Driftwood - Only Fighters Left Behind (2020)

Imagine giving an architect the opportunity to rearrange the song structure according to his own understanding. That his architectural thinking is released on a fragment of music, which is molded into its own angular composition. How would that process work, and what would be the result of this?

Sam De Bock followed his architecture studies at the Sint Lucas Hogeschool in Ghent, with an emphasis on the artistic character. In the middle of the night, he experienced that his spatial insight cannot be restrained by only using solid materials. Atmosphere is also created by filling in spaces, in which the musical sound play can also play a predominant role. He cautiously starts working with this fact sometime in 2016, which ultimately results in Driftwood.

Driftwood has now grown into a three-man project, a visualization in which De Bock's ideas are implemented with the help of Patricia Vanneste and Sam Pieter Janssens. Patricia Vanneste has been the violinist at the basis of Balthazar, and partly because of her circumstances the band has grown. Sam Pieter Janssens discovered his multi-talent during his classical guitar and drum training and supplemented it with self-study with bass guitar and keys. Via the versatile And Then Came Fall, he will make his appearance in the late winter of 2018.

Only Fighters Left Behind is an exciting radio play that germinates from the trip hop. The quirky typical Belgian approach also adds enough elements of the jazz community that is always developing there. This results in nocturnal club darkness, marked with contrary heavy pulsating rhythm section in the jet black Red Line Love. The neurotic bass is slightly annoyed by the shrill tin percussion, and throws his low notes through it. Sam De Bock's vocals are on the edge of morning mood, and they need a good cup of black coffee, with lots of sugar.

The hired strings of the Cordette Quartet are allowed to indulge in the instrumental Prologue. By claiming the lazy vocals by Patricia Vanneste in The Raven, she immediately casts a deep layer of sensuality over them. For the instrumentation this feels like a relaxed progress. The oppressive suffocating coating is shaken into a warm, airy blanket. Skilled classical background of Sam Pieter Janssens is strongly developed in the No Shadowplay driven by horny percussion. The cold wave that De Bock whispers in his lyrics and recitation, is wisely supported by the maternal backings of Patricia Vanneste.

With the powerfully restrained Avalon, De Bock limits himself to playing the piano and Vanneste can only solve the verbal. Something she can handle with ease. The trip hop is briefly left to take a look at the ambient structure of the beautiful Lavaland, although she peers approvingly when De Bock strikes again emotionally charged. Framework presents stray sounds that Vanneste cannot bend into words, but with which the sorrow of the Cordette Quartet knows what to do.

Ridge Fight goes all the way back to the emergence of the Belgian scene from around the early eighties. Catchy guitar rock with funky accompaniment. Driftwood knows how to merge this shark with the even more successful second batch that blossoms from the mid-1990s. Yet it is mainly the flexibility in the repetitive vocals of De Bock and Vanneste that makes it a song. Contrary drumming forms the irregular heartbeat of the positive-minded Lovers of a Different Kind, with the vocals turning into a more commercial sound.

The jazzy trumpet player is discarded in Whiplash, which degenerates into a heavily orchestrated passage which is reduced by means of necessary means to a well-organized whole. Sweet Messiah has its origins in the psychedelic electronic dreampop. Then it continues to walk in a playing field full of soothing soundscapes. After a short silence you will be surprised by the instrumental final chord. In perfection Only Fighters Left Behind closes it breathless. You cannot introduce yourself better; beautiful picture!