You might not think so by the looks of me, but I'm still alive. I let myself get hopelessly behind with my updates to this site, and the spambots happily took over from me. After painstakingly removing all the random gibberish and the Viagra ads, I figured I'd unleash my inner nerd and do something about it. Hence, you are now looking at SoundsBrown version 3.0!

Following up on the smashing success of last year's "La Bamba" night, Ultra Eczema decided to host a Popcorn Night(mare) this year. The concept was as simple as it was lethal: nothing but cover versions of Gershon Kingsley's classic song "Popcorn", all night long, both on stage and in the DJ booth. The party lasted until the next morning, which for us meant non-stop "Popcorn" exposure for well over eight hours on end. A mind-altering experience if ever there was one! The party also coincided with the release of a double LP with cover versions by many of the artists who also performed at the event -- meaning that you can relive the magic any time you want in the privacy of your own home! I can't begin to describe all the live acts, but I'll go over a few of the brownest ones.

A first highlight was a dude (whose name I regrettably didn't catch) who played the tune by slapping on his own cheeks and opening and closing his mouth to control the pitch. Very skillful! Elko Blijweert also did a good version, appearing as one half of Autistic Youth. The other half was ill, so Elko had the guitar parts recorded into a loop station and complemented them with highly energetic live drumming on a floor tom and a cardboard box. Michiel from CWTAB and his homey Steven played a fun version as well, using guitar, synth and tambourine and dressed up in robes and turbans.

Another fascinating performance was the one by a large tent. "Popcorn"-inspired sounds emanated from its mystical interior, while actual popcorn spewed from an opening near the top. Equally surreal was a performance by a group of horse-headed people, who tapped the rhythm of the song on typewriters. Finally, Possessed Factory (Mauro, Jef and Jeroen on this occasion), played something really loud and fast which I couldn't quite recognize as being "Popcorn". I'm sure it must have been in there somewhere, but I was already too far gone at this point to find it. They rocked that shit pretty goddamn hard, though. So hard, in fact, that a certain very drunk person crawled up on the stage and tried to perform oral sex on Mauro, presumably as a token of gratitude for the rocking. It's always a good sign when that happens!

We admitted defeat after seeing Possessed Factory (around 5 AM if memory serves), and called it a night. We were wading up to our knees in popcorn at this point, and we also got to relive the magic the next day by picking bits of popcorn out of our various orifices. Hooray for popcorn!

Wow, I lay my head down for a quick nap and suddenly I find myself running over a month behind with my updates to this site! Please allow me to rectify the situation with the following:

Iceland's blues/folk/metal pride Mugison played an acoustic solo show at the Botanique, along with two other Icelandic acts. The first of these was some singer/songwriter kid whose name I had forgotten before he had even finished his first song. In between songs he talked a lot about his life and about his feelings, which was simply too much for a macho man like myself to handle. At one point, he told us that he was wearing a girl's shirt, which belonged to a girl that he had met at the airport and with whom he was now madly in love. He was saving up his money to buy a plane ticket to LA, so that he could go see her again. He added that he felt very relieved by this turn of events, because he had a very miserable year behind him. This made me wonder why he was miserable -- did his parents revoke his PlayStation privileges for a year because of his disappointing school results? His yapping on and on about his emotions made me want to hurl, but the audience gulped it down greedily like a pack of starved piglets at the sow's teats.

The difference between Mugison and the previous act became very obvious very quickly. Where the kid talked about his deepest feelings, Mugison talked about matters of considerable brownness. This included anecdotes about sailors masturbating to German porn as well as a story about how Mugison literally shit himself on stage once (also at the Botanique) after eating a poisonous kebab. I didn't actually know beforehand that Mugison was going to perform solo. When I did realize this, I was a bit worried that he would limit his setlist to his more intimate-sounding songs because of this. After the first song ("Go Blind"), however, he said "I'm going to play one melancholy song now, and then things can only get better after that". My fears were allayed immediately. Mugison did not shy away from his more, err, abundant work at all, thus proving that death metal grunts and acoustic guitars can go together quite nicely!

