MAXIME TIRTIAUX of KERMESZ À L’EST: WOMAD 2020 Interviews
An interview by Tim Gruar.
For more than 10 years, KermesZ à l’Est has been setting fire to street art festivals and stages all over Europe with their Post-Punk/Metal/Balkan/Klezmer music and wildly anarchic stage show. This is a band that plays traditional brass instruments but dresses in leather, studs, ripped denim and mullet hairdos. They arrive on stage with prams, shopping trolleys, taxidermy animals and other bizarre companions like the ‘Kramozaur’, a domesticated dinosaur-on-wheels which increases the decibels and ‘heats up the atmosphere even faster than the climate’.
With years of street performance experience this mad menagerie of musicians, ranging from three to nine depending on the gig, bring to the stage a sweaty and supercharged show delivered at break neck speed which they describe as a ‘post-nuclear manifestation without electricity’. Put another way, it’s a Heavy Metal Balkan party from the dawn of the apocalypse!
Back in December, in anticipation of their appearance at this year’s WOMAD in March, I called up founding member and banjoline player Maxime Tirtiaux to find out more about his band and the why on earth they chose to mix Balkan fold music with the devil’s soundtrack.
Their on stage comic potential is mixed with a heady brew of Hells Angels aesthetic, trophies of rams heads, leather jackets, beards, tongue waggling, crazy Greek dancing, cymbals are thrown dramatically across the stage (to be struck by somebody with a drumstick mid-flight), confetti blown out of tubas and trumpets – it’s a magnificent form of organised chaos! And their videos are even crazier featuring everything from welding to bar fights and cat food shopping. Whether on a stage or in the street, KermesZ à l’Est is a fizzling bundle of energy, a truly explosive funfair bursting with off-beat humour and a contagious dynamism. Given all that, I had to know where this all started.
Bonsoir, mes amis. Comment allez vous? Where are you?
“I am home in Belgium. You are probably in beautiful sunny weather. You know Belgium in December, it is famous for its gloomy wet weather, like Britain now.”
You wouldn’t believe it but we’ve just had a night of thunderstorms causing havoc around the country.
“Oh, wonderful. Good to see God is evenly distributing his wrath and anger about the climate, you know. (Laughs).”
I really enjoyed investigating you online. You have your own beer. I saw it in one of your videos. You had me right then!
“Yes, Ok. We have some merchandising things and objects we have on stage that we use during the show but being a Belgium band, being punk and alternative, we knew that we couldn’t do better than have some Belgium Beer. Some friends have a micro brewery, organic, small batch brewed. There are lots of these small outfits around in Belgium now. It’s not all just ‘Stella Artois’. Not sure if we can bring some but if you want me to book one I can bring it along! You tell me that Wellington has a lot of micro breweries, too. I will need to check them out!”
You started life as a micro-biologist. So what happened?
“The first steps of the band started at University. A lot of students gather around various projects and I found myself in a project that was concerned with street art like clowning, and that was, how you say, the meeting of a very precious bunch of friends. And when we finished, no body was working in the field of study which we had a degree. We all became professionals at clowning, juggling, acting and so forth.
Once we finished University, we thought “Ok, what shall we do now?” I don’t know how it came about but somebody suggested we form a brass band.”
This was 12 years ago?
“Yes. That original team. That original atmosphere is very different to what we came to now. It’s a good legend – to say. That was only sort of how we came about. But everything has changed. Especially the music. It was more kind of mainstream than now. Years after years we specialise more and more Balkan, and Metal and Rock.”
From the original line up, who still remains in the band?
“From the original team, only three are left. We have myself; Martin Chenel, the bass drummer (who has a degree in Latin) and Luc Lambert, the trumpet player (who studied Biological Engineering with me).”
I love the way you all have ‘character names’.
