Postcard 09 (Brussels)
At some point it dawned on us that everything seems to start in Belgium and then is copied everywhere else. The 1992 rave smash hit, “Bombscare” by 2 Bad Mice, was our epiphany for this. And when, a year earlier, we listened for the first time to Belgian Neon’s “Don’t Mess With that Beat” we felt really smart: it’s all stolen! Listening to the re-release of Belgian band AKSAK MABOUL’s first LP, which was recorded in the mid to late 1970s, I feel vindicated on the one hand, but lose that teenage faith in some kind of continuity on the other. Stravinsky, tribal techno, The Fall, Mothers of Invention and Master Musicians of Jajouka all in a mosh pit? After these furious records, the group fell quiet for a long time. Shortly before the end of the project, one of its central figures, Marc Hollander, founded the legendary label Crammed Discs, which carries forward this spirit and transfers it to many bands. After almost four decades, he has now recorded the third album, together with old and new colleagues. Like an unburnt musical library of Alexandria, “Figures” demonstrates what can still be called pioneering today. Felix Kubin and Florian Bräunlich will talk to Hollander about this and other topics on the festival radio. It’s going to be four-dimensional!