Decent Music - LP

Van Nueten's latest album, Decent Music (2024), is an impressive anthology spanning two decades of commissioned music. It contains 15 haunting compositions, from passionate piano pieces (Schubert's Piano Trio Op. 100) to alienating soundscapes (Repelsteeltje, The Parasite 2022), interspersed with a dash of choral singing (Diabo do Belho) and a mischievous homage to Kraftwerk (Chairdance). The unique blend of classical and contemporary influences results in an eclectic masterpiece, which in all its diversity forms an organic whole.

Pianist, composer and producer Guy Van Nueten (b.1965) is at home in many genres, effortlessly switching from neoclassical and ambient to electronic music and indie pop. Anyone capable of writing music for films, dance performances and theatre productions, as well as chamber, choral and piano music, has earned the right to call himself a versatile artist.

Van Nueten's compositions are influenced by Bach, minimal music, pop and Krautrock. They combine a sense of lyricism and humour with an irrepressible drive for purity. The often cinematic music (Night Has Come) is timeless, introspective and emotionally charged (Boudewijn), anchored in classical yet modern (Afterplay), oscillating between drama and romance (The Reveal). It exudes a love of tranquillity and nature (Maurice, Night Walk), stillness and sadness (Divina Commedia), melancholy and gloom (Dark). At times acoustic and electronic parts are peerlessly intertwined (Transformation).

On stage, seated at the grand piano, Van Nueten is a gifted performer, introducing lived-in expressive pieces of music in a drily comic fashion. The flowing piano playing, at one moment introverted and fragile, then intense and raw once more, grabs you immediately by the throat and refuses to let go. As the performance progresses, the distance between artist and audience seems to decrease steadily until the music irrevocably gets under the skin and the intimacy becomes almost tangible.

In the summer of 2024, Van Nueten gathered a multitude of extremely talented vocalists and musicians around him in order to break down the barriers between diverse musical styles. Expect from the man's Decent Music Ensemble a cross-border post-classical trip, with the finest pearls from a richly varied oeuvre, which has been built up over more than 30 years: the crowning glory of one of the most inspired explorers in untouched areas of the music world.

Guy Van Nueten made himself immortal as songwriter and keyboardist of The Sands, best known for the 1992 pop classic 'April & June'. He then retrained to become an accompanist and arranger for prominent Belgian artists and bands such as dEUS, Zita Swoon, DAAN and Admiral Freebee. In the early 2000s, Van Nueten formed an occasional duo with dEUS singer Tom Barman, with whom he recorded an album and toured Europe. A classically trained pianist - he started playing the piano at the age of four - Van Nueten composed music for numerous prestigious productions on stage and screen. With his piano trilogy Merg (2009), Pacman (2013) and Contact (2018), Van Nueten emerged as an eminent representative of the neoclassical school. The last of these albums was released worldwide by Sony Classical. In 2019, he played live during a Paris-based fashion show by designers Dries Van Noten and Christian Lacroix. With the wonderfully diversified compilation album Decent Music and the Decent Music Ensemble, Van Nueten once again treads hitherto unchartered territories in 2024.