The songs are a far cry from what we're used to from Tim's other outings. There are no loud guitars, no hip-hop beats, no screeching noises: the songs are gentle, melancholic pop tunes. The first single, "Until I Find You", struck me as being one of the lesser offerings on the album, but the rest of it didn't take much time to grow on me. The songs sound a bit edgier live than they do on the CD: more guitars, less cheesy violin parts -- a good thing if you ask me. The band, being new and all, wasn't exactly what you'd call a well-oiled machine yet, but occasional flaws such as out-of-tune backing vocals could not spoil the fun. For both shows, Pascal Deweze came on stage during the encore to take over Tim's guitar while Tim freaked out (spastic dancing at Charlatan, climbing up on the bassist's shoulders at Trix). I didn't very much like the t-shirts the guys had for sale, but other than that: jolly good show!

One week later, while still in Berlin, we went to a place called "Bassy Cowboy Club". Unfortunately, despite the club's promising name, there was no hoedown going on inside. Instead, there was a show by the Magnificent Brotherhood, a sixties-inspired garage rock band. They did not bring anything new to the table, but they did have the kids dancing in the aisles in no time, which is presumably all they had hoped for.

Last Friday, we caught Girls In Hawaii at Trix. The band are close to releasing a new album (finally!), and they came to play us a few of their new tunes. As usual, the guys dragged along a bunch of old TV sets, on which they now displayed some entirely new visuals. A couple of shade lamps further helped to give the stage a cosy living room atmosphere. The new songs might need some more getting used to, but my first impression was that they are very much in line with the old ones. This means that they are by no means bad, but there were no big surprises either. Also, I got the impression that if the current trend continues, the live rendition of "Flavor" is going to be about 30 minutes long in another two or three years. The riff isn't that good, fellas! All bitching aside, though, I'm not saying it was a disappointing show altogether -- it just didn't quite live up to the expectations created by the long wait.

The night after, we headed to Charlatan to sing Hallelujah and witness the resurrection of Mauro & The Grooms. We weren't the only ones: when the doors opened, there was already a queue of about a mile long outside (a nautical mile, even). The show turned out to be well worth the wait, though. The Grooms have recruited the help of Pascal Deweze, so that they are now able to rock 20% harder than ever before! The setlist featured most of the old classics, such as "Trip To Beg", "Slow Bones", "Rusty Plough" and "Weapon Of Beauty", all of which still sounded every bit as good as they did four years ago. "Driving To The Fire" was sadly missing, but the band did treat us to seven new tunes. One of these (the first encore, which Mauro played by himself) was apparently a new dEUS song. The six others were off a new Grooms album that may or may not be released before the cows come home.

The way all this went down was: on the new songs, Mauro and David Joris played guitar, and Pascal played keyboards. On the old songs, Mauro did vocals only, Pascal played the guitar and David handled the keyboards. Furthermore, the band of course also still included Steven Janssens on guitar, Herman Houbrechts on drums and Jan Wijgers on bass. The latter's beard, by the way, is starting to get respectably ZZ Top-like!

I'll start by reporting on Franco Saint De Bakker's gig at CC Casino. A lot could be said about this show: one could say that Tim Van der Poel did not join the band, so that Elko was forced to take on two vocal parts during "No One Knows". One could also mention that Elko introduced "Angels And Demons At Play" by saying that the title perfectly reflected the inner world of guest guitarist Rudy Trouvé, and that this was considered funny by several members of the audience. Furthermore, one might say that the band played a particularly powerful and gripping rendition of "Cross". However, none of this would matter in light of the discovery that Elko had bleached his hair! This was quite a shock, considering that he is usually entirely black except for his face and hands.

Album

1 :: They Might Be Giants - The Else 2 :: Sleepytime Gorilla Museum - In Glorious Times 3 :: Praxis - Tennessee 2004 (Live) 4 :: Goon Moon - Licker's Last Leg 5 :: Shellac - Excellent Italian Greyhound 6 :: Cornelius - Sensuous 7 :: I Love Sarah - Hoekzetel Bruno 8 :: Future of the Left - Curses! 9 :: Enon - Grass Geysers...Carbon Clouds 10 :: Creature With The Atom Brain - I Am The Golden Gate Bridge

Gig

1 :: 2007.04.20 - Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, for not one, not two, but three shows of unparallelled brownness 2 :: 2007.07.18 - Flat Earth Society, Gentse Feesten 3 :: 2007.07.28 - Pawlowski, Scheld'apen 4 :: 2007.05.27 - Cornelius, Botanique 5 :: 2007.05.24 - Shellac, Vooruit 6 :: 2007.08.26 - I Love Sarah, Maanrock 7 :: 2007.05.08 - Tin Hat, Vooruit 8 :: 2007.10.28 - Blanche, Botanique 9 :: 2007.11.01 - Hitsville Drunks, De Singer 10 :: 2007.02.01 - Burial Chamber Trio, Recyclart

