Giants Of The Air
Where People Need No Ratio

Belgium has always seemed quite boring. Beer, mussels, Magritte, French fries, Eddie Merckx, the European Parliament, Antoine Joseph Sax (the one who invented the saxophone), Hooverphonic, dEUS, and then, off the top of my head, nothing else comes to mind. And that’s where this trio of air giants comes from, phantoms of the market, intangible presences in the eyes of showbiz, no one has ever heard of them nor will they ever hear their name.

Intrigued by the cover, I bought this record blindly for 2 euros at the Fnac in Belfort, France, in the summer of 2007, finding it at the bottom of those bins where the scraps of scraps end up.
In terms of quality-price ratio, it will turn out to be one of the best purchases ever made, because this group of spirits deserves a listen. Even if just one, but they deserve it.

The music they make is what is commonly defined as Alternative Pop/Rock, the nine tracks are full of energy that often takes shape through walls of sound built with guitars, synthesizers, and the piano which serves as a garnish. The perfect synthesis of all the music found here is represented by "In The Morning We Become Electric", which was no coincidence chosen as the launch single into the void that followed, or by the beautiful and powerful "A Head Full". Even the way Stefan De Clerck sings (who? No, not the politician, that’s Stefaan) gives the idea of facing a ghost, his constantly trembling voice reminiscent of Brett Anderson from Suede, often overshadowed by the other instruments so as to always seem distant, never truly tangible; even when the sound walls become thinner in favor of slower melodies ("From The Trees" or the closing title track). The real reason why it is a shame that these giants have been swallowed by nothingness in a very short time is, however, "Oceans Glowing", in the seventh position, a sonic crescendo where everything mixes, starting with marble arpeggios over which De Clerck's shrill voice remains composed, but later explodes accompanied by a hypnotic piano with a hint of brine seemingly wanting to keep the tempo, gradually the voice becomes the leader for the others, bringing them all along and finally letting loose when everything is engulfed by a sound wave as high as the billows that wash the shores of the North Sea.

Belgians, unknown, the Giants Of The Air are absolutely nobody, they never have been. They are nobody because if you don't exist on the Internet today, you are nobody, and trying to find information about this group online is like strolling through a crumbling village, abandoned and left to the erosion of time. The few links resulting from a search lead to pages devoid of information and at best show the tracklists of this 2005 album and of the following "I Am The Co-Pilot" in 2006. They don’t exist on Facebook, there’s no official website, you find nothing on p2p, all that remains is an active MySpace profile where you can listen to something. Well, thanks to DeBaser, a small, insignificant as you wish, trace of their passage in the music world now remains. And for the times they have stimulated my imagination with "Oceans Glowing", they deserve it.