Early Life Forms

This feast for axe freaks captures the live debut of a new supergroup assembled by Brussels-based multi-instrumentalist and sound sculptor Vitja Pauwels during 2022’s Brand! festival in Mechelen, Belgium. With special guest, downtown NYC luminary Marc Ribot in tow, the quintet bounce between airy spaghetti-western ambience and deep Afro-Cuban groove, an unusual admixture requiring acclimatisation, but entirely worth the effort. Frederik Leroux’s baritone guitar lends its sun-baked prairie-twang to ‘Overland’, sounding like a lost side from Earth’s Hex; Or Printing in the Infernal Method, while the sumptuous simmer of ‘Release and Return’ finds Pauwels and Ribot siphoning rich cascades of chiming harmonics and frothy FX clouds, reminiscent of Bill Frisell’s work at its most nebulous, en route to a blistering Pink Floyd-esque finale. Punctuating these meditative tone-poems, the Early Life Forms group flex their Latin muscle, with organist Laurens Dierickx vamping wildly to some frisky samba rhythms, before cranking up a snazzy fairground-ride funk. Ribot is clearly having a blast throughout, shifting from spiky-tailed, flanged-out fretboard heroics on ‘My Little Renaissance’ to cheekily quoting from ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ and Bob Marley’s ‘Get Up, Stand Up’ during the band’s freewheeling encore, proving again he’s just as adept at playing a joker as landing a winning hand.