• Isabel Adriaens
• Wouter Berteloot
• Sven Claessens
• Hanne Rombouts
• Janne Swaegers
• Reindert Swaegers
• Quinten Van Wichelen

Needless to say, this party came with a generous helping of brownness, courtesy of Pawlowski and Evil Superfarce. Pawlowski is Mauro's latest project: The Man has assembled a new live band featuring Sjoerd Bruil, Pascal Deweze, Jeroen Stevens, Ben Younes and Elko Blijweert. Although the band is new, their repertoire comes from the Otot album "Truth And Style". This album has been available in digital form for quite a while, but the material hadn't been performed live until now. Interestingly, Mauro did not play any instruments himself, apart from occasionally blowing/salivating into a harmonica. On top of that he sang, did lots of spastic dancing, threw handfuls of puzzle pieces into the air as if they were confetti, and generally did whatever malarkey his inner demons instructed him to do. The set was a mere 20 minutes long, but it rocked so hard that 20 minutes was all it took!

Later that night, Flat Earth Society played outside at St. Jacobs. The band's lively tunes and silly stage act do it for me every time, and they once again proved themselves to be one of Belgium's finest live acts (if not the finest, in spite of what some people might claim about the Hickey Underworld). The setlist included quite a few songs off "Psychoscout", including the wonderful "Waterman" and "LAX", during which Peter Vermeersch added vibrato to Wim Willaert's vocals by wrapping his arms around him and squeezing his belly. The band also played a tune I hadn't heard before, called "Wet Is Wet". Peter claimed it was inspired by the teachings of the German "composer" Joseph Goebbels, whom he said was his leading example in such matters. Err... Right. The song was frequently interrupted by Willaert, who repeatedly asked for certain elements to be removed from the song, in German so hairy that would make El Sympatico blush. He started with things like "nur 10% Swing" and eventually got to "raus mit die Melodie!", at which point the whole band was simply playing the same single chord, on the beat, with no rhythmic or melodic variation whatsoever. This then transitioned seamlessly into "Ich, Bin, George", and when it did, the whole band started jumping up and down to the beat. Oh, they sure are a crazy bunch!

The night after, we caught Borokov Borokov at Kinky Star. It was, entirely as expected, a positively absurd experience. The guys played their somewhat deranged rock tunes with conviction, and matched them with even more deranged stage antics. Halfway through the show, Boris whipped out a leaf blower stuffed with paper shreds, which he then blew into the crowd. Later on, the guys even resorted to pyrotechnics, which was downright nuts. Nobody pulled a James Hetfield, thankfully, but it must have taken quite a while for the smoke the clear up after the show. Good times!

The air was breathable again by the time Benny Zen were due on stage, which was at 3 o' clock in the morning. The band came to present their latest album, which is a four-song CD-R with beautifully minimalist artwork. Even though the gig took place in the darkest hours of night, most of the crowd appeared to be awake for the whole duration of the show. Considering that there were no pyrotechnics or other death-defying stunts involved, this was quite an achievement!

• Mauro and Jeroen performing as a duo and laying down some serious rock;
• DDV appearing on stage, apparently having inserted his head in the arse of a teddy bear;
• Paul Mennes reading from his own work;
• A guy being rolled onto the stage in a trash container.

The place was pretty crowded, and El Guapo Stuntteam turned it into one big mosh pit right from the start. They didn't bring Captain Catastrophy, but they did bring a big burly man to stand in front of the stage and push the moshers back before they could get impaled on a microphone stand or the neck of a guitar. The band cut their set list a little shorter than planned because of the extreme heat (pansies!), but most of the good stuff was in there, so no complaints.

The Rudy Trouvé Sextet has actually been upgraded to a septet, with the addition of Joris Caluwaert on keyboards. Sigrid Van Roosendaal, however, was not present at this show, and so the sextet moniker remained valid for the time being. The set was introduced by playing a CD lens cleaner, and featured a bunch of new songs. One of them was about Rudy's kids gathering so much junk in their rooms that the house might sink into the ground under the sheer weight of it all. It prompted the same sort of nightmarish visions that I sometimes get after I got tempted into buying yet another batch of CDs. Scary stuff!

