My interest in the Belgian New Beat music genre can be dated back very precisely to the year 2002. This I know because it was the year the Belgian label Eskimo Recordings released a mix CD titled Serie Noire: Dark Pop And New Beat, and hearing that compilation was very much a revelation to me. The music contained therein was all very slow (around 110 BPM) when compared to more conventional dance music, and also gloomy, gothy and mostly electronic. I remember DJing at Drouthy’s, a pub over the road from the art school in Dundee, and advertising my event with a poster that featured an image of a wasted-looking Goth girl with the slogan DARK POP NEW BEAT ALL NITE. Not that I had any of the records back then but still, I was in love with the aesthetic. In the years since, my fondness for the New Beat sound has only grown, and what follows is a brief history of where all of that came from:
New beat is an electronic dance music term that was a reference to the new beat sound: a particular electronic music genre that flourished in Western Europe during the mid-1980s. New beat is also used as a reference to the wider Belgian underground music scene and subculture during the 1980s.
The European new beat sound originated in Belgium in the late 1980s, especially in 1987 and 1988. It was an underground danceable music style, well known at clubs and discos in Western Europe. It is a crossover of electronic body music (EBM, which also developed in Belgium) with the nascent Chicago-originated acid and house music. New beat is the immediate precursor of hardcore electronic dance music (at the time known as rave), which developed in the neighboring Netherlands and elsewhere around 1990.
The genre was "accidentally invented" in the nightclub Ancienne Belgique in Brussels when DJ Dikke Ronny (literally "Fat Ronny") played the 45 rpm EBM record "Flesh" by A Split-Second at 33 rpm, with the pitch control set to +8. In addition to A Split-Second, the genre was also heavily influenced by other industrial and EBM acts such as Front 242 and The Neon Judgement, as well as new wave and dark wave acts such as Fad Gadget, Gary Numan and Anne Clark. Mega-nightclubs such as the Boccaccio soon made the genre a major underground success.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Beat
A Split Second
This is when your flesh
Crimson and pale
Withers behind the blackened veil
The vacant flesh
A petrifying look, the choice is easy
The outcome always the same
The shortest way to cardiac arrest
The flesh that dreams are made of doesn't last
This when you turn
To sanctimonius rituals
The duty of the beast
A disjointed, subsonic dance pulse is causing the biggest shock waves ever to grace European ears. The sound is New Beat and it's coming outta Belgium. Belgium? C'mon, the country which spawned the legendary 'fat Belgian bastards' jibe in Monty Python's 'Prejudice' sketch? What the hell is going on?
The story, or at least this version, goes approximately like this . . .
In the early '80s, a dedicated Belgian underground frequented a smattering of dancehalls throughout the land dedicated to the dictates of electronic music.
Places like The Happy House in Aarscholt, the Apelier in Leuven and On The Beach in Kortrijk all spun a variety of import material, from The Normal's 'Warm Leatherette' through Throbbing Gristle's 'United', checking A Certain Ratio, DAF, Cabaret Voltaire and Medium Medium along the way.
The scene receded in the smaller Belgian outposts as the decade wore on, but remained consistent in Antwerp, where a shiny new venue named the Ancienne Belgique opened its doors with a capacity of 2,000. Notorious and later jail-bound local DJ Fat Ronnie, who'd worked his way up from smaller Antwerp clubs like Scandals, began to mix favourites from the suburban venues with film music and tracks from the likes of John Foxx and Soft Cell.
"We didn't think it possible to entertain 2,000 people with that kind of music," DJ Marc Grouls reflects some five years later. "We were still playing Top 40 music, but the spark was there. A lot of people from outside town came to Antwerp, they began to call it AB music, after the club."
Fat Ronnie's inspiration snowballed when Marc and a handful of other DJs were listening to 'Flesh', the latest 12" from Belgian electronic band A Split Second in Antwerp's USA Import record store. By slowing the pitch control down to a lurching 33, Marc transformed the track from pleasant Euro-Industrialism to the melodramatic, pomp-laden epic that's been firing London warehouses all summer. "Then," as Marc puts it, "we started to talk of Belgian New Beat."
