Dance Europe Express (Cardiff-Brussels-Lausanne-Budapest)

Music Muziek Musique presents Dance Europe Express

From Cardiff - Rockem Sockem Robots
(Deep House and Breaks)

From Brussels - Nauru
(DJs Sensu [Manna, Plain, Café Belga] and Tuks [Toma!] play underground pop music in the broadest possible sense. When your name references a former tax paradise now run by an ex-Olympic weightlifter, there's few limits to what you might expect. Hearing is believing though, so no boasting ... just music ... loud ...)

From Lausanne - Leo & Tamara
(It's more than passion that links Leo [Creaked Records] & Tamara behind the turntables, open-minded and always interested in new sounds and exciting vibrations, they play their fine slices of electronic, rock, techno, experimental, hip-hop, noise, pop and more to build up a no-genre alike set that will leave you stuck to the dancefloor!)

From Budapest - Polymorphin
(Minimal techno from the Schallschnelle Records recording artists)

Plus your eclectic and danceable residents, DJ Jammer & The Phantom

Venue: Nouveaux Russes, Rue Haute 4 Hoogstraat, Brussels 1000
Date: Saturday May 31 2008 (doors: 23h - till late)
FREE ENTRY

www.myspace.com/musicmuziekmusique
"one more time..."

More Moby at Belga

Here's another pic from last night. There's loads more on Facebook.

Secret Moby gig!!

It's not often you head down to your local boozer and discover a world famous rock star is playing a secret acoustic show there that night. That's what happened to me yesterday, so here's a little report...

Moby - Café Belga, Brussels Wednesday May 7, 2008

Following a day of rumour and buzz – is he really coming? THE Moby? Really?? – The diminutive New Yorker stepped onto a makeshift stage at Café Belga a little after 9pm. A several-thousand-strong crowd had gathered in and around the trendy bar in Brussels’s Place Flagey to hear a ‘secret’ gig by the multi-platinum musician.

Strapping on an acoustic guitar, and accompanied by the considerable vocal talents of Joy Malcolm, Moby opened the show with ‘Natural Blues’, before playing a selection of old favourites (including ‘Why does my heart?’ and ‘We are all made of stars’), a track from new album, Last Night, and some unusual covers (‘Ring of Fire’, ‘Walk on the Wild Side’).

After set closer ‘Lift me up’ left the crowd chanting his name, Moby returned for an encore that included minor key renditions of Twisted Sister’s ‘We’re not going to take it’ and ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ and an improvised jam (!) “Do I know any more songs?” the singer asked himself. One more: ‘Me and Bobby McGee’. Kris Kristofferson’s song famously defines freedom. Here’s another definition: ‘Freedom’s just another name for being able to play an acoustic set in a bar when you are a rock star!’

Musings of the Month

...Jones the Rhythm...
Great to read that Grace Jones will be playing live at the Meltdown Festival in London next month. The first picture disc I ever bought was the 12" of Slave to the Rhythm (fantastic record) so I've got fond memories of Ms. Jones. And if there was anyone making better albums than her in 1980/81, I haven't heard them (as good maybe - stand up Talking Heads - but not better). If this description of going to see one of her live shows from the pages of Pop Justice is anything to go by, everyone at the South Bank on June 19th will be in for a treat!

...You call this progress? Or the thin end of the Wedge...
I was amazed to pick up a flyer the other week and discover that Shoreditch chancers Trash Fashion had been booked to play at the Fete Du Progres, the annual May Day fundraiser of the French-speaking Belgian socialist party, the PS, which took place last night. I'm sure Billy Bragg is polishing his cover of It's a Rave Dave as we speak. Twats!

...In search of Cosmic Disco, or the DJ and the producer...
Sadly (or not at all), I missed the Trash Fiasco in order to be at the 6YCC event at the Eskimo Fabriek in Ghent, celebrating the sixth birthday of Culture Club, the nightclub where Soulwax's Dewaele brothers cut their teeth as resident DJs. The main reason for going was to catch a Hercules and Love Affair DJ set. As the timings got all awry, I missed a big chunk of this, which, for some strange reason, was taking place essentially in the foyer of the venue (a former textile factory - very stylish, although the corridor linking the main rooms kept reminding me of the Panamian prison at the end of Season 2 of Prison Break). What I did hear was cool, although I think I prefer Herc & LA's own records. By contrast, Felix Da Housecat, whose recordings usually leave me cold, played a storming set in the main room. I guess that just proves that being great at cutting tracks doesn't mean you'll be the best at playing them, and vice versa.