It seems that Mugison is a bit of a handyman as well. In addition to his guitar, he brought a contraption which I can only describe as, well, a contraption. It seemed to be some sort of self-made sampler or perhaps a MIDI controller (he had a laptop on the floor as well). He played one song on it, using it to trigger samples of an acoustic guitar. Interesting! It was a shame, though, that Mugison wasn't the headlining act (something I also didn't know beforehand), so he had to limit his set to about 45 minutes. On the other hand, it meant that I didn't have to sit through the third act's entire set, which saved me considerable grief!

Having thoroughly enjoyed their passage at CC De Mol, I went to check out the Crab Four a second time at De Singer. The setlist was identical to that of the week before, so there were few surprises. The venue has a more informal feel than De Mol, though, which translated itself into a more abundant audience. One of these abundant people hadn't entirely grasped the concept of the show, however: he walked up to the stage just as the guys were starting "Good Night" and asked them if they could play "When I'm Sixty-Four". Wrong album, dude!

Because of the smaller venue, I was also able to get a closer look at the laptops on the stage -- as I mentioned in my previous post, I was curious as to why they needed three of them. I know now that the two that have the screens facing the audience are one Mac and one Windows PC, but that both of them are running Propellerheads Reason. This means that Auto-Tune must be running on the one not facing the crowd, which I guess was actually to be expected. Make sure to tune in again next week, when we'll reveal the well-kept secret behind Stoffel's seemingly impeccable sense of rhythm and explain the real reason why Sjoerd uses Helder's guitar during "Julia"!

Last Saturday, CC De Mol in Lier hosted the world premiere of the Crab Four's new tour. For those not yet in the know, the Crab Four are a quintet (cheeky bastards!), consisting of Pascal 'John' Deweze, Helder 'Paul' Deploige, Sjoerd 'Sjors' Bruyl, Stoffel 'Ringo' Verlackt and newcomer Arne 'Yoko' Leurentop. Arne was a complete stranger to me before this gig, but no doubt he will soon be propelled into superstardom and gain the admiration of fans worldwide, just like the real Yoko! Stoffel replaces former drummer Gino 'Ringo' Geudens, who is missing and presumed exploded. If you've seen him, please contact your local police.

Where previous Crab Four shows focused more on the older Beatles repertoire, this tour sees the band performing the fabled "white album" integrally. Despite its name, the white album is a dark brown behemoth with no less than thirty songs, spanning a bewildering array of chocolatey flavors ranging from syrupy ballads to heavy rock 'n roll and everything in between. Covering this album is a bold undertaking -- one that could easily turn into sacrilege -- but the guys pulled it off beautifully. They had to drag in a truckload of gear to do it, but each song was lovingly reproduced with the appropriate guitar sounds, the right backing vocals, the works! The band also treated us to some things we don't often get to see, such as Sjoerd on mandolin, Pascal on piano and even accordion, or Stoffel on lead vocals. I'm curious about why they needed no less than three laptops on the stage, though. Maybe just one isn't powerful enough to run Auto-Tune for five people simultaneously?

One of the poopier moments of the gig was the carefully orchestrated rendition of "Revolution 9". This prompted a few of the more conservative members of the audience to walk out, unimpressed by how faithfully the band managed to reproduce this epic song and probably thinking to themselves that the real Beatles would never have made such a ghastly racket. These people missed the finale of the show, an excellent a capella rendition of "Good Night", and it serves them right. There's a very real chance that I'll never get to see the real Beatles perform these songs, but this was a worthy substitute.

The Strumpets have officially released their eagerly anticipated debut album on Jezus Factory, and to celebrate this historical event the band played a gig at Vertigo last week. You don't become the saviours of pop music by milking your own work until it's dry, though. Hence, their eyes set firmly on the future, the guys played a set that contained more new material than songs off the album. They also did not offer copies of the album on sale. As for the gig itself, the band sounded as brown as ever. Miguel even brought his Moog for that little extra dash of chocolate flavour on one of the songs. Finer pop music is not to be enjoyed anywhere in the Cartesian coordinate space!

Channel Zero are back, and how! They're proving to be a god damn money machine: metalheads go in on one side, and cash comes out on the other. You probably know that they managed to sell out the AB six times; if you weren't there you might not know that the AB also sold commemorative Channel Zero bar coins, and that the merch booth accepted credit cards. If this were most other bands, I would be appalled at their unashamed efforts to milk me for all I've got. The thing, however, is this: the show rocked harder than a boat sailed by a blind, three-legged elephant.