The next act was Bladder Ghandi, which was actually Ross Blake of Buttonhead fame, backed by Jeroen from I Love Sarah on drums. Ross decided to use a different band name so that the hordes of raving Buttonhead fans would not overrun Scheld'apen, but he did play all the familiar Buttonhead hits. I don't think there was any new material in there, but with Belgian shows so few and far between, who can complain?

Tip Toe Topic were up next. After their soundcheck, Elko went upstairs for a potty break. A few minutes later, you could hear his poop pass through the drain pipe that runs straight across the basement's ceiling. During the gig, I half expected Elko to bang his head into that pipe every time he started to jump around frantically, but unfortunately this didn't happen. Other than that, it was a good show as always, although the set list is starting to feel pretty familiar by now.

Made For Chickens By Robots had shared a bill with Tip Toe Topic before, and had now returned from the other side of the world to do so again. His setup hasn't changed: slide guitar, drums, a megaphone, a loop station and a couple of toys were the building blocks of a one-man blues band. The set was fairly short, but almost perfectly matched to the length of my attention span.

Cornelius presented the "Sensuous Synchronized Show", "Sensuous" being the title of the band's new album, and the show being a carefully arranged sequence of synchronized music and visuals. The gig started with a white curtain drawn in front of the stage, on which the visuals were being projected. Initially the images were very abstract, consisting of nothing but a few large colored rectangles and a tiny bright dot somewhere that looked utterly out of place (but was no doubt put there intentionally). After a few minutes the curtain dropped, and the visuals moved to another screen placed behind the stage. They also became a lot more exciting: "Drop" was accompanied by images of a hand "walking" through a room on two fingers, and another song featured images of a boy who suddenly sprouted about a dozen hands and ears.

Musically, the band covered quite a lot of ground, with songs ranging from dreamy, echoey soundscapes over pop tunes to hard rock (including double-tapping in "I Hate Hate"!). In addition to the usual instrumentarium, each band member was equipped with chimes, which were put to gratuitous use. Drummer Migu also played a flute in two songs. Despite being so carefully planned out, the show was not entirely without audience interaction. For one song, a guy was pulled out of the audience to help Cornelius demonstrate that he could play the theremin with someone else's hand -- quite impressive! Later on, he also gave the people in the front rows a chance to push buttons on some sort of small portable sampler.

Shellac's songs all rely heavily on Steve Albini's distinctive guitar sound. His setup is rather unusual: he straps his guitar around his waist instead of around his shoulder, he plays with metal picks, and his effects pedals are limited to a noise gate and a strange contraption called the "harmonic percolator". Furthermore, both him and bassist Bob Weston have badass-looking amplifiers: big, rugged steel boxes with a single large volume knob on the front.

In addition to having a recognizable sound and good tunes, the band are also great live performers. Albini's odd "dance" moves and gestures are fun to watch, and the banter is always most entertaining. Weston at one point stopped the show because he urgently needed to "fix his hair". The band also have a habit of taking questions from the audience throughout the show. One person asked what the guys thought were the best and worst bands in the world, to which drummer Todd Trainer replied "both answers are LCD Soundsystem". Someone else wanted to know what "Squirrel Song" is about -- apparently it's about squirrels.

Black Cassette had the advantage of having at least somewhat catchy and accessible songs, which meant that what few people were there to watch also stayed for the whole set. The Archetypes were not so lucky: their hour-long improvized funk odyssey was a bit much for some folks to handle. By the end of their set, which was when one of the Tydeeh people went up and asked them to please stop, only the hardcore fans of the genre remained. There were other bands playing after the Archetypes, including the Violent Husbands, but as it couldn't possibly have gotten any more brown than it already was at that point, we deemed it safe to skip town.

Tip Toe Topic played a familiar set, culminating in the song "Big Daddy", with it's gratuitous soloing by Elko "Showoff" Blijweert. The Love Substitutes were up next, but by the time Rudy, Craig and Mauro were done with their soundcheck, there was still no sign of Bert. The other guys repeatedly called out for him through the microphones, and after a while even began to chant his name (with musical accompaniment by I H8 Camera), but Bert was nowhere to be seen. Presumably he had locked himself in a room backstage and was snorting cocaine off the boobies of a fat black prostitute. Or it might have been something else entirely -- I'm just making an educated guess. The band asked Elko to stand in for Bert, which he did. Craig gave him instructions every now and then, and Elko just went with it.

After two songs, however, Bert miraculously emerged from the backstage and took over. The rest of the set proceeded as planned, apart from Craig losing his temper once or twice. At one point he chucked his guitar right over his shoulder, so that it crash-landed behind him and one of the tuners broke off. He also tried to climb up on the bass drum, and knocked over one of the drum mics while doing so. Someone from the VK crew rushed on stage and, casting a hateful look in Craig's direction, simply removed the mic from the stage.