...Wearing my Rolex, or Grime doesn't play...
Despite entering the UK pop charts at no. 4, Wiley's 'Wearing my Rolex' has divided opinion. Some think it's a cheesy pile of dog's doings, others that it's the best thing to happen to Grime for years. I'm taking the middle ground. Yes, it is pretty cheesy, and perhaps overreliant on the DSK sample (a good track to rely on, mind). But in its defence, when was the last time you went to a club and danced to Grime? I mean, really danced? A case in point, Team Mega Mix played at MMM in March and they played a storming first set. When they hit the decks again later on in the night, they dropped Dizzee Rascal's 'I Luv U', a quality record, but one that, especially outside the UK, is as welcome on most dancefloors as a punk cover of The Birdy Song. Cue a sudden influx of bodies at the bar, and a quick change of musical direction in the DJ booth. Maybe Wiley is wiping away too much of the Grime from his sound, but he should be applauded for taking the genre in a new direction.

...Musique (Concrete) for the Masses...
Nice to see an article acknowledging the pioneers of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. In the same way that trade journals and in-house magazines have sometimes been the first to bring cutting edge graphic design to the mainstream (for instance Bradbury Thompson in Westvaco's Inspiration for Printers magazine of the 1940s), so the radiophonic workshop, in its functionalism, brought avant-garde techniques to a wider audience, under the guise of making weird sounds to illustrate drama. Musique Concrete for the Masses indeed! Given Delia Derbyshire's later career in psychedelic rockers, The White Noise, it seems like good timing to be heading over to London to catch Ipso Facto this weekend. IF have probably never heard The White Noise, but they sure sound as if they have...

Memory of the Month: 'Hard Times' in Thatcher's Britain

In the September 1982 issue of The Face, THE UK style magazine of the '80s, journalist Robert Elms wrote a feature entitled "Hard Times: The New Young Soul Rebels". You can find it in NightFever, an anthology (published in 1997) of The Face's pieces on the 'club scene' (a term the magazine if not coined, made into common currency). Beyond a few music journalists, musicians, and music obsessives with long memories, the 'Hard Times' article and the short-lived, but surprisingly influential 'Hard Times' movement Elms championed are long forgotten. So, what's the skinny?

In a nutshell, 'Hard Times' was about listening to Soul music from the late '60s/early '70s with a political edge (Curtis Mayfield, Gil Scott-Heron), as well as early '80s black music with similar sentiments (the original version of 'Money's Too Tight to Mention' by the Valentine Brothers, 'Cash Money' by Prince Charles & The City Beat Band and 'Drop the Bomb' by Trouble Funk being prime examples, along with, a little later, 'Ain't no rockin' in a Police State' by Black Britain). You would listen to this music while out enjoying yourself clubbing in Soho, however, to express your solidarity with the 3 million unemployed elsewhere in Thatcher's Britain, you would wear stylised versions of workwear, ripped Levi's 501s and sleeveless leather jackets.

It sounds laughable, and it was. The excellent website, My Cassette's Just like a Bazooka?, which gathers details of all the cassettes given away free by the NME in the 1980s, includes some choice analysis of 'Hard Times' and its malign influence. Music critic Simon Reynolds devoted about a quarter of his first book, Blissed Out: The Raptures of Rock, to shooting down the theories of Soul as the music of resistance, propagated by the likes of Elms and Paolo Hewitt in the early-mid '80s. 'Hard Times' was one aspect of this wider trend (which Reynolds dubbed 'Soulcialism') and its influence could be seen everywhere from Simply Red's cover of 'Money's Too Tight..' (their first hit) to Bros's ripped jeans. Thankfully, the rave scene and the alternative rock revival of the late '80s/early '90s killed all that stuff stone dead. But, it did have its moments, as this live version of 'Cash Money', complete with Princess Di lookalike, illustrates. Dance before they drop the Bomb!

Myspace of the Month: Shed and Sunbird

Couldn't decide between two alternatives for the first Myspace of the Month, so they both get the nod.

