With the Gay Haze & Spek Weekender getting it's own proper place in the calendar from 6-9th of June, we headed to Buda BXL for a sit down with Every Island, the design collective that will develop the scenography for our 40+ hour In & Outdoor party.
The internet and social media have permanently changed the world over the past decades. This article explores what that means for DJs.
Like a chance encounter that was somehow always meant to be, four kindred spirits found each other in Brussels’ unique melting pot. Lithuanian EMILIJA, Belgian Stanislawa, Italian Vera Moro, and French NMSS make up the ultimate Gen Z DJ quattro.
Listen presents Our Scene: three days to reflect upon nightlife and beyond with different activities taking place at Beursschouwburg from Thursday 28 until Saturday 30 of March. Discover all information and the full programme here ->
A while ago we sat down with Marie Umuhoza from Decoratelier to talk about her Brussel’s Highlights and her vision on nightlife.
Ahead of their back to back DJ session at Listen Festival, we met up with Nosedrip and CJ Bolland to discover how their paths intersect.
What do Whispering Sons singer Fenne Kuppens, music venue Volta and Listen Festival have in common? Together they host a concert night, curated by Kuppens, who calls Volta home, the rehearsal space of her band Whispering Sons.
Listen Festival and Botanique present a night loaded with concerts all over the iconic venue. We sat down with Botanique promotor Thomas Konings, discussing his job and favorite spots in Brussels.
Rapidly rising as a prominent figure in Brussels' thriving electronic music landscape, Altinbas has made a name for himself through his role as a resident DJ at Fuse and a producer avidly releasing on labels like Token Records, SK11 and Non Series.
Lola Haro emerged onto the Belgian music scene in 2018, rapidly establishing herself as a prolific DJ, both locally and internationally. Despite her hectic schedule, Lola finds tranquility in her shared apartment nestled in the lively Saint-Gilles district of Brussels. It's here, in this serene haven, where I had the chance to sit down with her for an unhurried chat.
Part of a new generation of DJs storming the music scene of the capital, Donia is one to watch. Her recent performances at L’Imprimerie during Listen Festival in or at Horst Arts & Music and Les Nuits Sonores have left a trace, and her label Sketchy Lines Records is becoming a fixed staple in the experimental club scene. Check out her Brussels Highlights.
To introduce Colin Volvert aka Rey Colino I’m just gonna read biography, because it’s so nicely written. Working a symbiotic balance between his day job behind the steering wheel of Amsterdam-based webshop and distributor One Eye Witness and his seafood-luvin’label Kalahari Oyster Cult, when the night clocks in, Brussels native Rey Colino has long proven his dedication and dexterity when it comes to ubiquitous on and off-stage dancefloor busting operations.
Part of a new generation who are rapidly reinventing nightlife culture, Oton is a DJ, producer and promoter to keep an eye on. Somewhere on the crossroads of techno, trance, psy, breaks and jungle - is a new sub genre available, please? - bounces Oton, always high on energy but never ever gratuitous.
DJ and interdisciplinary artist M I M I, who has Maria Muehombo written on her passport, meets us at the platform of the impressive train station Liège Guillemins. The exact same moment our attention is drawn to the colorful stickers at the immense ceiling - attached by conceptual French artist Daniel Buren - she calls our names.
Founder of her own press and PR agency Five Oh, Laetitia Van Hove has helped launch the careers of the likes of Angèle, Charlotte Adigery, Bolis Pupul, Clara Luciani or Lous & The Yakuza, just to name a few. In the meantime she added the well-known Brussels showcase concerts Fifty Sessions and the yearly spin off Fifty Lab Music Festival to her track record, persistently presenting the brightest new stars in music to a Brussels audience.
Having accomplished an ascent this high, one can take a moment to meditate, to reflect on the current state of things. This is certainly what Gillain has done while making her recent album Mind Is Mud, a genre-bending and cutting-edge album reaching out to both the dance floor as to alternative spheres.
The time is right to catch up with Bibi Seck in her flat in Antwerp, somewhere in the middle of her busy touring schedule on a warm but rainy July afternoon, for a long chat, curious to get to know the winsome DJ a bit better.
Moogy Maserati is still relatively new to Brussels. She moved from Rotterdam to the Belgian capital in 2021 to get her master degree Fine Arts at LUCA School of Arts. While she had been deejaying already in her home country, her DJ career really lifted off in Brussels.