The band's line-up was 25% different from what it used to be: original guitarist Xavier Carion developed an ear trauma and had to be replaced by Mikey Doling (of Soulfly fame). The setlist focused mostly on the albums "Unsafe" and "Black Fuel", starting with "Black Fuel" itself and ending with "Man On The Edge". They also played a few songs off the older albums, including "No Light (At The End Of Their Tunnel)". For these songs, the band were joined by Marcel Coenen on lead guitar. Before this gig Marcel was a complete stranger to me, but hot damn. As of know he shall be known as The Marcel From Hell!

The show was almost flawless from start to finish, with the exception of a long awkward silence before "Help" and the inclusion of their new song, "Black Flowers", which is nowhere near as awesome as the old stuff. Mikey is going to have to crank out with some better riffs (or take lessons from the Marcel) if the band wants to continue on their current level of brownness. Let's hope they're up to the challenge!

We travelled into foreign lands last Friday to see Om perform at 013. Upon our arrival, we witnessed a strange creature sitting on the stage. It had brown skin, was covered in irregular patches of long, bristly hair, and its larynx cast forth noises reminiscent of a fakir flute. The creature later also joined Om on the stage, to play tambourine as well as the occasional guitar and keyboard.

Om's set took place in a very relaxed atmosphere -- so much so, in fact, that it could be mistaken for complete disinterest from both the band and the audience. The band called it quits after no more than 40 minutes or so, and were given only a very brief applause. Then followed a few minutes of silence, which I guess was the time it took for the Dutch potheads to realize that the show was over, and only then came a proper round of applause prompting the band to come back for an encore. Despite the peculiar atmosphere and the fact that the hairy beast was the only member of the band that had any stage presence at all, however, I found the show to be well-played and perfectly enjoyable. A good thing, hence, that the encore was almost as long as the main part of the show!

Philip Metten, best known for his work on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, teamed up with Tim Vanhamel to create a performance titled "Powerhouse". It was, err, performed last Sunday afternoon at M HKA in the context of "Art's Birthday", an event which took place because in 1963 some pretentious wanker decided to declare his own birthday (January 17th) to be the "birthday of the arts". Not to be outdone, I hereby declare October 11th to be the "birthday of the arse"!

But we digress. Metten designed a backdrop for the stage as well as a costume for Tim, which was in fact the main attraction. It consisted of a sort of poncho adorned with reflective strips, a big robot head mask thing and a big claw. An iPod touch was embedded in the claw's arm, and Tim used it to trigger and manipulate various sounds. The noises were pretty abstract and random at first, but gradually developed into somewhat of a menacing drone. Meanwhile, Tim danced, crawled and slithered around on and off the stage. The room was lit by a single strobe light (not counting the faint colored glows from Metten's contraptions), whose frequency increased as the tension in the soundscape built up. Cool stuff!

The last days of 2009 had a few particularly poopy gigs in store. First of all, the Archetypes played one of their finest shows yet at La Campine. By the light of the Christmas tree, Miguel, Jeroen and Elko dished out equal parts jazz, doom, afrobeat and trash metal. It was pretty awesome, but by all means don't take my word for it! Videos of the gig have found their way onto the interwebs, so bask in the brownness, if you dare!

I also caught Tip Toe Topic at Wintervuur, a festival of sorts on Linkeroever. The band played in a leaky tent in front of a reasonably big crowd (by TTT standards). The set list included classic hit singles such as "Hound Dog" and "Electric Ant", but the guys have also amassed quite a bit of new material since the release of their debut album. Elko seemed to be in a good mood that night, resulting in a playful show which was sometimes a bit sloppy but always fun!

Finally, Sukilove played at Bar Mondial on the 30th. They had to compete for spectators with the Rudy Trouvé Septet, who played Wintervuur that same night, but thankfully the bar was reasonably filled. There were quite a few issues with the sound (dropouts, feedback and the likes), but the guys made the best of it and put on an enjoyable show. The setlist was good but unsurprising: lots of stuff off "Static Moves" sprinkled with a handful of older tunes. The latter included "Sun Sun Sun", which Pascal had to play on electric guitar because his acoustic was at Strings & Things for repairs, and those fuckers take weeks. Pascal's words, not mine! I hope the Strings & Things staff don't read this website, or Pascal might get in trouble. Sorry Pascal, but the people have a a right to know! But I digress. Near the end of the set, Pascal suggested that perhaps they could play "Paradise By The Dashboard Light" or "Bohemian Rhapsody", because someone in the crowd thought they should keep playing for at least another half hour. Unfortunately, Pascal's suggestion was not followed up on. I take comfort in the knowledge that the Rudy Trouvé Septet didn't play "Bohemian Rhapsody" either.

