The Phlod-Nar

Randolf Smeets, a.k.a The Phlod-Nar is a Belgian composer and multi-instrumentalist with Dutch roots. Starting around 1996, within his first 10 years he completed 5 totally different albums, the genre-hopping Black Paint and Red Ochre, ambient works on Utriusque Cosmi, piano improvisations on The Crystalline Piano, and more adventures. To express his individualistic creativity it’s impossible to pigeonhole his music. Even the ways of creating his music are limitless: from written scores, electro-acoustic noises, electronic programming, live played instruments, extreme audio editing, reworked and layered recordings, improvisation, etc. Next to his main solo project, collaborations and other solo projects popped op over the years. One is The Mun Astronauts, his duo with Barry Schuwirth creating atmospheric ambient music with piano and electronics. As a composer of chamber music you can find works released under his real name Randolf Smeets. Krautrock and instrumental postrock was his, now-abandoned, project Agula, where all the instruments (guitar, bass, drums, percussion) are played by Randolf himself. Other solo-projects: extreme sound manipulation and using techniques like Xenochrony, plunderphonics and John Cage’s aleatoric elements you can find in A Z I M O G U. With singer-songwriter Vigilan Freeland he developed his playing abilities, in studio as well as live, with the instruments electric bass guitar, acoustic guitar, clarinet and piano. In a review of his Works For Piano, Kelly O’Neil most aptly summarized his work saying “Smeets is a highly creative composer…liberating musical constraints yet still keeping his works aurally pleasurable”