The person behind Urpf Lanze is Belgian visual artist Wouter Vanhaelemeesch (B), who is mainly known for his large-scale ink drawings that offer a hermetic blend of weirdo characters, medieval iconography and surrealist decors. His artwork started gaining attention a few years ago when renowned avant-garde lutenist Jozef Van Wissem (NL) started using Vanhaelemeesch's work to decorate several sleeves of his recorded output, including his collaborations with filmmaker Jim Jarmusch (US), noise legends Smegma (US), free folkband United Bible Studies (IE) and fingerpicker James Blackshaw (UK). Next to doing exhibitions in places like Tokyo, New York and Paris, his drawings appear regularly in zines and underground publications all over the world. He also runs the audioMER label together with designer Jeroen Wille (BE) and has provided artwork for records by Jack Rose (US), Robbie Basho (US), Mauro Antonio Pawlowski (BE), Cian Nugent (IE), Graveyards (US), Second Family Band (US) and many others.
Urpf Lanze is the moniker of his rather unorthodox solo guitar project, under which he has been playing for several years now. With an acoustic guitar that lays flat on his lap, tuned to unwieldy scales, he brutalises the instrument in an oddly musical way. As if this wasn't enough he lays down some vocal work that goes from ventriloquist-like whines and mumbles to deep and guttural grunts.
The result is a rather unhinged and demented music. Imagine the rawness of Bill Orcutt, the more frightening sides of Loren Mazzacane Connors and the absurd stylings of Wilburn Burchette all wrapped into a Lovecraftian sonic nightmare. 'Procession of Talking Mirrors' is his first full lenght solo album. Recorded live on a 4-track tape recorder, these 6 tracks offer a mixture of folk music, free psych, scratchy blues, damaged lo-fi and aggressively percussive fingerpicking. While some tracks may carry a more melancholy tone, others seem closer to acoustic death metal than any kind of folk music.


'This is Urpf Lanze aka Belgian visual artist Wouter Vanhaelemeesch's first solo acoustic guitar album. His music has been described as outsider or anti-folk, but here he rides roughshod over such considerations. Some of the pieces approach the ecstatic, naggingly insistent style displayed by James Blackshaw and the late Jack Rose on Raag Manifestos. But if Vanhaelemeesch lacks the refinement of those two players, he makes up for it with aggression. With his acoustic guitar flat on his lap, he subjects it to some rough vocalisations. On "Plague Pillow", where he obsessively works on a picking pattern around three chords, they seem almost absent-minded murmurs. Elsewhere, as on the title track, his grunts, throaty growls and baleful ululations can be distracting, almost comedic. But this track also exemplifies his singular approach to the guitar. Veering from insistent percussive batterings to bending slackened strings to finely articulated runs, he employs disciplined technique and the power of sloppiness in a way that few other guitarists would even consider trying.'
By Mike Barnes,THE WIRE