Hopefully the past holidays haven't done you any permanent gastro-intestinal damage. Personally I could use a few days off to recuperate, but apart from that I'll live. Remember that you can still download my latest and greatest Christmas single, Jingle Hell, if you haven't already. I have a few more pictures from last year that I'll post Real Soon Now, and in the meantime I also want to share the traditional lists of my favorite gigs and album releases of the past year:

Of course, all this is just my opinion, and as you know, opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one, and I love it when people rub theirs in my face -- so knock yourselves out!

Merry Christmas, bitches! In keeping with tradition, I'm pleased to present to you my fifth annual Christmas single. This year's turd is titled "Jingle Hell" and is guaranteed to relax the bowels after a big Christmas diner. Head to the music page to hear or download it. Enjoy!

When I wrote about the Master Musicians Of Bukkake gig earlier this year and said it was almost inevitably going to be the gig of the year, I was not counting on the Melvins to come to Belgium before the end of the year. But lo and behold: they came, they saw, and they laid waste to De Kreun! The opening act was Porn, who were joined by Dale and Cody on drums for the second half of their set. The first half started with a monotonous drone and then turned into a no-holds-barred noisefest. The second half (with the addition of the drums) was slightly catchier (which is not to say that the first half wasn't good) and got everyone's headbanging muscles properly warmed up before the Melvins took the stage.

The band played two sets, the first of which started without Jared and Cody. They only joined in halfway through the set, and also played along for the entire second set. Buzz played a shiny metal guitar, no doubt made of steel forged in the very depths of hell. He frequently approached the front edge of the stage, which of course was where I was standing. Being mere inches away from my hero left me somewhat overwhelmed, I can tell you! I was close enough to smell His manly musk, and the constant risk of being struck in the face by His guitar simultaneously inspired me with tremendous fear and great joy.

The second set featured a brief appearance by crew member Gareth, who celebrated his birthday that night. The guys played their old classic "Anaconda" at Gareth's request, so thank you Gareth! The rest of the setlists were a good mix of old stuff (such as "Hooch" and "The Bit") and stuff off the last two albums (like "Blood Witch" and "Dies Iraea"). A finer rock show could not have been imagined! To top it all off, the merch booth had t-shirts for the low low price of 10 EUR. Thank you, come again!

After a long period of absence, Hank and Lily recently played some shows in Belgium again. I caught the one at Café Video, one of the venues where I also saw them on their highly memorable 2005 tour. The duo have since released a new album, called "North America", which again comes with a comic book. This time, you even get a songbook with chords and lyrics, so you can learn to play along! The set included classic love songs such as "Necrophilia" and "Olde People", as well as a good selection from the new album. It was only the two of them this time around -- no Palmeira or Cecil the Weasel, so it was just guitar and drums most of the time. However, the singing saw also made a brief appearance, as did the flute, which is apparently Lily's new favorite instrument. One song, Hank explained, was even written solely for the purpose of satisfying Lily's flute fetish. I won't try to pick highlights from the set list -- with its top notch tunes and highly entertaining banter, this show oozed brownness from every pore!

Magasin 4 found a new location, and my first acquaintance with it was at a show by Messer Chups. To see Messer Chups, however, I had to endure two of the most annoying opening acts I've seen in a while, as well as two of the coldest feet I've had in a while. Advice to future visitors: avoid light footwear when going to M4 in the winter! No complaints about the Messer Chups gig, though. The band are still good for some of the finest surf tunes in the eastern hemisphere, and Gitaracula (as the guitarist likes to be called these days) is still the master of reverb kicking. Needless to say, the set also featured hilarious B-movie visuals throughout, and the gig also had a few funny moments in between songs. When bass player Zombierella asked the sound guy to have less bass in her monitor, Gitaracula retorted by asking for more beer in his monitor. When a heckler shouted "Gorbatsjov!" a few times, the drummer silenced him with "Gorbatsjov suck my butt!". Eat that, heckler!