First up is the remix page of "French Electro-Pop band", Shed. This trio's music - influenced by the likes of Depeche Mode, Air, Portishead and Morcheeba - is pretty cool, but what really grabbed my attention was this message: "Welcome to this official SHED myspace friends remixes, You can listen some great remixes from friends!! We hope you enjoy them! If you are interested to do remixes of us, just ask us and we could sent to you the separate tracks." Sure beats paying 5 notes to remix Radiohead's 'Nude'!

The other page to check out this month belongs to a young Belgian guy called Adriaan who records as Sunbird. Based in Leuven, his mellifluent electronica reminds me of Royksopp and A Man Called Adam at their finest. "It is found again. What? Eternity! It is the sun mingled with the sea," as Arthur Rimbaud might have said when contemplating a drunken daytrip to the Belgian coast with his lover Paul Verlaine. We tried to book Sunbird to play live at Music Muziek Musique a few months back only to discover that Adriaan had broken his back! Thankfully, he is on the road to recovery (his music sounds like an analgesic, so I'm sure it helped). Sunbird's debut album hits the streets later this month - check it out.

The Bulgarian: Codeword 'Fidget'

“MEET ME in Room 511,” said The Bulgarian. I checked my watch, had I gone back in time and stumbled into the plot of a bad Cold War thriller? No, this was Brussels 2008, and I was being invited to interview one of the rising stars of the ever-expanding world of Fidget House. A self-confessed 'global citizen', The Bulgarian (aka Dimitre Vassilev) has been tearing up dancefloors from Camden Town to Cape Town with tracks such as ‘Crazy Dog Biscuit’ and ‘Jack it Like a Zombie’, a string of sick remixes, and a mixtape for the super hip No Love Lost Recordings (NLLR).

JT: Hi Dimitre, your background is quite unusual: tell us a bit about yourself.

TB: I was born in Bulgaria, so hence The Bulgarian. I lived in South Africa for the last 16 years, so that’s pretty much home as well. I was living in London last year, but then I decided to check out Bulgaria - I’m living in Sofia now: it’s very nice.

JT: You’ve got a few different aliases - how long have you been calling yourself The Bulgarian?

TB: Just about a year and a half now. With The Bulgarian I try to do the whole Fidget thing and stick to that. Stuff like Mr Elastik is more techno, minimal, electro - whatever takes my fancy. I’ve also got a side project with another friend called Tone Deaf Junkies, where we do just abstract electronica. It’s just to keep things easy for people to follow. If it were up to me I’d do it all under one alias, but it can get a bit tricky trying to market it all.

JT: What do you think of the name Fidget?

TB: It’s cool. I like it. I got into that genre just before it had a name. It’s better than what I was calling it – electro-jack [chuckles]. The thing that put me on to Fidget was a few years back I was in Bulgaria on holiday and popped over to Serbia for the Exit festival. And Switch happened to be playing in the dance arena and after a few too many beers and several thousand watt sound system, it all sounded really good. I’d never heard that before: I was just like, “I have to do this!”

JT: One of the tracks you’ve done as The Bulgarian is ‘Crazy Dog Biscuit’ with Spoek from Sweat. X. How did that [collaboration] come about?

TB: I’ve known Spoek for a while. I used to have a studio with a mate in South Africa. Spoek came in to work on a hip-hop album for another South African MC. And then he worked with Markus in Sweat. X. I knew Markus from before: I mean there’s not very many of us in South Africa doing this. So I knew what Spoek was capable of and one day I just gave him a shout to see if he wanted to do something. The first track we did together was ‘Jack it like a Zombie’. That was really good, so we did ‘Crazy Dog Biscuit’ to follow that.

JT: You say you know a lot of the other people there – do you think of it as being a South African ‘scene’?

TB: It’s hard-pressed to call it a full-on scene, especially with Fidget. Last year I was the only guy doing Fidget House. Sweat. X is a bit different, but it would have been pretty much only them and me doing this more London-y, Euro-style thing.

Before I left I was way more famous overseas than in South Africa. I used to get maybe one gig every two months or so in South Africa. And when I came back [to tour in February and March] everyone and their grandmother wanted to come along. People were asking: “Have you been to South Africa before?” I was like [sarcastic tone] “yeah-eah” [chuckles]. “Where are you from?” [deadpan] “Here”. It’s funny but I suppose that’s the way it is.

JT: I suppose South Africa is quite isolated in a way.

TB: Yeah, there are so many things. We’ve got the worst Internet in the world! You have limits – everyone gets 3 gigs a month [of bandwidth] and that’s it! Downloading anything more than an MP3 is a bit of an issue there.

