2 years in the making, épong is releasing a new album titled Eating the Ceiling

We have already published an article about the interesting Belgian label and collective MONTAGE, or as the official description on SoundCloud says: „Brussels-based trans-medial output.“ That time, it was about their various artists compilation Songs From The Gutter. On this occasion, the label is releasing a new project by épong. Eating the Ceiling is an innovative development in his production style. The album is more raw and club-oriented. Check out the single „VTM“ in our premiere and interview below.

Juul J. J. Verschraegen, known as épong is an artist and producer from Brussels. Ever since he was a kid, he has been using the world around him as an instrument. Fascinated by everything from crayfish making little tripping sounds in the water to broken ukuleles and the bubbling of mud to the delicate mechanical pieces of an old, forgotten clock. His music reflects his keen ears. As such, he employs a broad range of stylistic elements from all genres between industrial, experimental club music, metal, and avant-garde electronics.

For épong, feelings are more important than concepts. His newest album, Eating The Ceiling, strongly reflects this. Fed by an emotionally intense moment in his life, this is music to lose yourself in. It’s a revenge-fuelled fight, confronting dread, addiction, and frustration in the most intense ways. Club music meets epic melodies, and anger finds its way through a maze of beats. These are fragments of a flight catalyzed by amphetamine abuse of the highest order. And yet, the result remains unmistakably human. Raw, sincere, and real.

The music on this album was created over the span of two years, mostly by getting lost in the maze of tracker-based production. Sleepless nights echo through measure after measure of endlessly cut-up beats. Shaped by versioning the tracks through live shows, each piece became a snapshot of its own evolution. But the version we hear now is a reconstruction. It’s what he managed to salvage after his studio was burglarized. As he struggles to gather his thoughts, he manages to piece together the fragments that remain.

Check out our interview with épong about his new project for MONTAGE ➜

You have published various singles and projects on SoundCloud and Bandcamp. I like how you work with atmospheres and feelings, more than regular song structures. This might be your most club-ready project, would you think?

That is true, and it’s probably also the outcome of absorbing the sounds that I listen to in Brussels. This album is a strong, concentrated output mirroring a period with a lot of extremes. I can’t listen to this album with a clear head since it has strong connotations for me. I consider making music as a form of therapy.

Do you also enjoy listening to club music, and are you digging through SoundCloud algorithms and rabbit holes? For me, it’s an incredible platform.

I have periods of high in-and-out, but there are periods I’m not listening to music at all. During these times, the world around me is what I like to listen to. But SoundCloud is the top.

I love how immersive listening to „Eating The Ceiling“ is from start to finish. You built it like a trippy story, almost a movie. How was the process of building it like this? Also, you had a previous experience with making a soundtrack. Did this help you in creating this story-like atmosphere?

I really like to create a world that is connected through texture, tones, and recordings. But I also like the classical way of making accompanying themes for personages or subjects in film. So working for film gives the opportunity to try literally everything out that possibly helps the story. From classical music to sound designing crayfish breathing.

In the text, it is mentioned that your studio was burglarized. I’m very sorry to hear that. Does that mean you were reconstructing the old tracks from memory or using some old audio files that were left?

All tracks are the result of playing live and developing them further when the next live show was. I have up to 50 versions of “détruit mon Coeur”. When I got robbed, I lost the pc that was the heart of it. I had everything backed up, but was confronted with a lot of errors and bugs, missing recordings, and so on. So the reconfiguration was a very intense process of finding the right sound that I had in my head. I had a lot of malicious conversations with the screen.

Do you have plans to tour? Can fans look forward to hearing this album live? It would be exciting to experience it on a big sound system!

Release show is in Budha on the 26th September. After this, we will see!

What are your dreams in music or art in general? Is there something you would love to try or experience with your art in the future?

For a couple of years, I feel that melodic music makes less and less sense. I’m pulled more into the acoustics, textures, or psychology of the sound. Every day, I’m recording instruments, movements, rooms, and a lot of drum-like sounds. For some reason, being behind the computer and entering MIDI notes isn’t satisfying anymore, so I shifted more to a sample hunting/resampling workflow. So my workflow is constantly shifting. I feel that each day there is something new to learn, and that makes it very interesting and pleasant. I just hope that it will go on like this because it’s nice to experience the things you try to understand.

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