urpf lanze: procession of talking mirrors

The person behind Urpf Lanze is Belgian visual artist Wouter Vanhaelemeesch, who is mainly known for his large-scale ink drawings that offer a hermetic blend of weirdo characters, medieval iconography and surrealist decors. His artwork started gaining some attention a few years ago when renowned avant-garde lutenist Jozef Van Wissem started using Vanhaelemeesch's work to decorate many sleeves of his recorded output, including his collaborations with filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, noise legends Smegma, free-folk band United Bible Studies and fingerpicker James Blackshaw. Next to doing exhibitions in places like Tokyo, New York and Paris, his drawings appear regularly in zines and underground publications all over the world. He also runs the audioMER label together with designer Jeroen Wille and has provided artwork for records by Jack Rose, Robbie Basho, Mauro Antonio Pawlowski, Cian Nugent, Graveyards, Second Family Band and many others. Urpf Lanze is the moniker of his rather unorthodox solo guitar project, under which he has been playing for several years now. With an acoustic guitar that lays flat on his lap, tuned to unwieldy scales, he brutalizes the instrument in an oddly musical way. As if this wasn't enough, he lays down some vocal work that goes from ventriloquist-like whines and mumbles to deep and guttural grunts. The result is a rather unhinged and demented music. Imagine the rawness of Bill Orcutt, the more frightening sides of Loren Mazzacane Connors and the absurd stylings of Wilburn Burchette all wrapped into a Lovecraftian sonic nightmare. Procession of Talking Mirrors is his first full-length solo album. Recorded live on a 4-track tape recorder, these six tracks offer a mixture of Japanese folk music, free psych, scratchy Delta-blues recordings, damaged lo-fi and aggressively percussive fingerpicking. While some tracks may carry a more melancholy tone, others seem closer to acoustic death metal than any kind of folk music. However you may describe it, it is most definitely not a record for the faint of heart.