JT: Would you say you had any specifically African elements in your music?

TB: I don’t think like that, I just make music for myself. I have at times put in African elements. And Spoek’s pretty African [laughs]. I lived there for 16 years, I’m sure it influences me in some way or another. I don’t like that box of ‘African music’ – all tribal-y or whatever. There’s enough of that. I try to do something else.

JT: You’ve been doing quite a few remixes. What’s been your favourite so far?

TB: It’s hard to say, I mean I love all of them. But the most high profile one I’ve done so far is the remix I did for Larry Tee. That was quite something else because they contacted me out of the blue, which was quite a cool surprise.

There’s one that just came out for the Round Table Knights ('Hold me Back'), which is a really cool song. I like that a lot. I’m doing a lot – I’ve got about four on the go at the moment.

JT: If you could remix anybody in the world, who would it be?

TB: Anybody? Ooh, tough choice… Nine Inch Nails would be fun. Trent Reznor’s been a big influence as a producer through the years.

JT: As well as the tracks we’ve already mentioned and all the remixes, what else have you got lined up?

TB: I’ve started a label – it’s called Feta. In Bulgaria we just call [Feta] cheese – it’s something that’s very integral to our culture there. And it sounded cool! I’m doing it with another guy called Vlad Sokolov, who runs Sokolov Sounds. He’s from Serbia originally, also Feta country.

JT: He’s more into Breaks, isn’t he?

TB: He was, but he’s come to the conclusion that [whispering] Breaks is finished… Shit…Whoops…[Close to mic] Errr, no, Breaks is cool! So me and him started Feta together. We’re trying to do vinyl releases [as well as downloads] but we’ve just had a problem with the distributors. We’ll see – that’s still in the air now, but definitely that’s the plan. I’ve had quite a few deals with a few labels where, when I’ve signed it was for a vinyl deal, and then a few weeks later they’re like, “we can’t do vinyl any more” – it’s happened to me three times so far.

Downloading, whether it’s legal or illegal, is having such an effect on the music industry – it’s a whole new ball game. I’ve actually been considering going almost ‘open source’ on my music, but it’s a bit tricky to do that. I’ll probably have to get a bit bigger and make a bit more money first!

JT: Would you like to do a full-length album as the Bulgarian?

TB: I don’t know. The Bulgarian is very party music. I don’t know how suited it is to an album. It would be fun to do, but I’d like to make it a bit more varied, which also runs the risk of alienating people: “Where’s my Fidget, man? What’s this melodic stuff, I don’t like it.”

That’s far in the future I think, it’s too early to think about that.

JT: So, how do you sum up your music in one line?

TB: Don’t take it all so seriously: it’s just life.

An alternative version of this interview was published by Vice Belgium, check it out at: http://vice.typepad.com/vice_belgium/2008/04/interview---the.html

Markus of the Month... Or, an African sex ritual gone wrong

SOUTH AFRICA'S Sweat. X – MC Spoek Mathambo and studio boffin Markus Wormstorm – have been making waves with their highly original, highly sexual take on Miami Bass and Booty House (“Go black, go low, go fast/ Go pussy, go titties, go ass!”). I met up with Markus prior to a solo DJ set in Brussels at the end of the duo’s recent European tour.

JT: You’re in Brussels. Belgium seems to have recently discovered Nu Rave: is that a good thing?

MW: Ha ha ha ha. I’m kind of two ways about it – to me, Nu Rave is a fashion concept, what is it, summer 2007? And it kind of went hand-in-hand with a dance music revival, and a lot of things were classified as Nu Rave, whereas to be blunt to me it’s oh-so-passe right now. I’m really into dark colours and leathers at the moment. But, I dig the attitude: the party harder frame of mind.

JT: When Sweat. X play, what do you want the audience to think? What do you want them to come away feeling?

MW: We want our live show to be a very dirty thing. We want to create the feeling of some sort of African sex ritual gone wrong. We love performing at floor level, mixing with the people, getting bumped and punched and kissed. I love getting swarmed. We’ve been performing together for a while now and we’ve reached a point where we’re really confident and we can really just fuck around. We’ll just leave loops running and run around the crowd and slap asses - climb back on stage and do some more shit. It’s a very interactive thing.

JT: Where’s Spoek tonight?