Coca-Cola Met God's set followed the usual recipe: Tim sported his trusty mask/microphone contraption as well as his superhero cape, and delivered hard rocking guitar riffs, lots of noise, electronic beats, and unintelligible but undoubtedly very profound vocals. Eric accompanied all this with live drums and musical toys. The set had most of the catchy bits up front, but never really got boring -- probably in part because it wasn't all that long. The guys ended with an unexpected and very nice touch. A dude in the side stage signalled them that they had five minutes left, at which point they immediately ended the barrage of noise they were producing and filled up the rest of their time with something delightfully poppy. Who'da thunk it?

The last time Battles played at the AB, at the Domino festival in 2006, I was pretty blown away. The band have since released their first full-length album, and returned to play us some of those tunes. The guys all wore their guitars up really high on their chest, so that I couldn't help but wonder if they could still breathe with their guitar straps on that tight. On the other hand, perhaps a tighter strap is also the key to a tighter sound, because the one thing that can be said about a Battles gig is that it's technically perfect.

After the gig and a short break, the band returned to the stage to play an improvized "DJamsessie" with the DJ Big Band. This went on for about 45 minutes or so, which I reckon was about 25 minutes too long. The DJs seemed to be having a great time, because there was absolutely no stopping the hip-hop beats and the scratching the three of them cranked out. The Tin Hat members dutifully played along, improvizing over the beats with their acoustic instruments, but the combination didn't really work well enough for it to stay interesting. After a while, you could tell that it was just as boring for them as it was for us. The Tin Hat gig itself was really, really good, so it's a crying shame that it had to end in an anticlimax like this.

The night after, Vooruit was once again the place to be, as they hosted another edition of "Fuck The Students", a festival/party organized by the students of Sint Lucas. There were probably around a dozen bands on the bill, of which we caught Penguins Know Why, Hong Kong Dong and I Love Sarah. The highlight of the Penguins Know Why set was when they were announced as a bunch of homos. Other than that it was mostly in one ear and out the other, apart from "XOYO", which is still a damn catchy tune.

Hong Kong Dong featured a girl with a moustache and a guy who claimed to have a nigger in his pants. They played highly entertaining electro-pop tunes, with some neat guitar riffs and exciting moog parts. You could dance to it, too, and there were two dressed-up loonies on stage for most of the show trying to prove it. Good stuff!

It was the first time I got to see CWTAB with their new fourth member, Michiel. The addition of a second guitarist helped to fill in the band's sound, although his input was obviously somewhat limited in the older songs, which were written with only one guitar part. Nonetheless, the many new songs in the setlist showed a lot of potential.

Blutch's bassist had a t-shirt on that read "vagitarian", leaving little doubt about what he likes to eat for dessert. The setlist at the guitarist's feet suggested that the band intended to play somewhere close to ten songs. I'm not sure if I heard more than three, though. This isn't a bad thing, mind you: if you're on a mission to whoop ass, pausing between songs to say "thank you" isn't necessarily always appropriate.

Black Cobra tried to out-rock the previous two bands with only two people (guitar and drums), and gosh darn it, they pulled it off, too! In fact, they rocked the shit so hard that it made me lose all interest in Acid King. Well, that and the fact that I found out that Acid King are fronted by a woman, and stoner and female vocals do not go together in my mind. If you think this makes me a sexist pig, by all means try to prove me wrong!

T:me Festival, an arts festival which takes place every two years in Gent, invited Mauro as one of its curators for this year's edition. On the closing night of the festival, Mauro took the stage himself with a new project called "Children Of Dark Magus". Mauro played bass, and the band also featured Teun Verbruggen on drums, Rudy Trouvé on guitar, Kobe Proesmans on percussion, Tim Vanhamel on guitar. There were two people I couldn't name: another drummer and a saxophonist. The set was based on the music of Miles Davis. Sometimes the band would find a catchy groove and run with that for a while, throwing in some wild solos here and there for good measure. Other times, they would go out of their way to alienate the audience. Near the end of the set, for instance, there was a part where they repeatedly struck the same chord over and over again for minutes on end. People applauded for an encore after the show, and Mauro came back on by himself to play one. He strapped on his bass, but instead of playing it he picked up a shaker and just shook it, otherwise standing completely motionless. Again, this lasted several minutes. At the end, he violently banged the shaker against the microphone a few times and then walked off stage again. Fascinating!

