Eclectic Maybe Band

Eclectic Maybe Band’s pedigree now has more ramifications than that of the characters from Game Of Thrones. Add to this the fact that each main character has an impressive past, and the potential of storylines is unparalleled. Yet with each new release, initiator, bassist and producer Guy Segers manages to ensure a coherent concept. Among the participants this time are Cécile Broché, Michel Delville, Joe Higham and Luc Van Lieshout along with Japanese grandmasters of the improv scene Mami Foujita and Tatsuya Yoshida. In total, they were together for ‘Cosmic Light Clusters’ with no less than twenty-nine! The working method remained the same as on the previous albums but is never routine, quite the contrary. Guy Segers designs a basic structure and then sends it digitally with the accompanying score to the relevant guest musicians. Afterwards, he fuses everything together with adapted arrangements and takes care of the mixing. A number of songs were canned live with a permanent core of collaborators, though, and are based on improvisation. The cover of the fold-out digipack with custom cosmic illustration shows in detail each time who is playing or singing what. The lyrics were added in a separate booklet. The CD opens surprisingly with the cinematic and especially epic-tinged ‘Nébuleuse’ with which Guy Segers can safely be placed among the top contemporary composers. The collective improvisations with alternating group arrangements that follow (‘Cratère’, ‘Prisme Souriant’, ‘Mineral Is Growing Slowly’) are of an equally high standard and brimming with fragments and details that come into their own through the arrangements and conceptual connections. Typical derailments of this changing collective emerge in ‘Calculations At The Space Center’, a disruptive crossover between bizarre science fiction with horror accents and avant-garde ‘industrial’ beats. The spacy and very austere ‘Hypnopédie’ is enriched with parlando lyrics by Eleni Siozou, Mami Foujita and Cathryn Robson. Frightening and mysterious for its apparent simplicity. ‘Ordinary Undercover Radar’ in turn is an ingenious mix of synth pop, Electronic Body Music (EBM) and a film noir soundtrack with Yoshida on drums and Rich O’Meara adding accents on marimba and vibraphone. ‘Elipse Sealed’ intrigues with its initial rudimentary build-up until violinist Cécile Broché provides some power punch and the whole thing takes the form of an oppressive and almost macabre labyrinth. Finally, there are the angular and most prog-tinged ‘Bottle Opener’ cum the slightly theatrical closing track ‘B2 Or Not 2B – Astrum Argentinum’ with vocals by Cathryn Robson. The adjective progressive fits these ‘Cosmic Light Clusters’ perfectly, albeit without the limiting connotation with prog. There is much more to experience here including the overriding coherence that is regularly broken with inventive bravado coupled with continuously expanding perspectives. A peerless cosmic trip from start to finish. Do yourself a favour and seek out the previous chapters of this saga of which several more volumes will soon follow. – Georges Tonla Briquet. JAZZ’HALO

Belgian bassist/composer Guy Segers, best known from his days with Universal Zero, collaborates with 28 musicians from France, Japan, Greece, UK, USA, Germany, Spain and Sweden to create a fifth album COSMIC LIGHT CLUSTERS from a music project known as the Eclectic Maybe Band. Full of spacey, genre blending segments going from fully improvised to fully composed as the album progresses. Classical strings, free jazz brass instrumentation and atmospheric word poetry result in a diverse mix of ethno type fusion. The only obvious consistency in this global affair is that Segers plays bass on every track. The album opens with Nebuleuse. It’s total improvisation with “much space and not too much information” Guy says. Flautist Pierre Bernard snakes his way through most of the album with his dreamy flute. Jean Pierre Soarez, from French Rock in Opposition band Art Zoyd, plays a prominent chamber rock type role with trumpet. Cecile Broche with dramatic violin on Prisme Souriant is also present on many other tracks. There is novel use of Greek vocals from Eleni Siozou on Hypnopedie. The last three numbers elevate the album further, being more structured, avant progressive in style, with some addictive riffs. Ordinary Undercover Radar starts to rock out with American Rich O’Meara’s ancient marimba, all mallets a frenzy, whilst Japanese Ruins master drummer Tatsuya Yoshida thunders on. Ellipse Sealed (a play on words for “Lips Sealed”) increases the ethnic vibe with various strings and winds including guitar from Spaniard Angel Ontalva. The jazzy Bottle Opener is the only track that has sax, two of them. Swede Jimmy Agren’s blistering electric guitar solo sealing the deal. Lastly B2 or not 2B > Astrum Argentinum goes all out Henry Cow style avant rock with a similar but more restrained Dagmar Krause style vocal from London based Cathryn Robson as the outro. Guy’s experimentalism, dissonance, weird hooks, sometimes harsh yet beautiful sounds, structures that sometimes fracture, make the album all oddly compelling. He composes in such a way that it is about what you don’t recognise at first, until the hard to digest twists and turns become your fodder. Be prepared to bite off more than you can initially chew and you will be rewarded with repeated listens. It’s art music with a contemporary classical underpinning but without the purity. It’s a jazzed up, rocked out in opposition, avant chamber rock kind of a beast. Traces of inspiration from Segers’ Univers Zero days and his love of classical composers is clear but the Eclectic Maybe band has its own pervasive jazzy peculiarities. Prepare for the unexpected, transitions between genres and Segers’ very avant-garde approach to compositions but it is the exoticness that truly entices. The cosmic feel, lush foreign soundscapes and intricate layering of instruments that do not over crowd the listener. Alien but not alienating. The album never so dark that you can’t see the light, it may teeter there, but you will always see the stars and most importantly, the cosmic light clusters. – Paula McAdam, ULTIMA THULE

