Last Summer, Daniel Foggin, guitarist, writer and chief architect of Smote, uprooted himself from his usual home in Newcastle to live and work in a farmhouse in Kelso, near the Scottish border. “Through the summer when I was working up there, myself and Rob (Smote drummer) would finish work and go sit by a small river and have a couple of beers in the sun, and it was the best thing ever” he relates “So I guess the philosophy is that to some people it looks like any other stream, but to us it was supreme happiness. That can be applied to a lot of things in life”. Hence came the title of the fourth Smote album proper, one largely recorded in this same farmhouse - A Grand Stream.
It’s an album that’s the truest incarnation thus far of his vision for this band - a full scale psychic voyage into the ether and a drone-and-repetition-fuelled series of incantations that takes simple, primal ingredients and utilises them for the purposes of aural sorcery, summoning spectres and revelations aplenty in its wake. What has emerged from Foggin’s sojourn in the Borders may be imbued with a rich rural intensity but it’s also perhaps the darkest and more foreboding work that Smote have made to date. As he notes himself, the rawness of this record occurred in tandem with its recording process.

"De Regering Van Treffelijke Zaken is a Ghent-based occasional psych folk and krautrock infused jam collective. Their enigmatic worlds of sound unfold through pure improvisation, sense of experimentation, a confluence of coincidences and reasoned skits. The unmistakable sound of KRAAK's 12-string guitar advocate Venediktos Tempelboom, Ishtembashtockx's unconventional way of playing anything, Gonzalez's fuzzy and angular contributions backed by Lafong's percussive versatility and rhythmic fiddling make up for expansive, psychedelic jams that sound both tremendously earthy yet out-of-this-world. Their latest collection of jams, "Melle-Aan-Zee" has been released on vinyl through Cardinal Fuzz, Feeding Tube and Swarm In Peace earlier this year."
 

**Roxane Métayer** is a visual artist and musician based in Brussels, whose work is deeply inspired by nature, particularly forest fauna and flora. Her music combines field recordings captured in natural environments, such as forests and ponds, with instruments like the violin, wind instruments, and her voice. She creates an imaginative sonic universe, mimicking nature and exploring interspecies communication through bioacoustics.
Her recent project is a sound installation using ceramic and cedarwood speakers to offer immersive listening experiences. It has been presented in Belgium at Overtoon and STUK and was further developed during a recent residency in Japan.
Roxane also collaborates with other artists and musicians, including Benjamin Verdonck, Charles Dubois, and Suzan Peters. She has released albums on labels such as Matière Mémoire, Marionette, Morc, and Kraak, and has performed in venues like Café Oto and Ancienne Belgique. In 2023, she toured Japan and participated in the Mutant Radio Festival in Georgia. Selected by the SHAPE platform, her album *Perlée de Sève* was praised on Bandcamp, and her music is regularly broadcast on international radio stations such as BBC and NTS.