(BE/ (K-RAA-K)3)
 
The character Ignatz, a vicious mouse whose favourite occupation was throwing bricks at Krazy Kat’s head, was created for a comic by George Herriman in 1910. Krazy Kat thought it was love.
 
Brussels-based musician Bram Devens<b/>, uses the alias Ignatz to produce his unique brand of Future Folk. Invoking the mouse character from the long running Krazy Kat comic, Devens tells us that his music is like his own pile of bricks. In fact, he produces effects washed, improvised acoustic songs heavily influenced by American blues as well as psychedelics. A Jandekian character, Devens creates singular folk-music with odd electronics and barely intelligible lyrics. Devens is a lo-fi devotee. Apparently at fifteen years old, after being raised with old blues and the Smithsonian Anthology Of Folk, he felt the need to unroll old cassettes, rumple the tape and roll it back on before listening to the music.
 
Devens released the Ignatz debut in 2005, an untitled album on the Belgian independent label (K-RAA-K)3. All eight tracks of the album were psychedelic drone guitar music, influenced by Japanese psych and Mississippi Delta blues, with strangely high-pitched vocals. Later in the year came a five-track cassette tape called Addiction for Slumber that came out on the Belgian experimental label Imvated.
 
Following the debut, many listeners were surprised to find that Ignatz wasn’t a Mississippi Delta dwelling, crinkly-faced septuagenarian, grumble-crooning about a life of regret, but a young white guy from Belgium. His improvised songs draw on Appalachian folk and bluegrass and the electric-blues of performers like Mississippi John Hurt, but Devens invariably twists the tropes into his own strange language.
 
A year and a half later, after having released the tape on Imvated and I Will Soothe My Eye to Feast It with a Sight of Beauty cd-r on New Zealand label Celebrate Psi Phenomenon (run by Campbell Kneale aka Birchville Cat Motel), and another cassette release They are Quiet as Mice, on Beniffer editions, followed Ignatz' second ‘official’ album, Ignatz II on (K-RAA-K)3.
 
> Website Ignatz
> Ignatz on Myspace
 
Appearances:
> CTM.08 > MAGIC POND