“Nice lathe by this Belgian musician I first encountered when he was working on filming documentaries of Borbetomagus and Loren Mazzacane Connors. The Connors one remains unfinished due to Covid, but that doesn’t mean Mertens hasn’t been thinking about Connors’s work. Indeed, these four tracks are not only dedicated to Loren, they also show his influence in terms of playing, although their approaches are quite different. Mertens’s playing manifests a soupçon of Connors’s abstract dynamics, but his sense of harmonies is not blues based and his approach to melodies favours sweeter flavours. Still, the grace of the tone extensions here are of a piece with those of Loren, and I suspect anyone who digs the Mazz might well get a thrill out of this as well.” - BYRON COLEY, THE WIRE