The pitch-altered Split Second disc reverberated throughout the Belgian DJ community. It came to the attention of Maurice Engelen, a former promoter who had brought the likes of Modern English, Eyeless In Gaza and Josef K to the country, and later set up Antler Records with one Roland Bellucci.
"DJs from all around Belgium were playing 'Flesh' at different speeds," recalls Maurice. "I saw there was a strange atmosphere on the dance floor when they played the record, so I asked Bellucci to produce another record with the same ingredients.”
Richard Norris, 1991
http://www.mit.edu/people/mattski/Grid/nation.html
Treat Me is a cool but not so interesting New Wave song, with some sad vocals, typical of 80" Belgian alternative scene, in between EBM and dark wave. But if you head to the flip you'll find the gem : Euroshima (Wardance) is a definitive classic New Beat track. Slow, dark and synthetic pop instrumental piece, inspired, and at the perfect pitch to get you directly in it.
BomberOne
http://www.discogs.com/Snowy-Red-Treat-Me-Euroshima-Wardance/release/110714
This is an established classic of new wave and fits in well, pitched down to -4, with belgian new beat/ electro / ebm sets. fantastic, classic record.
seandevega
http://www.discogs.com/Carol-Snowy-Red-Breakdown/release/296097
The entity sample.....i took my 1st acid (sunrise) & they played this.....i think it scar`d my brain as it`s my fav oldskool tune ;)
retiredclubber
New beat was a sort of missing link – a brief but vital sound bridging the gap between EBM and electro-pop and later continental house and techno scenes. It was supposedly founded when an Antwerp DJ, Marc Grouls, spun ‘Flesh’ by the Belgian electronic band A Split-Second at 33 instead of 45, with the pitch nudged to +8. The result: a sludgy, heavy dance music pitched around 115bpm – as The Grid’s Richard Norris wrote, reporting on the scene in NME in 1991, “a sparse, relentless Mogadon groove”. It caught on in clubs in Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent, and soon DJs were mixing up homegrown Belgian productions with slowed-down American and German imports.
Going by the name Ro Maron, so listeners would not draw links between his 2 Belgens work and his club productions, De Smet took up a basic rhythm box and a few guitar pedals and got to work.
De Smet’s productions tended to be raw and experimental, and he cites The Normal, Gary Numan, and particularly Adrian Sherwood and On-U Sound as influences: “I was always thinking of a punk way to make this dance music. It was always very underground, very primitive.” At the same time though, new beat was a production line. De Smet’s friend Maurice Engelen, who produced under the name Praga Khan, ran Antler Records, which boasted a number of sub-labels – Subway, Dance Opera, Kaos Dance – dedicated to churning out the new beat sound. “When Maurice heard a record like 101’s ‘Rock To The Beat’, he would immediately go and make a version of it,” says De Smet. “And it would be more successful than the original.”
“One of my very early inspirations came from old techno records, the real first house records – the sort made by just a guy with his rhythm box, and a little machine. I used the vocal sample in Something Scary, but I didn’t know where it was from – at the time, of course, we had no Wikipedia, no internet. I got some mail from England, telling me it was from a film called Entity. I had a lot of mail from DJs in England when this one came out – I never had that with 2 Belgens.”
Louis Pattison
http://www.factmag.com/2015/02/02/belgian-new-beat-pioneer-ro-maron-explores-five-of-his-classic-productions/
An absolute anthem of Acid, and an interesting step in music history : of course, Belgian producers were clearly influenced by the Acid House releases that appeared since 86, especially from Trax, like Phuture's releases. But what is great here is that, trying to make some "typical" acid tacks, they invented an original european acid style (fellow uk friends would say "continental") : more industrial, with dark and appealing vocals (sometimes a bit stupidly sexy, ok but it was enjoyably daring back then ;-)
They also used the 303 a very different way : more extreme and gloomy.
