From Flint Glass to Tzolk’in to Empusae

Industrial Night opening show

Three projects morphing from one in to the other and further, showing all their combined force and new sounds. This al blended in to one truly unique live experience. The three projects are the one man projects Flint Glass and Empusae, and their collaboration project Tzolk’in.


Flint Glass
Flint Glass  is a Paris-based dark electronica project that has been described by critics as representing some of the most innovative sounds-styling towards electronica, rhythmic noise and dark ambient genres. Flint Glass is a one man project of Gwenn Trémorin, that he started in 1999. Not only a musician and producer, Gwenn also manages the outstanding experimental electronica label Brume records in France. Flint Glass' music tends to crawl under your skin, shapes the most fantastic images, and stays challenging by means of an intelligent use of samples, rhythms and beats. With Flint Glass you find influences from the ambient of the 90’s as well as various forms of IDM, tribal and industrial rhythmic noise. Flint Glass has played numerous live gigs all around Europe, festivals and at some famous clubs like Batofar/Paris, Dom/Moscow, Slime light/London, Kab Usine/Geneva and his project already appears in the foreground of finest experimental dark electronica.

Tzolk’in
the musical project Tzolk'in is a collaboration between Empusae and Flint Glass - artists who are known in the fields of dark ambient, contemporary ritualistic tribal music and experimental electronica. this project is a conceptual creation inspired by mayan mythology and the ancient mayan astrological calendar of the same name. From the beginning their approach to sound resulted in quite a few novel musical perspectives: the merging of Empusae's distinct dark, oppressive and brooding soundscapes and Flint Glass's characteristic rhythmic and ambient compositions. the final product is majestic and epic, often martial and bellicose, with a sense of tragedy that at times is even quite meditative. Tzolk'in can easily be viewed as an exotic soundtrack to the phantoms of a dead civilization or more simply put, music that is inspired by a doomed mayan divination system. An abyssal, haunting cycle of tribal sound, constructed so that the listener can dive into a bygone era.

in 2008 Tzolk’in releast their first album, named Haab’, on the famous German Ant-Zen label. In the autmn of 2010 they will release a new album, also on Ant-Zen. On the Summer Darkness Industrial Night you can get a nice preview of this exiting new release!

Empusae
With the complexity of the music, it may surprise you to find that Empusae is actually a project created by a single man, Nicolas Van Meirhaeghe aka Sal-Ocin. Empusae exercises a surreal science of structure that throbs and pulsates in an almost obsessive manner. The music is almost suggestive of a mechanical assembly line in its clock work clunks and clangs. It builds into a tense, yet haunting soundscape and rivets itself into the memory and refuses to be forgotten. It is serious music which's architecture has formed a solid foundation for itself, rather than sounding as if it's trying to tear itself apart! When listening to Empusae's music, you're lost in dark melancholy, tribal electronic athmospheres and scarefull ambient rituals. It's music is not easy to categorise, some say ambient, industrial, electro and other... but Sal-Ocin describes his music as a sountrack for the listeners personal fantasies. Being a member of various other project such as This Morn' Omina, Tzolk'in, Project Arctic, a split with Oil10 and a live member of Ah Cama-Sotz, Sal-Ocin isn't afraid of working together with other artists.

Empusae is also know from his releases on the german Hands Productions label. Debuting there in 2005 with the strong “Error 404: Metaphorical Loss” followed in 2008 by the beautiful and more fragile “The Hatred of Trees”

MySpace Tzolk'in