Teun Verbruggen: Drums
Vitja Pauwels: Guitar
Cesar De Sutter-Pinoy: Guitar
Never one to shy away from a challenge, Teun Verbruggen is undoubtedly one of the restless explorers of today’s improvisation scene. The drummer also understands that the best way to avoid stagnation or repetition is to constantly expand his group of collaborators. In guitar players Vitja Pauwels (Bombataz, leap/detach) and Cesar De Sutter-Pinoy (Peenoise, Bardo), he has found two young experimentalists willing to tag along and provoke him. The recently founded Cram Ration betrays some common traits with other Verbruggen projects like The Bureau Of Atomic Tourism, Warped Dreamer and Othin Spake, but offers its own twist.
Cram Ration’s sound is one of tension and release, consistent manipulation and an ongoing battle between order and chaos. Motifs occur, but might be strangled by dense washes of noise. A subtle, eerie foreboding might derail into oppressive mayhem and a barrage of eccentric sounds. Or not. It’s the kind of interaction that proves the futility of genre labels, as the trio restlessly combines free improvisation with contemporary electronics, drones, sound experiment and occasionally outrageous dynamics. It’s an update of Maximum Overdrive, the excitement and danger of 21st century systems bundled into a trio aesthetic that is as challenging as it is alluring. – Guy Peters