The product of a Peruvian father and Belgian mother, the prolific DJ and producer Diego Cortez Salas aka DC Salas is a real Brusseleir, born and raised in the capital. Landed in Uccle, the Cortez Salas family’s only child spent his childhood in the 1180 municipality until he expanded his horizons in Etterbeek, Schaerbeek and - nowadays - Laeken.
Isabel, Camilla, Lola, Ariana, Marieke, Aleksandra, Nel, Tanja and Marie. Meet the members of the Burenhinder collective. Their name is a legal term, best translated as neighborly or private nuisance, and got stuck in Ariana’s head during her law studies. Being the exact reason why many clubs have to close their doors, Burenhinder felt like the perfect name for their own club night. As some kind of a warning of what was about to happen…
The life of a DJ and music producer isn’t always a shiny good-news-show. Nevertheless, Maurizio was kind as always to take a moment to talk to us about his favorite places in Brussels, the city where he lives and works.
Silver lining, something good found in a bad situation, is the title of the debut album by Wiet Lengeler aka Sagat. Although not at all a first appearance - the Brussels based producer and DJ can by now be described more as a veteran of the capital’s scene - it took him some time to release his first long-player.
A collective that has its roots on a university campus and the growing friendship between two music freaks, today leaving traces as a record label, club nights, concerts and a music management and consultancy agency. Meet Magma, the jolly gang centered around movers and shakers Seb Desprez and Julien Gathy.
Commander Spoon is a fivesome where commander-in-chief Pierre Spataro is joined by guitarist Florent Jeunieaux, bassist Fil Caporali, keyboardist Lorenzo Ola Kobina and drummer Samy Wallens. We all sit together in the kitchen of Studio Pyramide for tea and a chat.
‘This city is so alive.’ Canadian DJ Melissa Juice has grown a lot of fondness for Brussels, where she moved to from her home town Vancouver a few years ago.
Put Hector Devriendt aka Jennifur in a basement studio for 18 months and he’ll produce every sound and all music for a videogame, that’s a simple fact.
In October influential Dutch DJ Antal selected a brand new track by Cheb Runner for his BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix. Cheb Runner is a Brussels based Moroccan music producer and DJ who goes by the name Reda Senhaji and has been on our radar for quite a while now.
Belgian - Vietnamese artist Emily Jeanne is one of those emerging artists you just know for a fact is breaking through. Her album Public by Default on Semantica Records shows a young producer in full control of her art, daringly exploring her sound and machines.
For a Chicagoan who moved to Brussels and initiated a new life here, exploring the city is an essential process. Dana Kuehr, who moved from the United States to Belgium in 2017 for a job in journalism without knowing anyone locally at the time, has made Brussels her home.
In the midst of every crisis lies great opportunity. This quote attributed to Albert Einstein also works for Zoé Devaux aka DJ Zouzibabe.
Sixsixsixties is one of the driving forces behind traveling queer safe space SPEK and co-founder of now defunct underground club night Holger.
The passing away of her grandmother during the pandemic and its digital and uncanny memorial service inspired Antwerp based Dienne to create ‘Addio’, Italian for farewell, her coping mechanism for an aching heart.
One of those rare DJs taking the mic during a radio show at Kiosk Radio, Ingmar aka Yooth is a positive force blowing through our capital’s scene. Representing a chosen family of artists through his Brikabrak collective, this mover and shaker adds energy and smiles wherever he enters the room.
Hard to grasp in musical genres, this forerunner of a new generation blends bass music and UK influences with shots of dubstep, drum & bass and electro. Curious as we are, we questioned Mankiyan about her Brussels Highlights and asked her to curate our latest Spotify Hundred playlist.
Outremeuse, on the island between the river arms of La Meuse / De Maas in Liège, we meet Fanny aka Karla Böhm in her luminous appartement. In a lively neighborhood where Ave Maria statues alternate dance bars and right around the corner of the street where her parents used to run a jewelry store when she was young, Fanny has found a nice place for herself.
They call themselves a bunch of fêtards or party animals. Driven by a communal thirst for nocturnal experiences from dusk till dawn, Chanoirs unites a group of artists, DJs, digital creatives and designers whose field of interest is the underground of the underground.
