1929 (one nine two nine) is a duo of two experienced musicians, guitar and voice, based in
Brussels.
Award-winning composer and guitarist, Manuel Roland, has written the music
which takes its quiet starting point in songs built around the voice and lyrics, sung with an
entrancing, crystalline clarity and softness by Danish born, Sisse Bro.
Stylistically the songs play with elements of folk and modern pop but also introduce various
compositional ideas and textures, exploring sophisticated melodies with reference to the
classic songwriting format. Just as the music mixes styles, genres and techniques into a
formation of its own liking, so too the lyrics play with opposites and juxtapositions –
assembled like a puzzle of phrases and then fitted to the sound. The result is a set of lyrics
that circle around psychological issues, contrasts of light and darkness, inner demons and
the thoughts and feelings that find release only late at night.
1929 takes their name from an infamous book of the same title published that very same
year in Brussels by three giants of surrealism, Louis Aragon, Benjamin Péret and Man Ray.
The book was banned at the time, a period when artists were in the process of liberating
themselves from the rules and norms of society, provoking debate and discussion around
values which chime particularly with today.
Together with long-term musical partners, Jérémie Mosseray and Manu Loriaux, the group
recorded their first album at the studio La Savonnerie in Brussels in 2018.
This first
album will be released on the 21st of June 2024.