Of course it was because of the EBM/New Beat influence, and it is interesting to compare this formula to the one created in the same time by UK producers that were trying to do the same thing (i.e. creating Chicago-influenced acid tracks) : they usually ended up with tracks more clubby and housey, just like Baby Ford's "Ford Trax" for ex.
You had to have grown listening to new wave, industrial and EBM to create the kind of Acid House we have here. You had to be Belgian
Definitely, a record like this one is everything but a follower : it is a true original recipe that still sounds great, and still creates a fascinating atmosphere.
BomberOne
http://www.discogs.com/Miss-Nicky-Trax-Acid-In-The-House/release/55645
By the early 80s, Belgium was producing its own confrontational electronic music for post-punkers who wanted something harder and more danceable than Kraftwerk. 'New beat' was pioneered at clubs such as Brussels' Ancienne, whose rigorous door policy made stars of the clubbers – their fashion of trashy sportswear and outlandish couture could easily blend in with Dalstonites today – and its nights embodied a globalised, pick-and-mix attitude to music that is now commonplace.
"Belgium is a country looking for a cultural identity," explains DJ Eric Powa B. "By sampling from different cultures it created one of its own.”
Three-thousand-capacity venues such as Ghent's Boccaccio presaged British superclubs. They had no statutory closing times, with clubbers driving across Europe before cheap airlines made such transcontinental party jaunts commonplace. "People slept on Wednesdays," recalls Eric.
"The hippy feeling was there; I thought we'd changed the world," adds Renaat Vandepapeliere, founder of Belgian label R&S. "It was the E, of course. I hadn't quite figured that out then.”
Justin Quirk
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/oct/04/raving-born-in-belgium
ACIDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD HOUSE YEAHHHHHHHHH or NEW BEAT
Lesire Patrick
There’s a new music, dance, and fashion rage on the horizon called “new beat.'' Haven't heard of it? That's probably because it's not a hit in the US - not yet, anyway. New beat is a pop-culture force in Europe right now, which started in, of all places, Belgium.
“Belgium didn't really mean much in the world market, because everything that came out was either American or English; so it was hard for the Belgians.'' These are the words of singer Jade 4U, the reigning queen of new beat, in an interview after her New York debut. “We were sort of dragged along like cattle, really, because we didn't have much to say. I think all the Belgians wanted was some recognition, because, after all, we do have some very talented people in Belgium. All we needed was a break, and this new beat thing was definitely a break.''
So just what is this new beat thing?
“It started in discotheques, ... with the disc jockeys. They started playing records at 33 r.p.m. that they were supposed to play at 45.''
So new beat developed as a kind of slowed-down version of “house music'' (the hypnotic dance music that caught on in Europe and the US a couple of years ago). New beat has been described as a mix of “electronic body music'' and European dance music.
Now Polygram Records has released “This is the New Beat,'' a compilation of 11 of the best-known groups, including the Erotic Dissidents, the Lords of Acid, and Jade 4U and her band, 101.
The names of the bands hint at the controversy that has grown up around new beat - one that has already divided the music into two camps. On the one hand, new beat goes for shock effect - with references to drugs and pornographic lyrics calculated to make parents' hair stand on end. On the other, new beat has been lauded as a safe and harmless music for the '90s - dance all night without drugs. So which is it?
“I would say that new beat is for young people,'' says Jade. “So we do say new beat is clean.... The pornography that comes in is actually only played in the underground clubs; so the other ones - the safe ones - are what you hear on the radio.''
She says what counts with new beat is “the rhythm and having a good time. If you get out on the dance floor, you find yourself still there hours later. I didn't believe it at first; I felt too old for all that,'' says the 26-year-old Jade. “But then I got out on the dance floor, and I couldn't come off!''
Along with the driving grooves of the music, there's a weird fashion craze that goes along with new beat. Dedicated new beaters dress in basic black, adorned with crosses and large cameos, with a picture of a “generic grandmother.'' Some of the cameos are replicas of the medallions found on tombstones in Belgium.
