Disleksikon by Hihats In Trees

Hi-Hats In Trees, Disleksikon EP

A celebration of the expressive and transportive potential of beat-based instrumentals by Belgian drummer Lander Gyselinck (STUFF., BeraadGeslagen, LABtrio).

The vocabulary of dance and electronic music finds a new expression in an acoustic setting ... A true ‘disleksikon’: a dis-anthology, a vocabulary for a new language.

Orders outside North America: https://www.musicmaniarecords.be/3703-hihats-in-trees/7406-disleksikon/

Advanced Discussion:

There is an essential point that is somehow easily overlooked when thinking about human–machine interaction, and that is that the machines in question were — for now, at least —made by humans in the first place, which means that they were designed with human needs and desires at their core. What Belgian drummer Lander Gyselinck appears to be doing on Disleksikon is to reaffirm these desires, as refracted through the machines of electronic music. Because even though there are darker moments and sounds here as well, the overall feeling that this short set of tunes breathes is one of joy.


The EP is a selection of 7 tracks culled from a much larger body of compositions that focuses on the language of beats and textures. Everything you hear on the EP is percussive in essence, but the sheer variety and inventive approach to many of the ‘instruments’ used adds melody and harmony. From the outset, the listener is struck by the very tangibility of these sounds. The music opens up vistas of something we might just be moving towards: another green world. That is, not a virgin pre-human greenness, but a new constellation in which salvaged and reassembled fragments of the past, the organic and the synthetic are compelled to find a new temporary balance.


Toms, bells, shakers and wood blocks give an almost tribal, polyrhythmic aspect to a trap beat in opener ‘Sandaalwoud’, and all sounds are projected in a very real navigable space, one that feels decidedly exotic. There is a similar breeziness in tracks like ‘Whale’ and ‘Sun Salutations’ that extend the nature tropes while incorporating different beat references from the sluggish (the former, with its whale song bass sounds) to the hyperactive (the latter, with its summery beach party vibe). In other tracks, the mood shifts somewhat: ‘Beaumen’ offers a breather, while slow-burning closer ‘D-earthless’ is by far the darkest moment here, with the earlier wood textures replaced by harsh metallic tones. It is an impressive track that adds an ominous ambiguity to what came before: the trees referenced in the name Gyselinck chose for the project and some of the track titles have gone: is a post-scarcity future also necessarily a post-Earth one?


The range of textures, sounds, and beat ideas contained in this half hour of music is nothing if not impressive. Yet although in some sense it is precisely that, the EP never ends up sounding like a showcase of Gyselinck’s spectrum. Instead, it becomes a very diverse but coherent statement celebrating the expressive and transportive potential of instrumental, beat-based music. Across the EP, a veritable index of electronic beats and genre references could be assembled — from 80s pioneer electro over 90s house shuffles to various contemporary hip hop and EDM styles — but ultimately, that would be quite beside the point. What seems to matter much more is how they are all made to work together, however incongruous they might seem, to project the very singular world of Disleksikon.


Should it matter to a listener how sounds were made? It might not, I guess, to the extent that different means lead to identical results. But there is more to it than that in the case of Disleksikon. Indeed, any discussion of it is bound to mention its methodology. Gyselinck, who has made a name for himself as a jazz drummer, has created these pieces as part of a very personal ongoing investigation into the vocabulary of dance and electronic music in the light of acoustic improvisation. And the fact is that all of the sounds on Disleksikon are acoustic and analogue: there are no sequenced beats or electronically designed sounds here, although these are explicitly its sources of inspiration. A premise like that could easily lead to a kind of atavistic craft-as-athletic-feat — which would seem to be the reverse of the techno-fetishism of computer-controlled acoustic instruments — but a ballad of John Henry this is emphatically not. Indeed, the subsequent layering and mixing of the sounds would have made such an effort self-defeating; Disleksikon is very much a studio project. Instead, Gyselinck reappropriates the products of the Mensch-Maschines and 808s he loves in a gesture of pure play and joy of playing — he is not trying to make a point, just music.


Where this music’s ‘means of production’ does make a difference, however, is precisely in its tangibility, gravity, spatiality and organic quality. What you hear are undeniably the sounds of objects and bodies affecting each other in the aesthetic dimension (is this object-oriented body music then?). However meticulous the music is constructed, it has a kind a recklessness about it: rubber balls and wood blocks, plastic tubes and prepared cymbals, Bach and Luke Vibert: anything goes if it serves. Shards of past and present are salvaged with fondness but ultimately with disregard of what they once stood for: what matters is their functioning in their new setting. The result is a truly futuristic music completely devoid of the nostalgia mode that taints so much of contemporary culture. A true ‘disleksikon’, then: a vocabulary for a new language, a DNA whose scrambled nature does not prevent established meanings to emerge so much as it generates new possibilities.


Ultimately, then, I can see us dancing to these tunes in some future forest — tangled in its vines mimicking the network cables and circuitry that were modelled on our own nervous systems in the first place.

Hihats In Trees or HHIT is a solo project by Belgian drummer / producer Lander Gyselinck (STUFF., BeraadGeslagen, LABtrio...) and is part of a Phd in Arts at KASK School of Arts in Ghent.
It focusses on the influences of diverse beat cultures in an instrumental, non-synthetic environment.

“A witty celebration of the expressive and transportive potential of beat-based instrumentals”