“Secret Thirteen Mix 038” is a painstaking musical montage, made of differently performed diverse solo instruments’ sampled parts. The whole work is filled with compositions of such honorable classical virtuosos as Krzysztof Penderecki, Bernard Herrmann, Erik Satie, Bill Dixon, John Cage, John Butcher, Giacinto Scelsi and others. This enigmatic musical selection has reasonable potential to call itself a timeless masterwork which connects different period and generation talents in the luxurious fictional scene.

The author of the mix is Pepijn Caudron (born in 1975), widely known as Kreng. Caudron is a Flemish actor and contemporary composer who lives and works in Mechelen, Belgium. Kreng started his carrier as a thoughtfully sample-based project, who incorporated sounds from various rare musical sources: free improvisation, variable electronics, modern classical, folklore, field recordings and others. The project progressively gained more and more theatrical and cinematic musical color and thus it started to receive an attention from alternative film and theater directors. Kreng has worked on more than twenty theater and dance performances, most of them produced by the Belgian non-traditional theatre-commune Abattoir Fermé. Caudron has officially released two full-length striking albums (both formats CD and vinyl) on the honorable Miasmah record label and two digital EPs on short-lived Fant00m imprint. This October he is ready to launch his third album “Works for Abattoir Fermé 2007 – 2011?, which will consist of four vinyls. Listen to the album teaser here.

“Secret Thirteen Mix 038” is a grandiose musical collection, consisting of thirty four accurately cut and edited records. Skillfully merged and smoothly developed instrumental installation creates an absolute solid feeling for the listener. Deliberate layering of strings, keyboards, percussion and wind instruments is equivalent to the professional live performance of the whole ensemble. Occasionally emerging significant spoken-words in the fragile background enrich the musical ideology in the dramaturgical perspective. Sometimes appearing subtle dissonance mystifies the whole work and evokes controversial depressive and nostalgic feelings. In some ways it is an example of Kreng’s personal creations where he uses micro-scale samples, only this time it can be called a macro-scale. High-quality cathedral sounding experience with all of its subtle balanced emotional vision and arrangement fully educates the listening audience.

“Secret Thirteen Mix 038” is like a genuine and humanistic Jean Dubuffet ‘low art’ painting “Grand Jazz Band” where beauty of truthfulness expresses personalities and their musical instruments as equally important. Caudron definitely revealed himself as a passionate and educated collector of records who has an extensive musical philosophy and a talent which is needed for being a major composer.