Nicknamed Mickey, Mickael Bursztejn on his passport, the Kiosk Radio founder is the first protagonist of this new series we are launching dubbed Brussels Highlights. Each episode has a key member of our scene curate both music and locations, the latter being places in town linked to nature, food, music and a hidden gem.
Having arrived in Brussels about eleven years ago, Spanish producer, MC and DJ Clara! brought a whole new sound to the city. Her fresh take on reggaeton, a genre that originated in Latin-America in the 1980s and for ages was overlooked in western music scenes, is surely remarkable due to her punk and feminist attitude and a unique blend of revolt, humor and plenty of other musical references she adds to the genre.
To find out more about the infamous Gay Haze parties known for their mysterious artwork, exhilarating line-ups and state of the art scenography, I sit down with founders Guillaume Bleret and Diego Cozzi.
Hosting one of our nights at the Brussel Congres station is Sara Dziri, a 30-years-old multifaceted artist, resident DJ at Fuse and Kiosk Radio and the founder of feminist, POC and queer underground party Not Your Techno, born to a Belgian mother and Tunisian father and soon releasing her debut album on Optimo Music. Time for a chat with the busy bee.
He4rtbroken ❤ Slagwerk. Uniting two exhilarating Brussels based communities for the first time on one line-up, we are counting down the days to April.
Five years of Crevette Records, how time flies! We paid Crevette head honcho Alfred Anders a visit in his loft apartment in Anderlecht, discussing our Brussels scene, the roots of his entrepreneurship and how he prepares for DJ gigs.
One of the purest, most beautiful and unique voices new to our scene, that’s Reinel Bakole. The versatile Belgian artist released a stunning EP with beat maker Louis Shungu, C12 resident DJ and producer Chris Ferreira and bassist, dj and producer Sam Van Binsbergen, showcasing influences from jazz, soul and electronic music.
Michiel Claus is a busy bee. He runs several labels, is an avid record collector and respected DJ travelling the world with his Walrus moniker, produces music and is part of the band bepotel records, works behind the counter at Crevette Records and manufactures furniture designed for record collectors and shops.
Far Out Radio Systems’ first and so far only live performance ever was at Listen Festival in 2018, today the producer just released a new album and works as the statistical coordinator of the Big Corona Study in Belgium. We visit the winsome Limburger at his home in Genk and learn more about how he connects statistics with music and uses the latter to make the former more attractive.
We visited iconic DJ Baby Bee at her home in Antwerp. Together with Smos, she has rocked dance floors all over Belgium and abroad for 20 years of which 18 as resident DJs in Café d’Anvers and four in FUSE. In July 1999 the influential UK’s I-D Magazine even awarded them ‘DJ of the month’. Sadly in April 2020 Smos passed away. During our lengthy talk with Baby Bee, she reminisces of their precious time together as Smos & Baby Bee and offers a unique narration of our country’s buzzing …
Eze is a clever and outspoken 27-year-old graphic designer, DJ and curator, a delight to talk with. Over the last few years she has rapidly gained a large following on her social media, while running a weekly radio show on Studio Brussel and playing energetic DJ sets in clubs and festivals all around.
At home chez Fabien Leclercq aka Le Motel we find ourselves in a cosy apartment in Forest, a stone’s throw from the Marconi Park. Enter the cosy apartment of this prolific DJ, music producer, film composer and label boss who will be turning 30 in 2021 and sit down with us for an extended talk about music, life and art.
Some people are so connected to a city that when they announce their departure, it comes as a complete surprise, even a small shock. This was definitely the case for Nicolas Bucci, commonly known as Boochie.
A headlight of the 10 years of Boiler Room celebrations we hosted in February 2020 was definitely the performance of Peter Van Hoesen. It’s refreshing to restream the video that is just a few months old, but already feels like a souvenir from an ancient time, a nostalgia for packed dance floors. The global health crisis that has closed all dance floors and led to moving Listen! Festival’s sixth edition from March to November, has a huge impact on our community. That’s why Listen! initiates this …
“As if a part of my life is being erased.“ If you are looking for a case study on what happens when an unprecedented health crisis mercilessly deletes a year full of DJ sets, festivals - included hosting her own room during Listen! Festival - and parties, meeting people, and overall good vibes out of the life of a twenty year old, don’t look any further. But AliA, or Alyah for friends and family, didn’t stop smiling. Her dedication and positive attitude are infectious and over the course of …
