C-drík in Kortrijk, Belgium. Photograph taken by Stephan Vercaemer.
I had a pleasure of meeting (online) a great composer, musician, mastering engineer, author, independent researcher, concert organiser, and curator -Cedrik Fermont. Apart from releasing music under many aliases (Alien Vegan Sect, C-drík, D-Drik, F-Drik, Y-drík and many more), he explores electronic, experimental and noise music from Asia, Africa and South America.
During the lecture, Cedrik took us on the fascinating journey through the world of non-Western alternative music and sound art.
In his work as a researcher, Cedrik is focusing on decolonisation of a history of music. I find this topic particularly interesting. I believe that in the context of arts, music and culture, decolonisation is a process of overthrowing the Western-centrism in those spheres. The most efficient way of it is by educating. Cedrik, through his journeys, have made lots of contacts all around the world and created an unprecedented network between Asia, Africa, South America, Eastern Europe, Middle East and the West. It’s worth mentioning, that his work began years before the internet became commonly accessible, and the only data carriers were vinyl records and tapes.
He is proving that alternative music like noise, ambient, electroacoustic music etc., have existed outside of Western Europe and USA and Japan way longer before people of the West would have imagined. By performing and and searching for alternative scenes in places like Kosovo, Myanmar, Indonesia and Iraq, he discovered unbelievable amount of new music from the most alternative nooks and crannies, like noise, ambient or break-core in places more or less untouched by the Western Culture. This made Cedrik want to rewrite the music and sound history, make The West aware of many amazing artists from the rest of the world.
And that’s how his record label, Syrphe http://syrphe.com/ was born. Thanks to being a citizen of the global village, I am able to listen to all those pieces from places I haven’t even dreamt of going to. I must say that researching Syrphe and different music projects of Cedrik got me into a deep Bandcamp hole of electroacoustic and noise masterpieces, industrial drones, metallic tingling and jungle sounds. I also discovered what chordophones are and other unbelievable instruments.
Going through hours of those magical sounds, my attention was caught by one project. “Chordophone” is a piece composed by C-drik in early 2021, from which samples were provided for free use by other artists. Some of them sent their tracks over to Cedrik which resulted in publishing the compilation on Bandcamp- syrphe.bandcamp.com/album/chordophone.
It’s a great example of how many different concepts and ideas can be created by collaboration. Tracks are vastly diverse and I think this project itself is a great source of inspiration that I will be using during my work with sound.
I took a great pleasure in discovering and listening to Axiome – collaboration project between C-drik and Olivier Moreau.
Operating in a field of rhythm, break core and industrial, its been the oldest project in which C-drik is involved, founded in 1991 and active to this day. Most of their work is available on CDs, but luckily I managed to find this live performance recording from October 2012.
CAUTION! Contains unbelievable amount of broken bits, hypnotic electronic sounds and overwhelming bass ! ! !
The only available digital music by Axiome I found is album released in December 2020, called “Who will control us”, featuring some juicy, trembling, drexciyan electro: https://axiomeduo.bandcamp.com/album/who-will-control-us.