G, A & D

When asked to participate in a week-long residency in Ghent, Dutch artists Louis Reith and Eelco Topper, also known as Felbm, found themselves drawn to each other’s disparate styles as a means of stepping outside their musical boundaries. Seeking collaboration in contrast, G, A & D is an artefact in time that captures two friends and artists challenging themselves to shed their primary artistic methods and embrace each other’s unique approaches to sound.

Louis has a predilection for the abstract and noisy, utilizing technology and machines to create silvery clouds of intrigue. Meanwhile, Felbm approaches his craft with a traditional sense of musicality and embraces melodies, chords, and rhythms to create structure, fluidly layering acoustic instruments and organic textures. The residency offered the perfect experiment to work against natural inclinations and learn from one another’s strengths. For Louis, this entailed harnessing structure, and for Felbm, tapping into abstract exploration.

While deviating in working parameters, they found common ground in the small, the sensitive, and the naive—reflecting their shared fondness for life’s subtleties, the intimacy of noticing and gravitating toward nuances and shadings, the residual and the shy.