This is a Belgium-based ensemble with four previous discs on the Discus label starting in 2018. There are some 29 musicians utilized here although I only recognize around a half dozen names: leader Guy Segers (from X-Legged Sally), Cecile Broche (played here at DMG with Lou Grassi), Michel Delville (Wrong Object), Tatsuya Yoshida (from Ruins), Sean Rickman (from the Steve Coleman Band) and Dirk Wachtelaer (from Phantom City). The pieces here were either written by Guy Segers or are collective improvisations or both combined and often with a dozen or more players involved. It hard to tell the collective improvisations from whatever is written or directed as all of this music sounds focused and purposeful. “Nebuleuse” has what sounds like haunting strings and horns swirling together. On “Cratere”, Mr. Seger’s bass is at the center of a series of swirling lines with a trumpet quietly soloing in the distance and flute(s) also soloing on top. Belgian violinist Cecile Broche, who has played here at DMG on a couple of occasions, is featured on a few of these pieces and sounds great. Each piece evokes a different vibe, somewhat dark and unsettling with what sounds like someone directing the flow. On a piece called “Hypnopedie”, there are three women spoken word vocalists who are used more subtly, more sparsely. My favorite piece here is called “Bottle Opener” and it is somewhere in between prog and great fusion. Challenging written ensemble sections which keep shifting directions and tempos. I am listening to this disc for the third time and on each listen, I hear more interesting combinations of sounds. All of the pieces sounds like they are connected, the inner story will be revealed after a few more listens no doubt. – Bruce Lee Gallanter, DOWNTOWN MUSIC GALLERY NYC

This 29-piece outfit, led by bassist and composer Guy Segers, create a pleasingly dense and, yes, eclectic music that recalls a collision between the Fire! Orchestra and the prog rock glories of the 1970s. – Kevin Whitlock, JAZZWISE

Guy Segers (Univers Zero) in his 5th expansive EMBand project, assembling an ensemble of progressive and avant-garde musicians in ever-shifting configurations, for an album that evolves from introspective and textural atmospheres to dynamic and complex sonic landscapes, incorporating voices, poetry, and intricate instrumental interplay; a compelling example of Europe’s progressive music scene. – SQUID’S EAR https://www.squidco.com/cgi-bin/news/earBlog.cgi

When I think of the albums by Eclectic Maybe Band, I tend to remember the spaced-out funky jazz grooves. They’re somewhat reminiscent of Bitches Brew, and I really love that sound. I tend to forget that much of the band’s music is far removed from that sound, aiming into sparse territory of long tones and eerie atmospheres. Of course, this range of style is one of the things that makes the group so appealing, and it’s just my preference that steers me to one end of the spectrum. Cosmic Light Clusters features many of the usual suspects for EMB recordings: Guy Segers (bass), Michel Delville (guitar), Pierre Bernard (flute), Catherine Smet (keyboards), Jean-Pierre Soarez (trumpet), and so on, though Segers is the only one to appear on every track, also being the chief composer. Several notable guests appear, like Tatsuya Yoshida (drums), Ángel Ontalva (guitar), and Jimmy Ågren (guitar). The album starts out in very moody territory, with three tracks of somber arrangements largely featuring acoustic instruments evoking mystery and uncertainty, then gradually building over the course of the album. Electronic noises start taking over on “Mineral Is Growing Slowly,” and drums finally make their presence felt on “Calculations at the Space Center,” along with some Magma-like chanting. “Hymnopédie” is an unusual diversion, with sparse musical backing from Seger’s computer and bass, a little violin, and spoken vocal contributions from Cathryn Robson, Eleni Siozou, and Mami Foujita in different languages. This takes us to track 7, “Ordinary Undercover Radar,” where we get our first grooves, with a herky-jerky bass line doubled by piano and marimba, along with Cécile Broché’s violin. That five minutes of energy is followed by the longest track on the album, the first half of which returns to the atmospheric style, before picking up a beat that crosses RIO with funk. The album finishes with a moody vocal track sung by Cathryn Robson. Yes, this album is perhaps less likely to grab you the way Bars without Measures did, but it’s full of excellent writing and beautiful textures. – Peter Thelen, EXPOSÉ http://expose.org/index.php/articles/display/eclectic-maybe-band-cosmic-light-clusters-2.html