Last month, Motorpsycho played a show at the Botanique. The guys laid it down for two and a half hours, which amounted to at least half a dozen songs! I guess playing long songs makes the show feel shorter or something, because I would have been just fine if they had thrown in another hour so. I didn't actually recognize too many of the songs -- this may be because the guys played a lot of tunes from their latest album "Child of the Future" (which I picked up after the show), or I may simply need to work on my fanboyism. Either way, my inability to sing along was of no detriment whatsoever to the overall enjoyability of the show.

The Strumpets played at the November edition of TrixTrax. The band now featured Thomas Noppe on bass, and played a gig that sounded distinctly more rocking than previous ones. They introduced some new material into their set, and concluded with an excellent version of "You're Far". Unfortunately, it appears that the Strumpets' debut album will not see an official release until early next year, which means it won't be considered in people's "album of the decade" lists. Fingers crossed for 2019!

I Love Sarah and Pawlowski performed at the Warande just over a week ago. Both bands were at the top of their game, resulting in two rock shows of considerable brownness. The shows were converted into a highbrow cultural event, however, by the interventions of Ultima Vez, who did some very artful dance performances on a catwalk in front of the stage. What's more, two of the dancers even pitched in on vocals during the Pawlowski gig. As far as I was concerned, the dancers turned the brownness into more of a greenish tint with orange blotches, but of course I'm no intellectual! The ladder that they brought up on stage during the last song, by the way, would better have been used to add dramatic impact to an epic guitar solo than to let some chick's hair blow in the wind. Damn fine rock shows, though!

Flat Earth Society recorded a CD of their "Answer Songs" project, and promoted this with a number of CD release concerts across the land, starting with a tryout at De Singer. For those of you not already in the know, the Answer Songs concept is what its title suggests: the band plays songs which were written in response to some existing song. The link to the original song is sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle. Several people, band members and others, contributed music and lyrics, and most of the vocal duties are handled by Esther Lybeert, who possesses a mix of talent and lunacy that makes her a perfect match for the rest of the band.

The show had more highlights than you can shake a stick at, unless you have a very big stick! Bruno Vansina caught on fire at one point and whipped out an epic, shit-hot solo that would probably have gone on indefinitely if Peter Vandenberghe hadn't pulled Bruno out of his trip by whistling on his fingers. Benjamin Boutreur and Bart Maris also played an excellent duet that Maris directed using hand gestures.

The song "The Everlasting Sea" had a segment were each member of the band appeared to be playing in a different time signature. I thought to myself that it was pretty impressive that they could pull this off, and anticipated the moment when everyone would come back together again. My illusion, however, was shattered when Peter stopped the song and had the band start over from the start. Turns out that it wasn't actually supposed to be quite that complex: they were just screwing it up in a big way. They had me going there for a minute, though!

Peter demonstrated his considerable skill on the fricatives when announcing "Thursday the 12th", a song in which Lybeert impresses by switching between pop, opera and hysteric screeching at the drop of a hat. The song also contains a highly entertaining break during which Berlinde Deman chatters into the mouth piece of her tuba. Other highlights included "Kiss The Pillow", a song dedicated to Semira Adamu which has sadly not made it onto a CD yet, and "Drizzlin' On Heels", an answer to Bowie's "I'm Deranged" with vocals by Tom Wouters that sounds very deranged indeed.

To top it all off, the band played A Group's "Woggy Doggy" (a song about a tragic episode in the life of Michel Mast) as an encore. I wouldn't have thought I'd ever get hear that one performed live -- excellent stuff! The guys did have an anticlimax in store, though: they didn't actually have copies of the CD on sale after the show. Hence, I had no alternative but to go to the official premiere the next day at the AB club, where the CD would be available. The set there was mostly the same, but the atmosphere seemed slightly less abundant. Some songs were performed better than at De Singer (they got "The Everlasting Sea" right from the first attempt, for instance), others were not ("Kotopoulopology" had more, err, chicken on the first night). The second show wasn't quite as legendary as the first, but it was still pretty good, and the guys delivered on their promise to have the CD on sale!

