalf of Songlines, mainly to write about the long-running jazz festival’s first-ever World Music Showcase, supported by the European world music platform UPBEAT. One of the many inter-European artists invited to perform were the excellent Belgian percussion trio Hands in Motion, who were handed the honour of opening the festival in the Bulgarian capital’s glorious South Park. The band proved to be the perfect opening act, their calm but dazzling polyrhythmic symphony a siren to the festival attendees as they entered the park from all directions. After returning from the festival, I sent the band's Simon Leleux a few questions but it took a while for the answers to arrive. This was because they had been busy. Changing their band name to Spëcht and recording a brilliant new album Triptyques for Zephyrus Records, the trio had taken their adventurous blend of global rhythms and subtle use of electronics to another level.

How did you feel about your performance at A To Jazz? It’s a big deal to open a festival, especially a brand-new showcase event! 

It felt great! Over the past months, we’ve been lucky enough to play in different showcases in Belgium and abroad. As you can imagine, in those contexts conditions can be really different and sometimes really tricky time-wise. Travelling with all of our gear compactly and learning how to set up very quickly allows us to relax on stage and focus on our music. In Sofia, we were well prepared and relaxed, and the festival itself was amazingly well organised. Having said that, it’s always a challenge to fill the space on such a big stage. We’re a 'sitting' trio and our music fits best on low stages and club-like contexts.

​

Having spoken with you at the festival, I understand you all play with many other artists and this is a new project. How did you come together? 

Indeed, as percussionists, we often have a very busy schedule! The idea came up in Istanbul, in 2012 I believe. We were there with an Ottoman music ensemble, playing the percussion parts with my colleague and dear friend Robbe Kieckens. During our stay, I shared with him my will to create a percussion-based ensemble, aiming for a hybrid music that would focus on complex rhythms, fixed compositions and arrangements, but also making it possibly danceable. Music for the body and the spirit! In 2018, we did our first experiments, creating a band in 2020 and releasing our first album Dawn in 2022. The trio as it exists today was created at the beginning of 2022 with Céléstin Massot, whose father was an improvisation teacher of mine for years. It felt really natural to share this project with him and the energies flowing amongst the three of us are amazing.

There are a lot of global influences in your music – can you explain how you all came to this love of polyrhythms and ‘world’ influences? What were your inspirations? Local and international? Have you trained with particular mentors?

The three of us have very different approaches, which makes it really interesting when we work together. Robbe has strong roots in African and Afro-Cuban percussion but has an overall rhythm knowledge of numerous musical traditions. He has also trained on Middle Eastern frame drums with Zohar Fresco and takes inspiration from his mentor, Alex Tobias, a master of Iberian percussion. Céléstin comes from the Western classical and jazz world but also excels in some hand percussion such as cajón and congas. For my part, I was always very focused on Middle Eastern ‘finger’ percussion, especially the darbuka, or its bass version, the doholla. Amongst others, I’m very lucky to have trained for some years with a real pioneer in this field, Levent Yildirim.  

Then of course, thanks to these unique instruments we play and the way we dedicate ourselves to it, all of us are part of different projects in various music styles. A lot of our inspiration comes from there. The music we learn, the people we meet all over the world, the experiences we live, the food we share. We try to bring this multitude of influences into our trio to create something really unique. 

The electronic textures in your music are very tasteful and subtle, ambient even. On tracks like ‘Sankalpa’ they are reminiscent of drones in classical Indian ragas, was this deliberate? 

Totally! Our aim for this piece was to agree on a rhythmic cycle (tala in Hindustani music), join at the beginning and the end of the piece, and have a very open, free improvised dialogue in the middle. In Indian classical music it is called jugalbandi which means 'entwined twins'. Usually, it’s always played with a lehra (melodic ostinato) and tambura (drone), which are here played by a mbira, going through FX pedals. India is very present in percussion playing nowadays. Especially in the Middle East. It is indeed a very inspiring and complex rhythmic tradition.

Are you influenced by electronic artists? If so, who? 

I wouldn’t say I have a deep knowledge of the electronic music field. We are, above all, practitioners of traditional percussion and music, even though we are very open and actively interested in electronic music. We’re mostly using electronic by manipulating acoustic percussion sounds and going through our electronic setup. Céléstin uses a small synth now and then. We love the contrast it creates with percussion, which has a very concrete sound. We started this with, and for, this trio especially! It feels like discovering a whole new and beautiful galaxy.

What were your aims with the new album, Triptyques? Exploring new avenues? 

The trio itself was created following a research process. Exploration is the only path we can take since there are very few projects with the same instrumental configuration. Our focus is still identical to the first album: one spiritual approach and one more direct, physical approach. Getting there seems to be a lifetime quest to us: there are so many avenues to explore! We changed our composition process, creating three long musical ‘suites’, using more direct grooves. We slightly changed the instrumentation and went for an overall cleaner sound. It’s one more step in our exploration process, and we can’t wait to share it with you!

Triptyques is out now