Says Jade, “The designers of new beat clothes thought of the idea. They went to an old-people's home and chose three ladies. All three of them love to pose, and they knew what it was for, and they were thrilled with the idea. Of course, I understand that people think the pictures are a little bit morbid, maybe, but that's the whole idea. Besides, it's better than to wear a swastika on your sweater, isn't it?’'
Amy Duncan
http://www.csmonitor.com/1990/0315/lbeat.html
Holiday in Ibiza ....fat track...still one of my favo's....dark acid new beat...house/techno with a smell of industrial......grrrrrr, makes me want to move still!!! Christopher Amsterdam
autodafeh242
Look at Antwerp; it’s a city with a lot of influences from the outside world, and they are quite open to those influences happening. There’s a huge richness there. I think this is artistically beneficial if you open yourself.
Antwerp has the typical dynamic of a city where lots of foreigners come in every weekend. The main thing was there were quite a number of good clubs like Ancienne Belgique, Prestige, and later on Cafe d’Anvers. Not only in Antwerp, but in the whole region surrounding it. In Antwerp there was this crossover between the fashion academy and the club scene, so when parties would happen during the week they would be full because students would attend. It wouldn’t be just a “student” party, because the fashion academy would do it their own way, mixing up with other people from other contexts, quite a surreal soup. Someone like (fashion designer) Walter van Beirendonck, who is of course one of the Antwerp Six, was part of it for a while. He definitely rode that rave train.
Another reason why Antwerp is so important is because new beat as a genre was by and large supported by a very important Antwerp radio show on SIS, as well as a very important record shop, USA Imports, where they built a studio and people could go in behind the shop and record, with the music then released on the shop’s label. And then you had Liaisons Dangereuses, the very influential radio show. Sven van Hees was selecting the music and Paul Ward was doing the presentation. I was still at school but every Thursday everyone would tune into the radio, you would listen to it and nothing else could get done.
Belgium hasn’t been marketed the way other scenes have. When new beat, techno, and rave happened people experienced it, lived it intensely, but never thought, “Let’s hype this up!” It’s not a Belgian thing to do. Belgians aren’t very good salespeople. In that moment they forget to see a broader picture. I think a contrast with Detroit techno is a good one, because from the start Detroit was marketed. It’s very clear and easy to understand: some British guy arrived in Detroit, heard the music and with typical English entrepreneurial flair said, “I’m going to make these guys the biggest guys in dance music!” and does it. There was never anybody in Belgium who thought the same about what was happening here, and what is written about Belgian electronic music is in Flemish or French. So it’s accessible to Dutch and French readers, but that’s it.
Peter Van Hones
http://www.electronicbeats.net/a-lesson-on-belgian-new-beat-history-with-peter-van-hoesen/
la bonne époque 1980-1995 Théatro (Bruxelles) O-side Anderlecht hooligans-les déplacements en train et déplacements en Europe pour affronter les sides adverses - la bière et ganja--les tags la nuit les montées en hollande pour la ganja-les délires avec les potes et les matchs de foot- la vraie musique ....ETC .... toute ma jeunesse dans la folie de 1980 que tu peux pas faire aujourd'hui..... Bruxelles Belgique
bidistone1
when will newbeat start making a come back? i miss it oh so much :(
ixceix
The success of New Beat is undeniable. There's actually talk about a "movement" and that's being compared to punk, but the one who's missing completely in this picture is the "rebel". New Beat seems to be quite conservative and very conform to the established values. No better Yuppie-music than that, although people who only want to hear "Le Pen to a disco beat" in the tunes might be mistaken.
Maurice Engelen : "I dare to think differently though. We are getting a lot of mail from very young people who really see New Beat as their music. They can use it for their "rebellion" as well and because the media rejects it they feel even more passionate about it. But, we're talking about teenagers who have just turned 14 or are even younger, people who can't get into clubs yet, they are the ones who give us most of the reactions we receive. On the other hand New Beat is also attractive for the somewhat older generation, who don't care much about rebellion anymore and who only want to have a good time. And this kind of music is perfect for that as well".