Still, it was more exciting than Silvester Anfang's set, the highlight of which was the soundcheck. After all individual instruments had been checked, the sound engineer naievely suggested that perhaps they should try one song all together. The guys had a laugh (as did I), but they obliged anyway with a quick jam. The actual set was a single long piece which utterly failed to grab my attention.

The contrast with the headlining act could not have been larger: Wolf Eyes showed no mercy and stomped all over the crowd with brutally loud beats and noise. The band's arsenal included vocals, electronica, guitar, sax and some sort of (presumably self-made) one-stringed bass contraption. It didn't take long for a mosh pit to form, and its participants soon found themselves soaked in sweat, beer, spit and god knows what else. Yummy!

The gig opened with a song for the people who stayed at home. The band would play two sets, with a short break in between, adding up to about two hours of bombastic rock goodness. With the exception of "Ambugaton" -- a great singalong -- the first half of the show was all new material. There's a new album coming out at the end of May, and judging by what we heard, it's going to be a brown one!

The second set mostly had stuff from the previous two albums. One of the highlights was the haunting "A Hymn To The Morning Star". It brought a tangible tension over the crowd, many of whom already knew that the song would transition into "The Donkey-Headed Adversary Of Humanity Opens The Discussion", which sounds as big and over-the-top as its title suggests. The same sort of tension could be felt during "1997 (Tonight We're Gonna Party Like It's...)", which was the encore. Carla Kihlstedt's violin mimicked the sound of police sirens in the song's intro, and you could feel the anticipation in the room as people recognized it and realized they were about to get their asses whooped. To give you an idea: I saw one of my neighbours poke at his buddy, nervously wiggling around in his chair with his eyes wide open and his fist in his mouth. Like, whoa.

Between the ass whoopings, thankfully, there was also time for a few laughs. At some point, Nils said "we are the Sleepytime Gorilla Museum featuring Carla Kihlstedt", which is how the gig was announced on posters and on the Bimhuis website. Kihlstedt giggled embarrassedly and crawled under her instruments to hide her shame. Later, during "Ambugaton", Kihlstedt took the liberty of altering her violin parts a bit. Frykdahl jokingly reprimanded her for not sticking to the meticulously composed riffs, stating that the audience paid good money to hear those riffs.

In addition to guitar, bass, violin and drums, the band used a whole array of strange and self-made instruments. These ranged from fairly simple percussion instruments to contraptions such as the "bass harmonica" (like a harmonica, only five times the size), and the "log" (some sort of king-size bass that's played with a mallet). The band members handled their instruments with great skill, and Frykdahl's and Kihlstedt's powerful voices topped it all off.

The band's larger-than-life sound was complemented with a visual spectacle as well -- they even did a costume change in between the two sets. The members were dressed up in ragged robes and wore make-up, making them look like the cast of a horror movie. Frykdahl looked particularly scary with his giant boots, muscular arms, and strange-looking beard. And what on earth did he do to his teeth?

The line-up was downright incestuous: the three bands that performed all featured one or more members of the Melvins. The first act were Porn, featuring Dale Crover on drums. They played long, mostly instrumental stoner tunes, in which Crover's drumming played a very central role. The guys didn't take things too seriously: they had soap bubble machines aimed into the crowd, the bassist demonstrated his duck-walking skills, and at one point Crover and the guitarist amused themselves by throwing drumsticks at the drumkit from a distance. Fun, and a more than decent warm-up for what was still to come.

Jared Warren and Coady Willis, a.k.a. Big Business, were up next. Willis looked more like a singer in a boys band than a rock drummer, but appearances were very obviously deceptive. The same could be said of Warren, who had sort of a Demis Roussos thing going on with his robe and beard, but who could crank out some serious rock riffs. During the show, someone in the crowd complained that the vocals were hard to hear, to which Jared amusingly replied that he was singing as loud as he could. Dale Crover joined the duo on guitar for a few songs. He re-emerged later to take place behind the second drumkit, followed by King Buzzo. Big and hairy as ever, Buzzo marched onto the stage with his Les Paul already strapped on, dressed in a dark robe and combat boots, and with an air of steely determination. And so, without any pause or warning, Big Business were suddenly the Melvins, and the shit hit the fan.

The guys had awesome sound going down: the gig was loud, heavy and amazingly tight. Buzz sure can play that guitar, and Dale and Cody's synchronized drumming is downright impressive to behold. The band are obviously (and rightfully) proud of their latest album "(a) Senile Animal". They played a few older tunes at the start of the show -- highlight among which was "Let It All Be" -- but the bulk of the setlist was an almost integral performance of the new CD, culminating in the obliteratingly heavy "The Mechanical Bride". After that we were treated to "The Bit" and the Alice Cooper cover "The Ballad Of Dwight Frye", and that was it. Buzzo walked off the stage -- the rest of the band stayed on a little bit longer to treat us to a particularly poopy rendition of "Lady In Red", sang by Jared Warren.