Currently KermesZ à l’Est consists of the ‘Bearded Woman’ – Luc Lambert (Trumpet); ‘The Taxidermophile’ – Martin ‘Bichette’ Chenel (Saxophones); ‘The pram operator’- Martin ‘Papitchulo’ Moroni (Snare drum); ‘The Megaphonist’ – Maxime Tirtiaux (Banjoline, Tamboura); ‘The Brewer-gatherer’ Pasquot Kravagna (Sousaphone); ‘The tanner of old skins’ – Martin Chemin (Bass Drum); The Giant Snail’’- Christophe ‘Tosh’ Collgnon’ (Trombone); ‘The Clickor of enroules’ – Emmanuel Haessig (Saxophone, Clarinet).
“Yes! You know, we have three ‘Martins’ in the band. This one, the sax player, we call him ‘Bichette”, which means female deer. He loves the stuffed animals. He came to our latest rehearsal with a huge stuffed badger (a taxidermy item) for our stage. “Hey guys, look what I found. For this weekend’s gig”. So, we have a new badger. Perfect, we have this crazy heavy metal outfits, mullets and now all these animals on the stage!”
Being crazy on stage is one thing but moving into the full heavy metal mode is something else.
“It really came about organically, as we moved into more Balkan music, which is so different from French, Gypsy or even the Polish music we were playing. So, as we did, it became more obvious to add the costumes and create the energy. I spend a year in Romania. The music is so attractive. It’s where the European culture meets the Orient, all these Oriental rhythms meet Western harmonies. It’s crazy and rich. And it’s street music. It’s very alive. It’s still played at parties, with a link to oral traditions. There’s storytelling and folk lore. But it can be expanded into anything you want. As a musician it’s exciting to mould to your own ideas. We don’t have this in our own country.
Musically, these are asymmetric. You can beat it equally like 4/4 beats in a song. The beats are seven or nine, like contemporary jazz rhythms. They are more interesting to play. And harder to follow, too. But they are designed to dance to.
We are also of the generation that can watch YouTube and listen to any music, and kind that’s a fusion of sounds. And because we aren’t Balkan, we can think more fluidly, get creative and experimental. We listen to everything – rock, jazz, pop, heavy metal.
Metal is a very interesting style. We came to this partially because it’s visually interesting. Metal is, for me where we can mix up those asymmetric beats. Rock cannot be creative anymore. Metal is the natural and most progressive next step. But, also, because the rhythms and beats. And we have a very good percussion section. If you don’t pay attention, you would hear only 1 drum. But we have a ‘drummer’ with 4 arms, and they are very good. Our bass drummer is specialised in West African drumming. Our other drummer is from Argentina, so he understands Latin drumming. And, it’s a music you can do without electricity! When you have many street gigs, brass can pump out all the same sounds, like percussion and noise! We can get just the same volume as if we were amplified.”
But your stage gigs are so different from the traditional ‘oom pa pa’ that we expect from brass bands.
“We have a new disc coming out. Wait til’ you hear it. There’s elements of goth rock, Norwegian Death Metal and plenty of (cathartic) megaphone screaming. But also electro and free jazz, too.”
How is it for a musician living in modern Belgium these days?
“We, the band live all over the country. But when we rehearse, it’s in Brussels which is very multi-cultural. We are exposed to all kinds of food, sounds, literature. We hear new things every day and we want to do something with those. It’s a great base. Belgium is open to ideas, and we can be ourselves, be this crazy anarchic Balkan Heavy Metal outfit. And everybody cheers us!”
Speaking of which, there are YouTube clips of some of your wild shows. What’s the craziest thing you’ve done lately?
“Well, you know we have now a giant snail that comes on stage. Last night we also had Santa Claus. Usually, you have to go to the mall to meet him. He is not normally on stage at 1.00AM riding a giant snail. But hey, why not? Eh? We improvise a lot. That comes from the street theatre background. So what ever comes is completely original. We love to interact with the audiences, it’s always a surprise – even to us.”
KermesZ à l’Est will be performing on 6.00pm, Friday 13th March on the TSB Bowl of Brooklands Stage and 5.15pm, Saturday 14th March on the Todd Energy Brooklands Stage – both at WOMAD 2020. Tickets are still available from the WOMAD website, but get in quick as they will sell out!
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