More good news for the youngsters is on its way : every single New Beat label is quite busy looking for the faces they want to paste on the bands. Just so the fans would have something to put up in their bedrooms, you know. Creating a culture is the name of it in professional terms, which were whispered by the foreign parts of Eurobeat in general. One can only get respected in this world by showing his/her own true face, or rather... that of someone else. As long as it's fresh and young. Just the thing a lot of those New Beat-producers aren't, they have bellies and beards and those won't bring you on Top Pop
Confetti's were the first to solve this problem, they rented a guy and four girls, who deliver magnificent photo-material but had just as much to do with their music than you and I. Subway is launching Candy's Caddy this month, a cute little kid that poses as the young Bardot
Second hurdle was the way to dress. Punk had safety pins and zippers. By now New Beat got out of its cycling-pants again and doesn't appear to have anything left to put on anymore. But they're taking care of that as well. Subway have hired a bunch of fashion people straight from the academy. You can expect loads of original New Beat Fashion this Spring. Not cheap, but 100% Belgian. "Great Rock & Roll Swindle", you might say, but that's how Mickey Mouse and Michael Jackson are being sold as well, So What ? If necessary, look the other way and move your ass, feel the beat…
Guido Van den Troost
http://users.skynet.be/newbeat/en/en_de_schaamte_voorbij.htm
Belgians do it better
pmodern2000
A regional dance music curio similar in a way to Italy’s Cosmic disco scene, New Beat DJs took popular tracks of the time and slowed them down, usually playing 45rpm records at 33rpm, pitched up to +8 on the turntable. Like Cosmic, the wrong speed aspect gave New Beat an otherworldly edge: something is up with these records but it can be difficult to pinpoint what that is, if you don’t know they’re actually being played wrong.
Kicks become thuds, claps become clanks, and every vocal seems wretched from the bowels of hell. Visually New Beat may be plastered in smiley faces, but musically it’s threatening, it’s a lil’ bit scary. Slowing down acid and techno records made the sounds heavier and the atmosphere darker, and it also chimed with the emerging industrial/EBM scene of the time. This dark, powerful aesthetic would be seminal in defining the techno that came from Northern Europe in the 1990s.
Part one of this two hour Soulwax trip comes complete with commentary/text that tells the story of this short lived but influential dance fad (very informative and worthy of your eyes) while part two features what is presumably some Belgians reliving the New Beat dance crazes of their youth (which involve a lot of hoping around from foot to foot) while rocking some awesome retro shell suits. Enjoy:
Niall O’Conghaile
*
p.s. Hey. The excellent artist of many hats, d.l., DJ, and generous guest-post maestro _Black_Acrylic offers all of us an introduction to and tour of Belgian New Beat, and, having already had the privilege of exploring BNBD while transmitting his post into the berth up above, I can assure you that you will learn stuff and have a hell of a good time sonically while you traverse it. So, do, please. _B_A will be checking in on how you guys are doing and what you're saying during the day ahead, so please talk to him about your discoveries. Thank you! An mega-thanks to the man in charge himself! ** Thomas Moronic, Hi. That's the 'Fable' edition I've had too since time immemorial. I love the cover. Yeah, it's such an incredible novel, I obviously agree. 'Fable' is a book I do reread every once in a while, yes. Its shortness, of course, makes that particularly possible. Mostly I'll pick it up and read a bunch of random pages to get a hit from the prose. Other Pinget? He's pretty consistently great. I suppose, off the top of my head, that my particular other favorites of his might be 'Mahu or the Material', 'The Inquisitory', and 'Passacaglia'. Cool, I'll check out that interview! Everyone, Thomas Moronic passes along this link to an interview with Harmony Korine by Marc Maron. ** Kyler, Hi. Cool about the discussion for me too. That's interesting about what the film explores for you. Yeah, I think one of the