Ghent-based nomad Benoit Monsieurs has explored all the paths paved by the early folk guitarists and is now blazing his own trail as Venediktos Tempelboom. Using the 12-string guitar as his main instrument, the self-taught musician creates passages that take fingerpicking Americana into the Flanders fields, with winding compositions that distill the essence of giants like John Fahey, Robbie Basho and Jack Rose mixed with the drone melancholia of Funeral Folk/KRAAK stalwarts like Silvester Anfang, Helvete and Ignatz. The results are flamboyant, utterly mesmerizing pieces of vivid sonic imagery, as heard on his KRAAK releases Het Vuil Volkske (2022) and Syne Vuyle Hoeck (2024).
https://kraak.bandcamp.com/album/het-vuil-volkske
https://kraak.bandcamp.com/album/syne-vuyle-hoeck
