PESTILENCE’s Joost van der Graaf Creates Experimental Prog/Funk Project CHOREOMANIC
Written by Johnson Stephen on January 31, 2022
Choreomanic saw the light when the world came to a halt in spring 2020 due to the Covid pandemic. With cancelled tours and no local gigs, musician Joost van der Graaf (Pestilence) started writing music, in which different influences from his past came together.
Graaf says “I had just joined Pestilence and was busy with the material, preparing for a USA tour with Possessed. Then the pandemic struck. Tour cancelled, everything on hold. I suddenly had a lot of time on my hands, so I decided to record a punk album to get rid of some of the frustration and anger that had built up inside. What I started writing had little to do with punk though…It was pretty spontaneous from the start and all I knew was that I wanted to create heaviness without any guitars.”
Somewhere halfway through the material, Graaf got the crazy idea to incorporate horns. He had never written music for horns ever before so he started experimenting with that.
“That’s probably the greatest joy when creating music: having no idea what you’re doing! Being pleasantly surprised by the total sound, I decided to stay on this path. It resulted in something I never thought I would ever do, but apparently, I just did….Why not go all the way then? Honestly? I’m not even sure there ARE any fans for this, but I do know that listeners of Pestilence for instance or of one of the other death metal bands I was part of, will probably be a bit surprised at least. I like to think that crazy people (like myself) will appreciate this.” adds Graaf.
The Self-Titled Debut album will be out February 18, 2022. Digital pre-save is available at https://emubands.ffm.to/choreomanic and limited edition CD pre-order at https://choreomanic.bandcamp.com.
Other Links
http://Facebook.com/choreomanic
http://Instagram.com/choreomanic