Sunn O))) played a jolly good show at the AB last month. The shit was laid down hard and slow as always, while singer Attila Csihar chanted all sorts of menacing shit with an inhumanly deep voice. As is their wont, the guys had the smoke machines on pretty much the whole time. During the first half of the show, Attila appeared in a hooded cape with his skin painted entirely white. Later, one of the other band members ceremoniously handed him a mask that made him look like his face had melted. For the second half of the gig, Attila changed into something that looked more like a Gears Of War monster. The best part, however, was that he also wore a crown and a cape that were both covered with mirrors, and that he shot laser beams from his fingertips (which then reflected off the mirrors). Yes, in terms of visual spectacle the show was right up there with the best of 'em!

The night after, the monthly TrixTrax boasted a triple bill of Shash Shash Shash, Star Club West and The Portables. The latter two contributed little to the overall brownness, but Shash Shash Shash was, err... interesting. Claiming to be from Afghanistan, the band consisted of four people (possibly men) dressed in burqas. They played middle-eastern tinted psychedelic rock using bass, drums, saz and keyboards. Meanwhile, they projected clips from a satanic soft porn movie behind the stage, which of course is always a plus!

Another day later, Amen Ra celebrated their 10th anniversary with an extra super special performance at CC Kortrijk. It was a theatre show -- yes, you read that right: it was in a posh-looking theatre with a seated audience. The guys started the show sitting near the front of the stage, playing a few gentle acoustic tunes. After that, the curtain behind them opened to reveal their regular gear set up in the back of the stage. This heralded the beginning of the sludge-fest that everyone was waiting for. There were about 15 meters of empty stage between the band and the audience at this point, though, and it soon became obvious why: it turned out that the show was accompanied by dance performances! It started with a girl who had the band's logo painted on her gazongas, and got progressively worse from there on. At one point, two naked dudes were pounding their heads into the belly of a girl, using fake blood to underline the intensity of the pounding. Ooh-la-la, très artistique! To top it all off, the show ended with singer Colin being suspended crucifixion-wise above the stage. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry (or hurl)! Musically, however, the show was pretty damn good. So good, in fact, that I was still disappointed that the band didn't do any encores.

You may have noticed that updates to this site were starting to lag behind a little. This is due to laziness and lack of motivation on my behalf, but also due to some major server problems. The server is powered by hamsters, you see, and they got really sick after some careless individual fed them leftovers of a burrito from an unsanitary Mexican restaurant. With the server problems out of the way, though, I'll do my best to catch up -- starting with this:

Around the time that the hamsters met their doom, Sukilove played at Trix to present their new album "Static Moves". The band's lineup was slightly gimped for this gig: Toon and Tim were absent, with Pieter Van Buyten standing in for Tim on bass. This inevitably meant that some arrangements were a little less lush than usual, but the guys made the best of it and put on plenty enjoyable show. Many of the songs on "Static Moves" have been part of the band's live set for a while, but now that the CD is out these songs will finally be able to fullfill their considerable hit potential!

The night after, the first ever performance of the Pink Flamingo Fusion Project took place at Bar Mondial. The PFFP features Jeroen Stevens on drums, Elko Blijweert on guitar, Andrew Claes on EWI (Electronic Winkle Inducer), and a blonde Elvis lookalike who goes by the name of "Hantrax" on keyboards. They describe their own music as "anti-jazz", which basically means that they mix elaborate jazzy soloing with a nice catchy riff every now and then to make it more palatable to jazz haters. This could be considered the best or the worst of both worlds, depending on your inclination -- I was in the former camp!

Throughout the month of October, CC Luchtbal hosted a joint exhibition by Rudy Trouvé and Bache Jespers. The Rudy exhibited a few of his paintings and album covers, and Bache displayed a big collection of photographs that were in some way Heavenhotel-related. Each friday, this exhibition was accompanied by a Rudy-related live gig, during which Rudy also projected some of his animations on three sides of the room (the fourth side was a mirror). I caught three out of four gigs: Prima Donkey, Central and the Love Substitutes.