Back in the 1970s, Guy Segers was bass player with Univers Zero, one of the original bands (along with Henry Cow, among others) in the Rock in Opposition movement, a collective of progressive rock bands brought together by the music industry’s refusal to recognise their music. Since then, he’s been involved in many projects, both live and in the studio, often releasing material via his own Bandcamp page. His main project for the last few years has been the Eclectic Maybe Band. Drawing on a large pool of musicians, including Art Zoyd trumpeter Jean-Pierre Soarez and former Univers Zero colleagues, clarinettist Dirk Descheemaeker and oboist Michel Berkmans, he gathers small groups together in the studio either to improvise, or to record more structured compositions. The compositions are built up in layers, each player adding their part one at a time. Improvisations and compositions are then edited by Segers into the tracks that appear on the albums.

Cosmic Light Clusters, their fifth release, is a welcome addition to their discography. If you’re unfamiliar with the earlier albums, I’d say they’re well worth checking out. The previous album, Bars without Measures, which came out in 2022, features the voice of Julie Tippetts. Cosmic Light Clusters, by comparison, is described in the notes that accompany its release as ‘somewhat more introspective and textural than its predecessor’ and I wouldn’t argue with that. As the title suggests, there’s a breadth and seriousness to it. A few tracks stand out. ‘Prisme Souriant’, could be described as a miniature violin concerto, with something of Bartok and Stravinsky about it. I know titles can plant ideas in your head, but, listening to another improvised track, ‘Mineral is Growing Slowly’, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the sense of wonder I felt as a child on visiting show-caves. One of the composed tracks, ‘Hypnopédie’, features a multilingual text, a ‘creation-of-consciousness myth’ if you like, that charts the emergence of conscious life from darkness and its decay back into dust. The title, incidentally, means sleep-learning, or learning while under hypnosis. Another composition, ‘Elipse Seated’, has something of a klesmer feel to it.

Eclectic Maybe Band is an intriguing name. It could be a moniker for the whole of humanity and has you intrigued even before you start listening to the music. And eclectic it is: they have a distinctive, genre-fluid sound, part jazz, part rock, part classical, but always EMB. One sometimes gets a nostalgic whiff of earlier RIO bands (in ‘B2 or Not 2B > Astrum Argentinium’, Cathryn Robson’s voice has overtones of Dagmar Krause on Henry Cow’s ‘Living in the Heart of the Beast’, I thought). I get the feeling, though, that ‘style’ here is simply the end product of whatever it is the musicians need to do, which is how all imaginative, innovative music should be. – Dominic Rivron, INTERNATIONAL TIMES https://internationaltimes.it/prepare-yourself-for-the-cosmic-eclectic/

Guy Segers is a founding member of Univers Zéro and has an unusual characteristic: he is one of the few members of the band who has participated in several projects outside of his career with Univers Zéro. In recent years Guy has put together a peculiar project, the Eclectic Maybe Band, a play on words with Electric Lady Land, in which he takes some musicians into the studio and there they improvise or experiment on songs that Guy has composed. Then Guy edits the song and invites other musicians around the world to add solos or even record their parts. One record is never the same as another. Cosmic Light Cluster is the fifth, with several members of Univers Zéro, Art Zoyd, the cream of Belgian musicians and several guests from the USA, Japan, Spain, Sweden just to name a few. To my ears, this album is the one that has the most aesthetic connections with Univers Zéro, some phrases here and there remind me of some compositions, but the music, in general, is completely different, being more jazz-like and with touches of contemporary music. The album can be divided into two parts, the first tracks are improvisations with more tense and dark atmospheres. Even though each track was recorded with different musicians, they unfold almost like a suite and develop continuously. A parallel would be a jazzy version of early La Faulx. The last tracks, however, are more structured and explore the field of fusion, modern jazz or chamber jazz. The best Belgian musicians alternate with soloists from various parts of the world in some of Guy Segers’ best and most intense compositions, with extremely diverse and rich instrumentation, Guy explores the skills of his guests in the best possible way, whether in the rhythm section, singing, declaiming or in sensational solos. Don’t miss this CD, which is, to date, the most creative and intense from the Eclectic Maybe Band. Let’s wait and hear what’s next! – https://www.progbrasil.com.br/ExibeResenhas.php?eID=1929

