Belgian player Jakob Warmenbol has been steadily drumming on other people’s records since 2008, in bands Abschattungen, Don Kapot, M(h)ysteria, Nest, Phynt, Robbing Millions, Wheels, and De Klok, and evidently covering a range of styles thereby, moving from jazz to noise-rock by way of African music.
He’s here solo today under his alias Kabaal with his debut LP, World Why Web (MOLI DEL TRO MDT008). It’s an exhausting listen. Warmenbol is a frenetic, energised stickman and if he sees a space between two oranges in the fruit bowl, he’ll instantly fill it with a watermelon if so disposed. Not content with hammering out the railroad ties as he builds his one-man passage to the North-West frontier through the Sonian Forest, he’s also caught the sampling bug, drawing on a very eclectic range of pre-records which would be enough to consume 18 hard drives in flames, and presumably he’s triggering these samples live in real time while he pads away behind the kit. Already the frantic action is doubled. This doubling also tends towards sonic overload for the listener, as one odd / surprising / shocking / puzzling escapade follows another in the stream of exotic selections, powered by ceaseless beats. To return to the fruit metaphor, it’s like eating psychedelic grapes laced with pineapples, whose herbaceous crowns have somehow transformed into lattice spindlework gathered from a nearby spider.
According to the text here, we might find the music of jazzman Paul Dunmall and composer Ligeti sampled somewhere in the fast-moving array, but no use in attempting to trap these errant dragonflies by the riverbed nor identify their species. I like the lively chutzpah with which Warmenbol pilfers from recordings, even if this hopppermathon is a confusing jumble, whose novelty value is high but whose staying power has yet to be determined. I’d like it if his Kabaal name did in fact indicate an interest in the Kabbalah; perhaps then he might attach a mystic significance to the odd images on the covers here, such as buzzsaws embedded in tree trunks and a random spill of coloured balls. It would also be possible to assess the internet – the “world why web” – as a huge storehouse of puzzling symbols and signs, in need of decoding by a Talmudic scholar. However, I expect the name is just a coincidence. LP is pressed in turquoise vinyl. From 01/11/2024.