Prima Donkey set themselves up in a half circle in the middle of the room. The Laïs chicks were missing from the line-up and were replaced by two lesser-known chanteuses. Craig Ward also joined in on banjo and vocals, and was responsible for two of the main highlights of the show: a splendid acoustic rendition of "Bangladesh Fashions" and an equally splendid cover of Michael Jackson's "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough".

Central have only played a handful of gigs since their ineption in 2001, so to see them play at Luchtbal was a unique occasion indeed. It was a fine show, too: Rudy's trashy, repetitive guitar riffs fit perfectly with Jelle Jespers's samples and the live drumming by Michiel Thijs. One of the highlights was a song for which Rudy laid his guitar down on a bar stool and played it using a slide and an e-bow. Meanwhile, he rhythmically tapped an effects pedal which made the sound skip up and down an octave. Awesome sound going down!

The Love Substitutes, finally, played a long set that included all the catchy stuff as well as a number of improvs. The length of the set turned it into somewhat of a battle of exhaustion, but it definitely had its moments. Mauro sang a particularly good rendition of "Someone like you", "Shanty" worked very well, and even the Flash Gordon theme made a brief appearance in between songs!

On the magical date of 9/9/9, Franco Saint De Bakker assembled at the AB club to record a new live album -- their third so far. To prepare themselves for this momentous occasion, they also played at Trix the Sunday before. Because they were recording a new CD, the setlist consisted almost entirely of new material. Only the encores included some oldies such as "Powerhouse".

The new stuff included a few covers (notably a rendition of "Louie Louie"), but most of the songs were original. The majority of these didn't have definitive titles yet, but I remembered such titles as "Playfield", "Layla" (in which I was unable to discover any references to the classic rock anthem of the same name) and "Surfrus". There was lots of good stuff in there, including a few Afro-jazz tunes that were catchy and danceable.

Finally, a note to the AB crew: Flat Earth Society's "Psychoscout" is undeniably a great album, but playing it repeatedly both before and after FSDB's show is too much. If you can't find any other decent Belgian jazz (and I fully understand that it might be difficult to find something that can live up to the brownness standards set by FSDB and FES), at least realize that FES has more than one album. Thanks!

Laïs/Lenski recently had to cancel a performance at Feeërieën due to an acute outbreak of pregnancy. Thankfully, the AB found Mauro willing and able (and not too knocked up) to replace them. The announcer welcomed Mauro to the stage stating that we would be treated to an acoustic set, after which Mauro strapped on a guitar with what looked to me like two humbucker pickups. <nitpick>Know your guitars, Kurt!</nitpick> Anyway, Mauro played a classic solo set, including his usual blend of Hitsville Drunks and Grooms tunes, covers such "The Power Of Love" and his timeless "oh shit I can't whistle" joke. Which miraculously still works, even after all these years! Mauro also played one brand new tune, which he wrote a few weeks ago. This made me wish there was more new material to be discovered, but other than that it was as good a show as one could expect.

The night after, the Love Substitutes played at Bar Mondial. It had been ages since I last saw them, so I was pretty curious about what they would have in store. The gig started with an improvization, backed by a drum computer and Craig's laptop, which played back some ethnic chanting that Craig purchased from the iTunes store. In addition to the laptop, drum machine and some shiny effects pedals that I hadn't seen before, he also donned a pair of brand new sneakers that he got from Foot Locker earlier that week.

The set ended like it began, with another improv featuring the same drum loop. In between, we were treated to a selection of the band's greatest hits. It was blistering hot in the club: the spotlights reflected brightly off the sweat that streamed down the musicians' backs, fronts and instruments. Mauro used the curtains behind the stage to wipe the sweat off his face, Craig swiped it off with his hand and then flung it into the audience, and Bert and Rudy just stood there and took it like real men. Despite the oppressive heat, the guys played a pretty long set, cranking out one pop classic after another and larding them with a few improvs. Highlights included "Disconnected", "Shanty", "Not Even Mutiny" and a funny take on "Lower the masterfader". A good show, which was well worth the dehydration.

The weekend after, Tip Toe Topic performed at the Cargo Zomerbar in Park Spoor Noord. The bar is located in a big-ass hangar in the middle of the park, but most people chose to stay outside, where they could sit in the comfy chairs. This meant that Tip Toe Topic got to enjoy the hangar's natural reverberation to its fullest, with only a handful of people actually approaching the stage to watch the show. Other than that, the audience consisted of a few kids who were skateboarding and bicycling inside the hangar. A sad sight to behold!