Guy Segers, bassist and composer, renowned for his participation in Univers Zero, the inspired and original Belgian group that was part of the rock in opposition movement, has been leading a project for a number of years now, with the name Eclectic Maybe Band, derived from ‘Electric Ladyland’, the title of the third and last studio album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, released in 1968, for which he brought together in the studio, around his own compositions, a whole range of musicians (from rock, experimental, contemporary, jazz…).- such as guitarist Michel Delville, cellist Sigrid Vandenbogaerde, old trumpet-playing companion Jean-Pierre Soarez, keyboardist Andy Kirk…) whose improvisations he captures – to which he adds later overdubs, collected from other guests. The result is this new (and fifth) album, “Cosmic Light Clusters”, a collection of ten tracks with scattered atmospheres (playful on “Ordinary Undercover Radar”, haunting on “Hypnopédie”, ethereal on “Nébuleuse”, inverted on “Calculations At The Space Center”…) but with lines of delightful complexity and inventiveness. – Bernard Vincken, PROGCENSOR

Having played bass in avant-garde bands such as Univers Zéro, Present and X-Legged Sally, Guy Segers has now fully invested himself in the Eclectic Maybe Band. He first recorded The Blind Night Watchers’ Mysterious Landscapes eleven years ago with pianist Catherine Smet, guitarist Michel Delville, keyboardist and saxophonist Joe Higham and drummer Dirk Wachtelaer. They are back together again on their fifth album, Cosmic Light Clusters. The word Cosmos refers to the ordering of the universe, as do the ten disparate tracks on this album. The cover is reminiscent of King Crimson’s Islands album, which was marked by improvised jazz, which confused the band’s fans. Guy Segers also takes great pleasure in drawing up musical plans which, once launched on the rails, drift off in new directions. A number of international artists have joined the core group on additional recordings. These include Frenchmen Franck Cottret and Jean-Pierre Soarez, formerly of Art Zoyd, Spaniard Ángel Ontalva, German Stephan Köhr and Swede Jimmy Ågren: all strong individuals. A real tour de force, Hypnopédie simultaneously incorporates three innovative lyrics. ‘The Rain’, written by Greece’s Eleni ‘Silena’ Siozou, “Firelight”, from the pen of Japan’s Mami Foujita, and ‘Vibration’, a composition by Britain’s Cathryn Robson. The trio’s vocals complement each other, creating a singular universe. Dynamic rhythmic formulas unite Japan’s Tatsuya Yoshida and American Rich O’Meara in “Ordinary Undercover Radar”. The vigorous drumming of Sean Rickman, as comfortable in this context as he is with Steve Coleman, supports the large formations that shape “Bottle Opener” and “B2 Or Not 2B / Astrum Argentinum”. This composition, in which Cathryn Robson’s dark, disquieting voice emerges, closes the album modestly. Cosmic Light Clusters celebrates experimentation and opposes all forms of predictability. Guy Segers’ talent strikes the right balance between improvised and written parts. The chiaroscuro climates inherited from Chris Cutler’s RIO scene find new echoes here. – CITIZEN JAZZ

Here we have the fifth album from Eclectic Maybe Band, a collective organised by Univers Zero bassist Guy Segers who brings together a pool of creative progressive musicians to either play and improvise on his compositions or collectively compose live in the studio, with further work then often taken by Segers later. The physical release contains not only the lyrics for those songs which have vocals but also details who plays on what track which is important given no two songs have the same line-up and there may be as many as a dozen musicians involved in one piece of music. In some ways it is reminiscent of Øresund Space Collective and their approach to space rock, while the way the music is constructed and brought together is similar to the work undertaken by the late Robin Taylor, except in both cases this feels far more earthy and real with less emphasis on electric guitars and synthesisers. In some ways it feels like the clashing together of multiple worlds with RIO and free jazz on one hand, progressive rock and avant on another, all coming together in an album where one never knows what is going to happen next, and often that includes not only the listener but also those involved in the performance. There are nearly 30 musicians involved in this particular project, and while musically it does fit in well with the imagery conjured up by the album title and photos, it is also out of left field and quite different to what many in the genre are producing and is all the better for that. Overall this is a great piece of work which need to be played on headphones and really listened to, as this is an unusual and jagged piece of work which somehow is also rounded and surreal. – Kev Rowland, PROG ARCHIVES https://www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=3204474