Annelies Monseré is along-standing, integral member of the Ghent underground. Although recording and releasing solo music since 2000 and having cut her teeth in celebrated groups Distels and Luster, her recent output has ascended into a deeply intimate, warm musical language that feels utterly singular and entrancing. Initially piano-based but now using organs and her own warm vocal performances harmonising with the instruments, her breakthrough album Mares featured on many end of year lists, while 2024’s I Sigh, I Resign refined the sound to a stirring, emotional bare bones minimalism. Her most recent release captures choice moments in her ongoing collaboration with fellow Belgian artist Goldscammer, cassette only.
Annelies Monseré
I Sigh, I Resign
(Horn Of Plenty)
LP – Limited
A follow up to 2023’s Mares, here Monseré pulses with a sonorous rhythmic sensibility while keeping the deep, drone-based songwriting she’s hewn.
Recorded at home in Gent between 2016 and 2023, I Sigh, I Resign retains the intimacy of Mares with it’s close-mic’d keyboards and vocals that capture every breath. Folk and early music are at the core of her sound but the palette of piano, organ, bass guitar, cello, synth and drum machine make it very much a document of the here and now.
The cover features Annelies’s sketches referencing female artists from the Dutch Golden Age who, highly revered at the time, now serve as mere footnotes to Rembrandt, Vermeer et al. The cover sets the tone for the music within which deals with power structures, toxic environments, and questioning (his)tories.
Standout tracks include the pounding rhythm and choir-like voices on Salt as well as the tense folk/post-rock of Simple Fractures (co-written with her Luster bandmates). The album’s most tender moment is a cover of Jean Ritchie’s Appalachian ballad One I Love played and sung by Annelies and her ten year old son.
I Sigh, I Resign is an intimate piece of work that explores personal and general themes which, having played-out for centuries, are still depressingly relevant. Despite the suggestion of defeat in the title, I Sigh, I Resign is an affirming and defiant manifesto for growth and liberation.
Annelies Monseré
Mares
(Horn Of Plenty)
LTD Repress, last copies
An enchanting wonderland of sound concocted by Belgian artist Annelies Monseré, Mares burrows into the head and catches there. Last copies.
Waves of synthesized enchantment built medieval modes and augmented liberally with Annelies Monseré’s spectral vocal. The most bewitching tapestry of sound I’ve heard in an age. (MK)
As a member of Ghent’s experimental music scene, over the past two decades Annelies Monseré has slowly refined a singular approach to musicality, moving from the sparse, instrumental piano works from that defined her early career, toward increasingly complex arrangements of instrumentation that offer a central place to her own voice, issued by noteworthy imprints such as Morc Tapes, Stroom, and three:four. Like her work within the widely celebrated ensemble, Luster, as well as Distels, her duo with Steve Marreyt, Monseré’s solo efforts establish a strikingly beautiful and remarkably unique territory that elegantly balances between rigorous experimentalism, minimalism, drone, and folk.
Recorded between 2016 and 2022, Mares is arguably best approached through the song that marked its inception and conclusion, a rendition of Cyril Tawney’s Sally Free & Easy. Written in 1958 and popularised by Pentangle during the early 1970s, it has been approached by so many artists – Davy Graham, Trees, Tony Caro & John, Marianne Faithfull, Flying Saucer Attack, etc. – that it’s become a “standard” within the folk scenes of the last half century or so. Initially drawn to the melodic qualities of the tune, Monseré became fascinated with the lyrical content, which she points out are “ethically problematic: a sailor ‘slutshaming’ a woman because she left him.. blaming her for his (planned) suicide”. Refined from paired down beginnings over a six year period, a droning, feminist dirge slowly emerged from her hands, incorporating male backing vocals and harmonium as brooding counterpoint to her voice, that entirely recasts the song into a new and radically prescient form. (Horn Of Plenty)
Annelies Monseré & Goldscammer
Annelies Monseré & Goldscammer
(Horn Of Plenty)
LTD Cassette, last copies
Utterly gorgeous collaborations featuring organ, bass, electronics and elgiac close harmonised vocals. RIYL: Low, Bedhead, Sarah Davachi
Annelies Monseré and Goldscammer are members of the contemporary Belgian underground with a string of solo and collaborative releases on Kraak, Stroom, and Morc Tapes which showcase their ability to create powerfully atmospheric works centred around highly personal approaches to songwriting.
In early 2024 they decided to work together for the first time and began by exploring Annelies’ back catalogue. These sparse compositions allowed Goldscammer’s lyricism to push them into new directions, prompting more complex arrangements as well as a fresh approach to the voice and musical textures. The recordings that followed are rich and intimate, without being over-produced or ornamented.
They settled on nine tracks previously published between 2009 and 2024 which they are now performing live on their first UK tour as a duo.