Later that day, the Van Jets played at Petrol. Their very straightforward rock show was entertaining enough while it lasted, but very easily forgotten afterwards. That's about all I have to say about this gig, which proves my point! There's a bit more on the Van Jets below, though, so do read on!

Another edition of Vadermoord has come and gone, and on this year's most interesting evening, Dez Mona and the Van Jets came to pay homage to their musical heroes. Dez Mona, rather unsurprisingly, chose to do Nina Simone. Some of the songs they played had already been part of regular Dez Mona sets, but of course there were others that we hadn't heard them do yet. It all sounded great, even if not that different from what the band always does.

The Van Jets tackled the works of David Bowie, which I'm not terribly familiar with. I recognized "Heroes" and "Fame", and noted that the rest of the set didn't sound half bad either. The band dedicated one song to Willy Willy, who allegedly had always wanted to cover said song, but couldn't do it because the outro required a delay pedal and he didn't have one. The Van Jets did have one, and happily used it to pour salt in Willy Willy's wound. Insensitive pricks!

The Go Find have a new album out, and they presented it at Trix. Their set was more exciting than that of opening act Bracken, but still not quite exciting enough to my taste. Not everyone agreed with me, though. Some people even waved a banner (it read "hete brommers" for some reason), and during the last song, a whole bunch of stuffed animals suddenly rained down on the stage. Peculiar.

Benny Zen, with their lineup extended from a trio to a quartet, did a tryout gig at Café Rood-Wit in Berchem. They couldn't have picked a browner location! The café had a pool table in the middle of the room, forcing people to sit or stand around it at quite a distance from the stage. There was also a darts board, a shelf full of trophies, a blackboard filled with football scores -- in other words: it was the real deal! The crowd -- about twenty or so people -- seemed to be a mixture of café regulars and friends or relatives of the band members. The set list included all the hits, such as "Small Lesbians" or "UFO Conspiracy et cetera", as well as a bunch of new material. Peter announced the three encores as being "kutnummers", but his modesty is very much misplaced!

• Adriaan Something Something: narrative
• Elko Blijweert: guitar
• Rudy Trouvé: guitar
• Teuk Henri: guitar
• Ephraïm Cielen: drums
• Miguel Sosa: moog
• Jeroen Stevens: percussion
• Yuri Vanuffelen: guitar
• Mark Meyers: vocals
• Heyme Langbroek: sax
• Craig Ward: guitar, sax

It's been twenty years since Andy Warhol kicked the bucket, and so the Beursschouwburg organized a three day tribute festival in his honour, which they dubbed "Sex, Lies & Andy". On the first night, Klara did a live radio broadcast at the Beursschouwburg, during which they interviewed various people who had something to say about Warhol. Franco Saint De Bakker were invited to provide musical intermezzos throughout the show. They played a few of their regular tunes as well as a number of Velvet Underground covers, and brought along some special guests: Roland Van Campenhout on guitar, Simon Lenski on cello, and Nathalie Delcroix and Craig Ward on vocals. There were also performances by Bl!ndman and by Pieter de Buysser and Stijn, but these weren't anywhere near as entertaining as FSDB's interventions. Clocking in at four hours, the show was quite a battle of endurance, but thankfully you could always head for the bar!

Dan Auerbach, singer of the Akron, Ohio based blues rock duo the Black Keys, has grown an impressive beard since the last time I saw him -- something which I can only applaud. The Black Keys recently played at Handelsbeurs, and it was by all standards a Good Gig. Apart from one or two breathers, the gig was all steaming hot guitar licks and energetic drumming. Good stuff, which was warmly received by a ravingly enthusiastic crowd.

In an attempt to tear down the imaginary wall between Flanders and Wallonia, the AB and the Botanique joined forces to organize a little festival. The first night ("Bota@AB"), a number of Wallonian bands played at the AB. The second night ("AB@Bota"), a few Flemish bands played at the Botanique. We attended the second night, which was opened by Kris Dane. I had never heard of him before, and in retrospect I can't say I was missing out on much.

Blackbox Revelation were up next, and provided a potent antidote against the sleepiness induced by Kris Dane's set. The guitarist stood on the bass drum during one song, but this has already been discussed in an earlier update. There was a short acoustic intermezzo, which was performed with a guest singer and without drums, but other than that it was all rock!

