Photo: Francis Vanhee

One of Belgium’s most forward-thinking musicians, Dijf Sanders is not afraid to push the envelope.  The Ghent based multi-instrumentalist and composer has announced the release of his new album Tangkoa II, arriving on May 8th through Unday Records. With a free-thinking openness to different cultures, Sanders’ previous albums saw him travel to places like Indonesia and Nepal, searching for open musical exploration. The forthcoming Tangkoa II grew out of field recordings collected during his 2022 travels in Vietnam. Feeding these sounds into his self-built machinery, and abstaining from using any pre-sequenced sounds, samples and synths were shaped and played live, with Simon Segers steering it. Segers “operates as a human interface between rhythm and circuitry, a true man-machine”, as the press release describes, while Sanders “acts as a living effects processor, continuously manipulating sound in real time”. To bring Tangkoa II to life, Sanders has also enlisted a phenomenal group of musicians – Vitja Pauwels (guitar), Viktor Perdieu (saxophone), and Louise van den Heuvel (bass).

Alongside the album announcement, Sanders has dropped the first single ‘Mooning’, an entrancing and enthralling track that we we just can’t stop listening to. Here it is.