reasons it's such a great film is that it lends itself to many personal explorations. I think people who resist it because they think it's overly Christian are really shooting themselves in the feet. I can only imagine that Linda Manz is quite complicated. She's also really great (and complicated) in 'Gummo'. ** Steevee, Hi. Thanks a lot for the report on the film. Very, very interesting. I'm going to try to divorce myself from my friendship with David when I watch it and see what happens, but that kind of thing is hard to do. I did read Glenn Kenny's piece on the film. I can't say that I disagree with him in theory, that's for sure. We'll see. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Thank you so much for the marvelous new Mac-Mahon. I'll post it on Friday, the 14th. Is Doug Kramer still alive? I haven't heard word of him in a long time. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben! Thank you, thank you! I hope your road trip is going really well, and I look forward to your check-ins. I think d.l. Bernard Welt might be road-tripping through Scotland at this very moment too, if I'm getting my dates right, but I think his trip might be by tour-bus, so I'm not sure if you guys will bump into each other. ** Douglas Payne, Hi, Douglas! Thanks, man. Oh, those doors sound really magical. I love anything that smacks of magic trickery even in a consumer goods way, and, there's lots not so hot to be said about the 50s, but they did have a way with wannabe futurist decor. Bon day, man. ** H, Hi. Ack, Blogger's comment eating glitch is so annoying! You're in NYC! Hooray! A Frank O'Hara haircut, ha ha, nice. Have fun! ** Chris Dankland, Hi, Chris. Hm, you know ... I think I'm at a disadvantage with Drake because Rap is not a genre that I'm all that excited by in a general way except when the artists are doing something really daring, surprising (to me), and formally interesting or radical or rough or great/ inappropriate. I want to listen to more of Drake's stuff, and I will, 'cos I didn't get hugely far, but, to my untrained ears, it sounded very mainstream and just sort of edgily commercial to me. I guess I didn't get what's supposed to be so special about his work. I'm sure there are nuances and details and stuff that I'm just not picking up on. It just ... seemed really unsurprising to me. This is a difficult question, so ignore it at the drop of a hat, but what am I missing? Is it that he's playing with the acceptable, popular version of the form in some subtle way and that one has to be into and knowledgeable about the form's center to appreciate it? That might be really naive question, sorry. Have a great day. ** Adrienne White, Hi, Ah, I see. Well, I'm happy to get talk with the 'real' you! ** Jonathan, Hey, J-ster! Before I forget, I was at Berkeley Books the other day, and the proprietor asked after you extensively. She misses you. She seemed really sad not to get to see you. And she has some book that she's holding for you. The Allemann is pretty interesting, yeah, I agree, cool. Thanks a lot for the link to the site. I've booked it for a visit first thing Thursday morning. I know the name Gary j. Shipley. Hm. Maybe he and FB friends. Great that you did get into the FB headquarters and get unlimited usage of the riso thing as dreamed, schemed, planned. Nothing like Blixa's voice. Holy shit. Now I want yo crack up 'Halber Mensch'. I will. Miss you, man! ** Misanthrope, You read something I spotlit! Yay! Shit, I hope that bout of illness is ... what do they call that stuff that comes out of car tail pipes and 'dissipates' down the road ... exhaust? Is that it? I hope your sickness is like that, but that it doesn't burn a hole in the ozone layer on its way out. I was going to say sorry for making Mr. Morrison a meanderer, but then I realized that you probably thought what he said was profound, ha ha. Well, okay, but come on, sometimes it's fake as a three dollar bill. I've seen plenty of three dollar bill-like stuff during matches. ** Bill, Hi, Bill. I think you might like 'Fable'. And it's very short, which I know you like, ha ha. Cool, I'll be in the theater watching 'Look of Silence' as soon as a theater here douses its lights on its behalf. Have a fine day! ** Right. Back you guys go into _B_A's fun and information fest. See you tomorrow.