The main event, as far as I was concerned, was Dez Mona. They played in the small and cozy Rotonde, which lent the gig a wonderfully intimate atmosphere that fit the band perfectly. They convincingly presented their latest album, "Moments of Dejection or Despondency", which they sold for a hefty 17 EUR after the show. There was a guest appearance by Sjoerd in the song "Flawless Daughter", showing the stark contrast between a mere human's voice and that of Frateur. Gregory made valiant attempts at introducing the songs in both Dutch and French, although he more than once gave up and went for English instead. But hey, it's the intention that counts!

The Archetypes played a Sunday afternoon show at Villadelfia on the 11th of February. Before the show, the moog could be heard autonomously humming an uninterrupted steady tone, which Miguel informed us was necessary to warm it up. Cool! The band and the crowd were packed together in a very small room. Although most cozy, this meant that I could never let my guard down, for fear of being struck in the face by Elko's guitar. The band perhaps played just a bit longer than was really needed, but as they happily pointed out, they weren't keeping anyone from walking out -- which quite a few people did, actually. That said, there was some really good stuff in there. In fact, at one point during the set, the guys were rocking so hard that Elko went berserk and violently banged his head into a locker cabinet that was standing against the wall next to him. Fuck yeah!

Craig Ward was in the country for a while in February, and so the Love Substitutes had an opportunity to play a few gigs. We went two nights in a row: first at Molens Van Orshoven, then at Café Beatnik in Beerse. Don't ask me how they ended up in Beerse -- I have absolutely no idea.

Blackbox Revelation rocked significantly harder, even with one less band member. Their high-octane blues rock was just what we needed to get in the mood for the main event. One of the highlights of the show was when the guitarist stood on top of the bass drum for a while. This was pretty cool, although we have since come to suspect that he actually does this at every show. At future shows, hopefully he will try to push the envelope with even more daring tricks (e.g. standing on the cymbal instead of on the bass drum)!

El Guapo Stuntteam introduced their show by playing the video to their new single "Back From The Grave" -- twice! When the lights went back on afterwards, the guys came on stage in the same classy outfits they wear in the video. As always, the team rocked the shit about as hard as it can be rocked without causing lethal injury. One of the highlights of the show was "Real Mean Beauty", performed with guest singer Jan Bas. After the song, Cedric attentively asked the ladies in the audience if they were still feeling alright, and if he perhaps needed to come down to mop up the drool.

The catwalk in front of the stage was used to great effect for some shit hot guitar solos, and it offered the crowd an up close and personal encounter with Captain Catastrophy! After pouring fuel over himself, the Captain walked up to the edge of the catwalk and asked "does anybody have a light?". The people in the front happily obliged, and the temperature in the front rows quickly went up a few degrees. The coolness!

At this year's De Nachten, the main event was the performance of the Ex-Drummer Band. The show consisted of short sets (two or three songs) by a bunch of bands that appear on the Ex-Drummer movie soundtrack:

• Blutch played a single, long stoner epic. They were fronted by a hairy dude who struck all sorts of impressive rock poses while grunting into his mic and laying down crushing guitar riffs. Yeah!
• The Experimental Tropic Blues Band are still the same bunch of crazy fuckers that we've come to know and love. They're not going to forever change the face of blues rock, but they always put on a brown live show.
• Madensuyu sounded rather bland to me. The singer really looked like he meant it, though. At times I thought he was going to burst into tears, but personally I wasn't moved one bit.
• Millionaire were the headlining act. They played a longer and browner set than any of the other bands. Regular bassist Bas was replaced by none other than Flip Kowlier, who did a positively splendid job. The set included "Deep Fish", "Mongoloid" and Kowlier's "De Grootste Lul Van 't Stad" as well as a few other songs that aren't on the soundtrack. The set was nowhere near long enough, of course, but at least it rocked hard from start to finish.
• Also worth mentioning is that the event was presented by Gunter Lamoot, who cunningly insulted both the audience and Vitalski in one fell swoop. Impressive!

A few days later, we caught White Circle Crime Club and the Blood Brothers at Trix. Enough has been written about the former, so I'll concentrate on the latter. The Blood Brothers play what is colloquially referred to as "screamo", which in layman's terms means that the guys scream a lot. The screaming is accompanied by loud guitars -- a combination that got a mosh pit going in no time. The gig was made all the more entertaining by the sheer gayness of one of the singers: experts will want to know that he wore a red handkerchief.

On the last day of January, Sharko played at the Vooruit. Catchy pop tunes were interlaced with some amusing banter, which made the gig sort of fun for a while, but it all started to sound alike pretty quickly. There were a couple of great tunes in there, like "I Went Down", but I found some others to be downright annoying -- "Excellent" in particular.

