Current Projects/Bands
To learn about all of Nicolas' past projects and bands (including theater, dance, short films, etc.), visit the Home page with his biography. Here you'll find information about his current and upcoming work, including the music he's creating right now.
Spook
What started out as a carte blanche for the Citadelic festival in Ghent quickly became a fixed working band named SPOOK with Filip Wauters on pedal steel, Simon Segers on drums, and Nicolas Rombouts on double bass. Their music blends written compositional ideas with instant composing, drawing from "jazz," "Americana," and "Krautrock" to create long, adventurous pieces. The pedal steel colors the distant sky with sound and effects, while the double bass shifts between intense grooves and open noise structures, and the drums tame the horizon with kraut grooves and exotic percussion. SPOOK describes their music as "post-western" or "free country." Their debut album, "SPOOK," was released on the famous Belgian W.E.R.F. jazz label in March 2022 to great acclaim. A new album is set to appear in the spring of 2024, also on W.E.R.F.
Rombouts & Watts
In November 2020, Belgian artist Nicolas Rombouts and American Brussels-based artist Matt Watts met at Studio Caporal in Antwerp behind Central Station. Just a week after the suicide of their friend and artist Loloman, and in the wake of an end to a marriage marred with pain, addiction, and depression, they shared their losses in conversation and on muted piano, contrabass, and electronics. They shared compositions and improvised, and by the next day, their album "Muted Songs for Piano" was complete. Meant to be listened to in one sitting, the album takes listeners on a trip across the galaxy, looking back through a telescope at this world and its lonesome mausoleum of memory. The sounds and movements are almost audible and tangible, even though they have passed in the time it has taken for their light to reach the listener.
Kaijin Kaiwa
"Kaijin Kaiwa means "conversation bewteen two mythical figures/monsters and is a collaboration between Nicolas Rombouts and Sjoerd Bruil, a guitar player par excellence in bands such as Kaset Hitam, Millionaire, Dez Mona, and Mauro. What started as spontaneous sessions linking rough melodic and harmonic ideas with instant composing has developed into a true "studio" project, complete with overdubs and a strange mutual sonic landscape with some Japanese and Dutch references. Their debut album called "master of the universe" is set to be released in January of 2024.
#Whatneedstobedoneinbetweensilences
This is a research and future performance project in close collaboration with cellist and performer Simon Lenski. The project explores the transition from a musical movement to a "dance" or "basic" human movement, and how both disciplines can coincide in the resonance of an attempt to keep both. The project seeks another kind of virtuosity beyond mere technique, instead focusing on true belief. There have already been residencies in KAAP, Nona, and Mill.
WArdwaRD “The Balancing Act”
For Ann Vanden Broeck's dance company WArdwaRD, Nicolas is composing his 10th musical score for the upcoming piece "The Balancing Act," set to premiere in October 2023. He has worked with the company since 2013.
Guido Belcanto
Since 2006, Nicolas has been the main bass player and musical director for Guido Belcanto. He has also co-produced five of Belcanto's albums between 2007 and 2021. A new album with a new tour is expected in 2024.
Jim White (US)
In 2011, alt-country legend Jim White asked Nicolas to join him for a concert in Zurich. Since then, Nicolas has regularly joined Jim and his close friend and guitar player, Geert Hellings, on tour in Europe and the UK. They have also worked on albums together, such as Misfit's Jubilee, which was released in 2021.
Bernaerts Platform "Jazz. The art of listening."
Nicolas curates this monthly platform of exciting and adventurous jazz without being too historical. In the words of Frank Zappa, "Jazz is not dead. It just smells funny."
Blue Moon Spring & Body Dialogues III: Moving Spaces
Anneleen Keppens is a dancer and choreographer who has collaborated with Nicolas on two projects, "Blue Moon Spring" and "Body Dialogues III: Moving Spaces." In "Body Dialogues III," Anneleen asked Nicolas to explore the intersection of dance and instant composed music. Together, they created a research project called "Moving Spaces," where they improvise in different spaces to explore the idea that music and dance are temporarily sculpting the energy that is already present in the space. They believe that everything is already there, and they allow the charge and history of each space to move through them and give sound and form to its vibrations and frequencies. This approach is a form of time travelling, meditating, celebrating, waiting, dancing, and being danced.
After each improvisation, they symbolically collect some energy in a container as a memory of the moment. "Blue Moon Spring" is Anneleen's new dance piece that premieres in STUK Leuven in October 2023. The piece is a celebration of life if life were a jazz piece. Nicolas was asked to advise on the musical score and to create a kind of continuous soundscape that adds new voices to the jazz history.
Don't hesitate to get in touch! If you have any questions, comments or inquiries, please fill out the contact form, and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.