Stefanie Mannaerts: the beating heart of Brutus
Karin Park embarks on a new sonic path
SHE MIGHT BE amember of Norwegian noise-rockers Årabrot and the white boiler suit she’s sporting onstage is slightly reminiscent of Slipknot circa 2000, but KARIN PARK’s solo material has nothing to do with metal. The Swedish electroclash artist sounds far more like an intriguing meld of Everything But The Girl’s warm-sounding sophisti-pop, Björk’s stuttering, broken, Vespertine-era glitchy trip hop, and the throbbing, thoughtful electro of Self Esteem. Slayer she’s not, but she proves just why mixed bills can be such a wonderful way to expose yourself to music you may be unfamiliar with, by being fantastically transfixing throughout. Treating her half-hour onstage more like a flowing DJ set of endlessly morphing sounds, rather than a bunch of singular songs, she sets the bar way up high.
Luckily, Belgian post-rock trio BRUTUS have an equally unique sound and style. Their music is a superb tug of war between punk rock rhythms; deceptively complex noise riffs and soundscapes; rapturous, blissful vocals and moments of heart-stopping fragility. With most of the songs coming from last year’s Unison Life album –now comfortably considered the finest of their career –Brutus are able to pick a setlist that cuts the very rare pieces of fat from their back catalogue and now feels both intimate and euphorically massive at all the right times.
The star of the show is, predictably, drummer and vocalist Stefanie Mannaerts, a pummelling powerhouse behind the kit, but also in possession of a voice that soars, roars and crackles with class and emotion. Her breathy whisper-to-wail during a gorgeous What Have We Done would send shivers shooting up and down your spine if she were delivering it stood stock-still at the front of the stage, doing nothing but clutching a mic. The fact that she can channel those vocals while hammering the drums at the same time is nothing short of astonishing.