The night after, there were three seriously deranged acts to be enjoyed at Recyclart. The first was Sylvester Anfang. We caught a bit of their soundcheck, which had some very promising heavy guitar riffs in it. Unfortunately, the actual gig didn't live up to the expectations created by the soundcheck. What we got was an uninspired, monotonous noise set -- and I mean monotonous in a bad way. You can also sound monotonous in a good way, but more on that later.

The next band on were Todd, who delighted the audience with their ultra-violent guitar noise. It all sounded very brown, but for some reason the gig seemed to be way too short. The guys ended their set prematurely, which I think was due to technical problems, but it all happened so abruptly that I'm honestly not sure of just what was going on. A damn shame, because it would have been a great show if it had been a little longer.

The night after, Freaks End Future invited Deepsrof, Mauro, Ghost Of Mercury and Ludo Mich to play in the store. Deepsrof used a guitar, a laptop and a keyboard to produce a barrage of painfully loud noise. It wasn't the most entertaining barrage of painfully loud noise ever produced, though. The guys just sat there on the floor and fiddled with knobs, and so it didn't really sound or look all that interesting.

Mauro took a bit of a minimalist approach: he played back a tape and then improvised guitar parts over it. The tape sounded fairly peculiar by itself, and even more so with the extra guitar noises. The last part of the set involved a generous portion of double-tapping, which is of course always good for bonus points!

It just so happened that JWSM are calling it quits, and so this was their last ever Belgian show. The singer pointed out that they could safely throw in the towel, since the future of rock music was in good hands with I Love Sarah. There's not much I can add to that, is there? The dynamic duo put on a great show as usual, and I got to hear the new hit single "Braken Koffie Braken Lasagne" for the first time. It's a singalong!

JWSM themselves didn't do too bad a job either. Shame we'll never get to hear them again... They played catchy guitar pop tunes, including homages to Bud Spencer and Daniel Johnston. The occasional touch of silliness helped make things all the more enjoyable -- for one song, for instance, the singer played his guitar with a dustbuster. Why didn't I think of that?

Tip Toe Topic closed off the festivities with another highly enjoyable set. As usual, the band blended killer beats, sweet jazz, and (much to the delight of the guitar fetishist in me) some very serious shredding! Elko belched impressively before the first encore, to show his satisfaction with the show. Although nobody belched back, the crowd's enthusiastic applause made it clear that they were equally satisfied.

On December 19, the Handelsbeurs held a new edition of their "Kraakpand" series, with Elysian, Rye Jehu and Helder. Elysian were easily forgotten, Rye Jehu's lo-fo guitar rock slightly less so, but Helder definitely stood out as the better of the three acts. I guess that's why they made him top of the bill! Helder played stuff off both his albums as well as a few new tunes, and did so all by himself. It's amazing to see what some people can do with as little as four limbs!

But I digress. On December 13, Flat Earth Society performed "De Oesterprinses" at Vooruit. Because it was the last time they played it, they threw in a little extra: the gig started with a short film from 1932 about a bicycle race in Brasschaat. It was great fun to watch, and of course the band played an appropriate soundtrack. I enjoyed the main film just as much as the first time I saw it, a few months ago at De Singel. It's a highly entertaining flick, even when you already know how it ends, and the music is absolutely brilliant. Rumour has it that the soundtrack is going to be released on CD this year, so start saving!

Album

1 :: (The) Melvins - (A) Senile Animal 2 :: Flat Earth Society - Psychoscout 3 :: Motorpsycho - Black Hole / Blank Canvas 4 :: Man Man - Six Demon Bag 5 :: Sukilove - Good Is In Your Bones 6 :: Liars - Drum's Not Dead 7 :: Colour Haze - Tempel 8 :: Mugison - Little Trip 9 :: Les Georges Leningrad - Sangue Puro 10 :: East West Blast Test - Popular Music For Unpopular People

Gig

1 :: 2006.04.23 - FantômasMelvins Big Band, AB 2 :: 2006.06.09 - Flat Earth Society, AB club 3 :: 2006.11.09 - Man Man, Petrol 4 :: 2006.04.09 - Sunn O))), Domino 5 :: 2006.04.13 - Battles, Domino 6 :: 2006.02.28 - Liars, AB club 7 :: 2006.11.19 - Coca-Cola Met God, L' Archiduc 8 :: 2006.07.04 - Les Georges Leningrad, 't Lokaal 9 :: 2006.04.08 - Deerhoof, Rhâââ Lovely Festival 10 :: 2006.10.07 - Mauro, Zaal België

All this is just my opinion -- you are of course very welcome to share yours as well!