AKSAK MABOUL release Figures 
their first new album in 40 years!

 

Figures
2CD / 2LP / digital
out now



 The new double album by the legendary experimental pop outfit is just out, and both audience & media are showing a lot of love and enthusiasm. Let’s see how some of them perceive the record: 

The long-running Belgian avant-garde band explores complicated gender dynamics on their ambitious new double album… Aksak Maboul’s musical vocabulary is admirably worldwide. 
 (Pitchfork, US)

Totally pop, yet psychedelic… manages to contain elements from every phase of the band, whilst still having a contemporary edge… It’s a little too early to talk about best albums for 2020, but for me this is currently the one to beat.
(The Quietus, UK)

First album in four decades from the Belgian experimental pop pioneers, making up for lost time with 75 minutes of scampering, genre-agnostic fun
(Uncut, UK)

A masterful lesson in contemporary pop. Across 22 tracks, Figures jumps from the craziest experimentations to irresistible pop songs, with joyful ease
(Les Inrockuptibles, FR)

and:
Aksak Maboul is to music what Thomas Pynchon is to literature… (L'Autre Quotidien, FR)
Off the beaten track… Véronique’s texts are drenched in Surrealism and replete with subtle literary references (Le Soir, BE)
Dazzling, carnivorous pop  (Le Vif/L’Express, BE)
etc… 

Figures is Album Of The Week on Gilles Peterson's Worldwide FM (UK), ByteFM (DE) and Bayerische BR5 (DE)
+ much more to come ( see all early reactions here )

 

More info: Aksak Maboul was initiated by Crammed label boss Marc Hollander before he started the label. The first two albums (1977 & 1980) have become avant-garde classics. The 3rd album, a collaboration with Véronique Vincent (The Honeymoon Killers), was shelved for 30 years and finally released in 2014. Hollander & V.Vincent then started playing shows and writing new music after a gap of several decades, which resulted in the recording of Figures.

In this new album, Aksak Maboul draw again from the multiple sources which have always inspired the band (from electronic music and pop to experimentation, jazz, minimalism, contemporary classical etc), and reconfigure them with their inimitable style. 

Figures was written and performed by Marc Hollander & Véronique Vincent, produced by Marc Hollander, coproduced by Faustine Hollander. The album features contributions by the band’s current live line-up (Faustine Hollander, Lucien Fraipont & Erik Heestermans), and by guests including a.o. Fred Frith, Steven Brown from Tuxedomoon, and Julien Gasc, Benjamin Glibert & Audrey Ginestet from Aquaserge.