Sakina Abdou, Mariam Rezaei & Kobe Van Cauwenberghe

Demo-track called “Takver”, recorded during a residency at STUK in Leuven in March 2025

I’m very excited to present a new exciting trio with saxophonist Sakina Abdou (FR) and turntablist Mariam Rezaei (UK)! As it turns out all three of us were born in the slightly ominous sounding year of 1984, somewhat reflective of current times, yet also a great band name…

Sci-fi references don’t have to be dystopian however, like the great Ursula K. Le Guin, whose novel “The Dispossessed” served as inspiration to write music for this new unique trio. In a somewhat inconspicuous passage Le Guin describes how the main character, the brilliant physicist Shevek, meets a composer who translated Shevek's revolutionary theories into a musical composition:

“I’m writing a piece of chamber music. Thought I might call it The Simultaneity Principle. [Several] instruments each playing an independent cyclic theme; no melodic causality; the forward process entirely in the relationship of the parts. It makes a lovely harmony.”

Shevek’s theory challenges traditional ideas of sequential causality, suggesting that past, present, and future are all happening simultaneously, though human perception can only experience them sequentially. I took this musical reference as a starting point to write a collection of compositions with this trio of turntables, saxophone and guitar in mind, allowing space for improvisation, co-creation and experimentation. The turntables represent the cyclical process of time, melodic and harmonic movement in the guitar and saxophone creates sequential linearity. But these roles are never set. As a hybrid trio the musicians operate between cycles and sequences, lines and circles, past - present and future all at once, non-linearity as default yet all in one simultaneous forward process.

A full studio album is expected to come out in spring 2026 on the label Dropa Disc. In the meantime, we will perform our first live show at Summer Bummer Festival in Antwerp on August 30th ! More dates to follow…