About

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While presented as a debut, the record reflects years of experience as an internationally active freelance musician, resulting in a project that feels mature, coherent and fully realised.

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Dreessen’s music brings together rhythmic complexity, harmonic depth and clear formal thinking. His compositions are carefully shaped and structurally strong, yet remain open and communicative. Adventurous and rhythmically challenging, the music never loses its sense of flow or connection. Rather than foregrounding virtuosity, it seeks balance between ambition and accessibility, allowing listeners to engage both intellectually and physically. As Mosaic of Jazz noted, Dreessen acts as “a master architect of rhythm and atmosphere”, where structure and emotional impact reinforce one another.

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For Angle of Incidence, Dreessen assembled a quartet of distinctive voices from the Belgian and European jazz scene: Jean-Paul Estiévenart (trumpet), Bram De Looze (piano) and Cyrille Obermüller (double bass). Together they form a highly responsive ensemble, capable of translating Dreessen’s compositions — rich in melodic and rhythmic detail — into music that feels both considered and alive.

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The album has been premiered by venues such as De Bijloke, which emphasised the quartet’s strong collective identity and live impact. In concert, the music opens up further: forms are stretched, dynamics sharpened and interaction takes centre stage, without losing clarity or focus. The result is a live experience that remains engaging and accessible, even when the musical language becomes more challenging.

Rooted in the jazz tradition yet clearly forward-looking, Angle of Incidence balances challenge and approachability. The album received strong critical attention and was selected among Klara’s (VRT) and RTBF's albums of the year as well as Focus Knack’s Top 10 Jazz Albums, placing the project within a broader international context and confirming Dreessen as a distinctive voice of his generation.