Under the skin: what makes Edouard Gilbert aka Kuna Maze tick?

French producer and multi-instrumentalist Edouard Gilbert loves that village feeling that Brussels has. Ideal as a counterbalance to the musical destinations and cross-pollinations that he looks for as Kuna Maze. The trip that once began in Panama and recently made a few hip jazz venues in the UK rock comes home to Brussels Jazz Weekend.

Edouard Gilbert has just finished performing in London, Bristol, Manchester and Norwich when we meet him at Café La Pompe in Saint-Gilles. That he is at home here is evident from the way he is greeted on the terrasse of the popular pub. He is still upbeat from the short tour of England, following a successful showcase last autumn in London. “It was an old-fashioned, but very tantalising trip,” says the producer, who on stage mainly plays bass. “We left Brussels in a small van and took the ferry. It is more practical than flying: our equipment stayed with us and we were freer to move around.”

Gilbert is especially grateful to his label Thru Thoughts. That label is about to launch Back & Forth , the album he made with his good friend Nicolas Morant aka Nikitch but will also launch his solo project early next year. “Together with our booking agent, they also arranged our work visas and the other administration for the trip, so that we could focus entirely on the music.”

Gilbert sees the excitement of the concert-goers as a small victory over the jazz teachers who had little interest in cross-pollination back when he was studying at the conservatories in Lyon and Chambéry. “We don't play classic jazz but they still let us play at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, where all the big names have passed through.”

BACK AND FORTH
For Gilbert, it all began with the classical trumpet before he briefly switched to bass in his teens, but it was mainly the music of adventurers such as Flying Lotus that motivated him to start experimenting himself. “At one point I had had it with the jazz scene in Lyon. It was too closed and compartmentalised for me. I have started to open up more to other genres. By extension, my move to Brussels felt like a breath of fresh air. Here, not even the students at the Conservatoire pay much attention to genres. They play with an open mind and life here is easy. Brussels combines the allure of a capital city with the feel and closeness of a village. I can enjoy underground nights here as well as concerts at the Ancienne Belgique.”

Gilbert found Flying Lotus via beatmaker J Dilla and that became his gateway. Later, he started listening intensively to house and broken beat producers. “These days, my influences are even more diverse: from Herbie Hancock over Brazilian bossa jazz to the multicoloured British jazz scene, which draws inspiration from reggae, UK garage and dubstep.” Back & Forth was born out of that mix and the title refers to the back and forth travel and online correspondence between Gilbert and Nikitch, who now lives in Grenoble. “That took some organisation, but that we complement each other makes up for everything.”

COLOURFUL LABYRINTH
“I need a lot of musical input anyway, even when I'm creating,” Gilbert says. “When my inspiration fails, I put on music. That can be a different style, and in there somewhere I hear something that I can use in a different way. While making the new record, I listened a lot to the American producer John Carroll Kirby, a colleague on Thru Thoughts, but also to broken beat icons like Domu, Afronaut and Bugz in the Attic, and to bossa classics from the 1970s. “Manfredo Fest's Brazilian Dorian Dream was a great inspiration, as was Marcos Valle.” On the new album, where Commander Spoon's Pierre Spataro plays some saxophone sporadically, Brazilian singer João Selva can be heard on the catchy “Engatinhar”.

So in one fell swoop, we find ourselves on the other side of the Atlantic, where Gilbert found inspiration for his stage name. “I used to draw a lot. A book about the traditional textile art of the Kuna people from Panama caught my eye. The colourful, geometric patterns look like a labyrinth. I thought that suited my music, which is equally hybrid. My uncle lived on a boat near their habitat which stretches across the many islands off the Panamanian coast. When I visited him seven years ago, I met the indigenous people and that was an amazing experience.”

If music from many corners of the world has always had a direct influence on his creative production, then travel certainly has an indirect one. “It emphasises how important it is to me to be open. Covid put a bit of a damper on that travelling. But I am convinced that even that short trip through England has influenced us. Being confronted with a physical place always teaches you something that you cannot get from books.”

NIKITCH & KUNA MAZE: BACK & FORTH
Release: 27/5 via Thru Thoughts
Concerts: 27/5, 19.30, Botanique, www.botanique.be & 28/5, 19.45, Kapellemarkt/Place de la Chapelle, www.brusselsjazzweekend.be