MW: He’s probably got to do some chores around the house! He’s got a really demanding grandmother. He’s Ndebele, he’s royalty – I mean a lot of people claim that in Africa. But because he’s the youngest male in an Ndebele family it’s really not done for him to leave the house. He’s supposed to look after his Grandma and his mum and that’s probably what he’s doing right now.

JT: Does that play havoc with your tour schedule?

MW: No, not really man. But his grandma doesn’t like me and I don’t have much to say to her either! She’s like 90 - we just glare at each other. Her whole thing is she can’t understand why they need him to fly around – she’s sure there are enough singers, you know what I mean [chuckles].

JT: And what does she think of the music?

MW: She doesn’t get it man. I mean we’ve recorded some stuff at his house – she’ll just open the door and just stand there and look at us. Like something out of a Lynch movie - fucking eerie.

JT: People are talking about a bit of a South African scene, with guys like you and The Bulgarian getting known internationally. Do you feel part of a movement?

MW: Definitely. My contemporaries and I, when we started doing stuff back in ’99, we sort of set the cornerstones in a lot of ways for electronic music [in South Africa]. I have a studio in Cape Town called Say Thank You Studios, and we do a lot of production, so it’s like an outlet for a lot of artists… One of my partners owns one of the biggest nightclubs in Cape Town, The Assembly. Also we did a lot of shows – a night called Shadow Works, a night called Bookers – and it’s really something we had to build up, the scene of say 2,000-3,000 people that we have now in Cape Town, that’s all off our work. There weren’t bands coming out [from Europe] – we were left to our own devices.

JT: Who else should people be listening out for from South Africa?

MW: Oh man, Felix Laband. I mean Felix is a genius – he’s got a bit of a [self]-destructive streak, but I think he’s one of the greatest musicians we’ve had in a long time.

JT: Do you feel any affinity with other people who are mixing electronic music with sounds from Africa, say Baraka som Sistema?

MW: I’d have to say no. We do African music because we’re from Africa. I don’t think we’ve at any point set out to sneak in a couple of bongos into a song to give it that ‘ethnic’ feel.

JT: It’s African because you are?

MW: Exactly. And I don’t think we’ve ever thought of designing it to be that.

JT: You’ve said [what Sweat. X is doing] is not IDM, it’s not pushing boundaries, you just want people to have a good time. You’re obviously intelligent guys – some of the photo shoots you’ve done are pretty ironic. Do you want people to see the joke as well?

MW: So much of our stuff is based on private jokes between us. I guess you can’t help sneaking that irony into it. I mean we are indie dudes and we are allowed to do whatever we feel like. But do you mean as far as the history of South Africa goes?

JT: I don’t know…

MW: Spoek’s funny, Spoek says we’re like the Apartheid After Party. And what’s this other shit he says? He says we’re a 20-metre acryclic painting of a black hand holding a white hand… We did this one song – do you know what BE is? Black Empowerment. We did this track called ‘Markus Wormstorm is on some straight BE shit’. I think that’s about as political as we’ve got.

JT: What’s happening next with Sweat. X? Any plans for an album?

MW: We’ve got two new labels – we’re still in the process of getting everything together, but we’re putting some stuff out in the States, something called the Saviour and Messiah EP, and we’re doing the Throwing Shade EP and Throwing Shade album later in the year.

JT: Do you get many requests to remix other people?

MW: Yeah, we do get asked and we do ask other people, but nothing ever seems to materialise. We haven’t done anything yet. I really want to do something with Game Boy/Game Girl, these kids from Melbourne, Australia. It’s like this big guy and these two girls and this producer called Miami Horror. I think they are awesome.

JT: If you were forced to sum up Sweat. X in one sentence, how would you do it?

MW: Chasing the season till our blood runs cold.

Mixtape of the Month: Dmitry Fodorov

WITH A new release just about every week, it's no surprise that the first mmmblog* Mixtape of the Month award goes to an artist from the No Love Lost Records stable. Number 44 in the NLLR Mixtape Series is a 13-track, 49-minute blast of white heat from Russian DJ Dmitry Fyodorov. Anyone who remixes The Village People's 'Sex over the phone' AND 'I wanna be your dog' AND puts them on the same playlist deserves maximum respect. Favourite moments in the mix?... 05:53: Swen Weber's 'Samba de Bochum' kicks in and it's like stepping out of a Berlin fetish club onto the sands of the Copacabana: Electro shadows and light...19:04: The sudden realisation that you are dancing to the Village People and it's all right!...38:37-40:51: polyrhythms-a-go-go!!...45:35: Here comes Iggy...!

