Stormweere

Formed around the voices of sister and brother Eva and Maarten Decombel with the mandolin and synths of Trio Dhoore’s Ward Dhoore and the guitar and keyboards of Jeroen Geerinck, who also produces this debut collection, plus drummer Louis Favre, Spilar are a new band inspired by a shared passion for songs discovered and collected, revived and reinterpreted in their home area of Flanders. As Maarten sees it: ‘Folk is pre-eminently music in which you look at our own musical heritage with contemporary glasses. Rather than being a rejection of the past, it’s a modern-day celebration,’ and, significantly, all of Spilar’s members also play in other contexts.

Maarten’s own background is in classical music, Eva has sung in an old-time/swing band, Favre comes from the jazz and improv scene, while Geerinck and Dhoore, who founded the Trad Records label, are both rooted in folk. Here they bravely put their own stamp not only on Jacques Brel with ‘Pertank’ but also Willem Vermandere’s ‘Voor Marie-Louise’ and the Antwerp fado of Wannes Van de Velde’s ‘Verdronken Land’, while anyone who didn’t already know ‘Suver Maecht’ and ‘Steere’ as Christmas songs might well not guess their history from this gently radical, firmly committed collection.