VI.BE

Winner of the Tremplin de Dour 2022 / Played at Fifty Lab 2023 / Finalist in the Humo's Rock Rally 2024 / Phoque Off (Canada) 2025 pro showcase / ...

After two EPs that firmly established him in Belgium, Edouard van Praet is now releasing his debut album, ‘Mascarades’, a logical but bold follow-up to his previous rock experiments (‘Doors’ in 2021, ‘Cycles’ in 2022). The album features predominantly French vocals and an openness to electronic sounds.

For Edouard, musical creation is a huge playground. The result is an album that's deliberately versatile, blurring the lines with a ballad influenced by Tom Waits and Frank Sinatra and a degenerate gabber/trance sound. The bridge between these extremes is an alternative sound that comes from rock, of course, but dares to go beyond its sometimes too rigid confines.

On stage, Edouard goes wild, and therein lies the constant that emerges from these contrasts. Accompanied by his band of anti-rockers, he invites you to drink the cup and surrender to the trance. It may be a quintet of ‘rock’ musicians on stage, but that's only the first visible layer of a deeper reality. It's a masquerade that conceals a wild and intense show that will take you from folk rock to glam, synthpop to techno trance, and from theatrical showmanship to total exposure.