Here's the full tracklisting: 01 Dmitry Fyodorov - 'Halford Rawk' 02 Swen Weber - 'Samba De Bochum' 03 Dmitry Fyodorov - 'Carnage' 04 New Order - 'Blue Monday (Dmitry Fyodorov Edit)' 05 Buy Now - 'Body Crash (Arrow!!!'s sold Out Remix)' 06 The Village People - 'Sex Over The Phone (Dmitry Fyodorov Edit)' 07 Frankie Goes To Hollywood - 'Relax (Sex Mix)' 08 Dmitry Fyodorov - 'MD5VS.SHA-1' 09 Dmitry Fyodorov - '1b-1' 10 Deadmau5 - 'Stereo Fidelity' 11 Dmitry Fyodorov - 'Greetings, D!' 12 Dmitry Fyodorov - '1987' 13 The Stooges - 'I Wanna Be Your Dog (Dmitry Fyodorov's Steak Lunch Remix)'

And here's where you can download it. Enjoy!

Rewind to the future: A brief history of MMM

After this month, Music Muziek Musique, the monthly club for music lovers, will be taking a break. This season-long (August 2007-May 2008) experiment to see if Brussels could support a club night with an experimental, but pop, approach to programming, will be winding down till the autumn. And the result of the experiment? Ask us this time next year! (;-). If you look through this blog's archives, you can read the complete story of the night so far (flyers, playlists and all). Here's a brief recap:

August 23 - As well as your eclectic residents, DJ Jammer and The Phantom, doing their thing, Gilli from Torpid plays a solo set as Yikez! and DJ Sensu spins his favourite soul and disco tracks (first in the 'Another Side of...' series of guest sets).

October 5 - We play the Flaming Lips album Zaireeka in its entirety on a bunch of CD players and boomboxes. Sweet. The Balkan Hot Step Soundsystem from Ghent do their thing.

November 2 - The fabulous Tapedeck come over from London for a DJ set. Plus we hear another side of Radio Limburg's Gijs Ramboer, a very talented techno DJ, when he's not being a sports reporter!

November 23 - MMM relocates from Windows to Smouss Cafe to be able to include the huge talents of guest DJ, James Holroyd. The Bugged Out! and Back to Basics resident comes straight from the Chemical Brothers show in Antwerp, where he has been warming up the crowd for the main event, to play Another Side of... for us. Awesome! The full bill is a full-on Vaudeville experience, starting with Davyth Hicks (ex-Revenge, ex-Lavolta Lakota) playing his favourite classic rock, punk, post-punk, goth and grunge records). Hicksy is followed by DJ Slick from Eddy Tornado et les Scandaleux, perhaps the best Rockabilly DJ in Belgium. Closing the night we have the subtle skills of minimal techno DJ, Fernando Daxta (Sirius Pandi records).

December 21 - A pre-Xmas party - Fight Night! Beatles vs Stones, Kompakt vs Kitsune, etc.

January 18 - Back to Smouss after December's show at Windows, and a guest appearance from The Human Jukebox (aka Guillaume Maupin), plus a second slot for Davyth Hicks.

February 22 - Music Muziek Musique presents Unknown Treasures, 'an evening of illegal, unreleased and rediscovered music' at a secret location in Brussels.
Probably my favourite MMM - the secret location turned out to be my flat - yes, I threw a 'facebook party' and survived! There was something kinda cool about random strangers showing up at my front door asking for 'the club'. The guests were very cool too - the illegal part was supplied by DJ Le Clown from Rennes, a lovely guy who makes great audiovisual mash-ups; the unreleased part by Tarzan, a Brussels-based duo with a fine line in downtempo electronica mixed with rock. We also had the pleasure of DJ Jammer's rediscovery of an unreleased Pete Shelley acoustic set, recorded for Piccadilly Radio in Manchester in 1979.

March 21 - Music Muziek Musique presents The Long Good Friday. Harold Shand would have been proud: we brought over three awesome, up-and-coming DJ duos from the UK - Team Mega Mix, STDJs and MeMeMe - for a night of wonky basslines and sick beats. Appalling weather conspired against us, but the Barrio Cafe still rocked.

