Choremanic: Joost Van Der Graaf with Medieval Dancing plagues!

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On Friday, Feb 18th bassist Joost Van Der Graaf (Pestilence) released his experimental prog/funk project Choremanic ‘s self-titled debut album. Recommended for fans of Mr. Bungle, Zappa, John Zorn, Infectious Grooves, Brian Setzer Orchestra, and of course fans of Pestilence who enjoy music outside of just extreme metal. Off With The Figurehead – Music Video / Bass Playthrough

During covid lockdown last year, Joost began work on his experimental prog/funk project Choremanic and with the help of various musician friends was able to complete the self-titled album for the project. The end result is an album that features twelve bass-orientated tracks experimenting in realms of prog, funk, and everything else on the planet that has musically inspired Van Der Graaf over his thirty-plus year career. The full length’s lyrical concept explores Choreomania, an uncontrollable urge to dance, especially in a frenzied, convulsive manner also known as the Medieval Dancing plagues.

Van Der Graaf explains how the album came into existence:

«I had just joined Pestilence and was busy with the material, preparing for a beautiful US tour with Possessed. Then the pandemic struck. Tour canceled everything on hold. I suddenly had a lot of time on my hands with all the other work canceled as well (music school closed, no more local gigs) 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.  Time To Let It Out – Music video / Bass Playthrough

«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 Van Der Graaf.

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