The imaginary suitcase is the one we carry along throughout our lives, the one that contains our dead or barely breathing illusions and the images of our life as we fantasize it.

The Imaginary Suitcase is also the solo avatar of Laurent Leemans, singer and guitarist in the acoustic folk-rock combo Ceilí Moss since 1996, and before that in La Vierge du Chancelier Rolin in the 90s.

Cracker sang « what the world needs now is another folksinger like I need a hole in my head » and they were not wrong, but in 2010, after 14 years spent in a band of 5 to 8 musicians playing full throttle Poguesey folk-rock, the desire to bring to life songs that didn’t fit in the Ceilí Moss sound got stronger than the fear of becoming the 1001st whining brat who strums two and a half chords and moans his small time existentialism, so that everyone understands what Schopenhauer meant when he wrote that boredom could be a metaphysical experience…

Soulful and melodic songs built round a deep and versatile voice (often compared to that of Mark Lanegan or David Sylvian) at times caressing, at times ominous, and deceptively simple guitar chords. Can you say The Imaginary Suitcase is a sort of Belgian counterpart to The World Of Skin or maybe Joseph Arthur’s evil twin? Why not? And the listener will probably also perceive the influence of The Jesus & Mary Chain, The Smiths, Rowland S. Howard, Wovenhand, Joy Division, Paul Roland, Brendan Perry, Death In June, Hugo Race or Swans.

The Imaginary Suitcase has already released two homemade demo CDs: “here’s to those we could not save” in 2012, and the forthcoming “Putting things on top of other things”, scheduled for february 2013. Live, Laurent uses different electric or acoustic guitars, an autoharp and some percussion to bring a surprisingly full, varied and generous performance for a guy alone.