May 31 - So, here's where season one ends - at Nouveaux Russes with Dance Europe Express (Cardiff-Brussels-Lausanne-Budapest). Our special guests will be Rockem Sockem Robots (Cardiff), Nauru (Brussels), Leo & Tamara (Lausanne) and Polymorphin (Budapest). Eclectic, international, experimental, but accessible, just like MMM as a whole. Seems like the ideal way to sign off for the summer. Hope to see you there! Thanks to everyone who has supported us, and especially Jodie Davies-Coleman in Durban for the great posters and flyers. Till the next time...

This blog is changing

THIS BLOG has had a makeover (or a 'relooking' as they like to call it here in Brussels). From May 1st, the Music Muziek Musique blog becomes mmmblog* (thanks Hanson!), a monthly blog for music lovers. As there are a million and one music blogs already, why should you bother checking this one out? Well, don't bother coming and checking it if you are just looking for Mp3s to download. mmmblog* won't be doing that unless the musicians in question offer us the Mp3s and ask to have them put up. And don't come here every morning looking for some flannel about Amy Winehouse's latest arrest, or whatever. mmmblog* will be about quality of posts, not quantity. In fact, aside from a few notices about upcoming Music Muziek Musique events and DJ playlists, I'm only going to be posting stuff once a month! That's right. The first day of each month, you can read all my thoughts for that month. You can read it as a micro blog, you can read it as a boutique blog, as long as you read it.
So what, you may ask, can we read? Each month's regular posts will be organised into one of five categories: Musings of the month (reflections on stuff that's been happening in the world of music in the last month); Mixtape of the month (I pick the best mixtape I've heard in the last month and explain why I like it); Myspace of the month (same principle as the mixtape, surprisingly enough); Memory of the month (could be a review of a classic album, could be a piece about a forgotten genre, record label, musical movement, whatever); Meeting(s) of the month (interviews with the music-makers - for the first month, it's a bit of a South African special, as I catch up with The Bulgarian and with Markus from Sweat. X).
Enjoy!

Tropa playlists

Here's more or less what I played at the Tropa Disco Bar the other week (this is before we started tag-team DJing!). It was a fun night, looking forward to playing there again in the near future.

Set 1:
John F. Kennedy - Ask not what your country
Pilooski - Can't there be love? / Not lost in translation - Pick up lines: English to French
Cadence Weapon (A1 Bassline remix) - House Music
Royal House (Club Mix) - Can you Party?
Crookers - My Penny
Eurythmics - Sweet Dreams (Chew Fu refix ft. J-Cast & Substantial)
Buraka Som Sistema - Yah (Cosmic Remix)
Diplo - Diplo Rhythm
Róisín Murphy - U know me better (Toddla T Nu Remix)

Set 2:
King Creosote - You've No Clue Do You (Atlantic Conveyor Mix)
Hercules and Love Affair - Blind
Cut Copy - Hearts on Fire (Joakim Remix)
Billie Ray Martin - Your Loving Arms
Numero# - Hit Pop
Telex - Moskow Diskow
The Chemical Brothers - All Rights Reversed
Headman - Catch me if U can (Tronik Youth Remix)

Dance Europe Express (Cardiff-Brussels-Lausanne-Budapest)

Music Muziek Musique presents Dance Europe Express (Cardiff-Brussels-Lausanne-Budapest)

From Cardiff - Rockem Sockem Robots (Deep House and Breaks)

From Brussels - Nauru (DJs Sensu [Manna, Plain, Café Belga] and Tuks [Toma!] play underground pop music in the broadest possible sense. When your name references a former tax paradise now run by an ex-Olympic weightlifter, there's few limits to what you might expect. Hearing is believing though, so no boasting ... just music ... loud ...)

From Lausanne - Leo & Tamara (It's more than passion that links Leo & Tamara behind the turntables, open-minded and always interested in new sounds and exciting vibrations, they play their fine slices of electronic, rock, techno, experimental, hip-hop, noise, pop and more to build up a no-genre alike set that will leave you stuck to the dancefloor!)

From Budapest - Polymorphin (minimal techno from the Schallschnelle Records recording artists)

Plus your eclectic and danceable residents, DJ Jammer & The Phantom

Venue: Nouveaux Russes, Rue Haute 4 Hoogstraat, Brussels 1000
Date: Saturday May 31 2008 (doors: 23h - till late)
FREE ENTRY

www.myspace.com/musicmuziekmusique

"One more time..."