Saar and Elko tried to make the best of it anyway. They played a set which consisted mostly of familiar material, but which did include one new cover, and one or two new songs of their own. The show was a bit sloppy, though -- Saar was all too well aware of this and blamed it on a lack of sleep. Combined with the less than ideal circumstances, this made the gig one of the band's less memorable ones. Better luck next time!

Sjoerd "Maes Pils" Bruyl and his band Black Cassette played a show at the Spiegeltent a while back. It was good. The guys introduced a couple of new songs, during one of which Pascal traded his bass for an organ. Other than that it was a greatest hits show as usual, although "Family Friend" was notably missing from the set list. All songs, new and old, were loaded as always with crazy hot guitar riffage, so it's no wonder Sjoerd needs to crawl inside a refrigerator to cool down!

The night after, I Love Sarah played a show at Café Video. The opening act was a solo performance by Toon Callier (of Fritzi und Heidl fame). Toon performed the electric guitar composition "Trash Tv Trance" by Fausto Romitelli. This piece was based around loops and mixed semi-recognizable guitar playing with all sorts of interesting noise effects. As an example, one of the sounds was created by pressing an electric shaver against the guitar strings. Good stuff, or as they say: art-wank from the top plank!

I Love Sarah played all their usual commercial successes, the least old of which was "Baby Croco". In between the moments of rocking, Jeroen took humorous stabs at -- to name but a few -- Team William, Rye Jehu and the club next door to Video (which is Roerkuip, where an I Love Sarah gig during the Gentse Feesten had to be cancelled due to miscommunication). Furthermore, all the people who don't own a record player were also mocked, and rightly so! We were also given valuable lessons in drumming technique, including the golden tip of not wearing overly pointy shoes. The guys played "Braken Koffie Braken Lasagne" as an encore, announcing beforehand that they would strive for an anticlimactic ending -- has Jeroen been hanging out with Mauro too much? But lo and behold: despite the very simple and incredibly catchy lyrics, there was precious little singing along during the finale. Jeroen answered the audience's silence with a long stream of random insults, and then gulped down another wodka tonic to soothe the bitter pain of disappointment.

The Strumpets played a show in their four-piece band line-up last Thursday at the Homey bar. The gig took place outside in front of the bar, but thanks to the tent-like umbrella construction that protected the band and the audience from potential rain showers, the atmosphere was still pretty intimate. The band divided their cosmic voyage into two legs of about half an hour each, with a short break for refreshments in between. Apparently interstellar travel makes you thirsty! The set list included all the band's classic pop ditties, as well as one song which was sung by Alex and which he dedicated to his girlfriend. Presumably this means that he wrote it as well -- it at least sounded a bit different from the other songs. The guys also played their slide-guitarless cover version of "Sleepwalk", which is still (after hearing it two whole times) lots of fun. Another fine performance, in other words, by the underground Beach Boys of the new millennium!

Sometimes you can tell that a gig is going to be brown before the first note has even been played. Such an occasion occurred last Friday at Scheld'apen. There were a number of factors that lead me to have the highest of expectations for the show that was about to take place. First of all, the name of the band was "Master Musicians Of Bukkake". Gee whiz! Furthermore, the musicians were all dressed in colorful capes, funny white hats and black veils that obscured their faces. Additionally, the singer was dressed up as a Yeti! These guys could have just stood there without playing any music at all, and it would still have been entertaining!

They did play music, though, and how! The band integrally performed their latest album "Totem One" in all its cum-drenched splendor. It's a very psychedelic album indeed, with monotonous drones, hypnotizing chants and simple but effective guitar riffs all thrown into the mix. The record is excellent in its own right, but the live performance definitely kicked the brownness up another notch, resulting in one of the most brilliant gigs I've seen in quite a while. As far as I'm concerned, unless something really really chocolaty happens, the 2009 award for "brownest gig of the year" has already been won!

Last Wednesday, the evil Creature With The Atom Brain emerged from the sewers and broke into Bar Mondial. The club was crowded and hot, which I reckon are ideal circumstances for a CWTAB show. The guys played a pretty relaxed set, with mostly the same tunes as other recent gigs. The relaxed atmosphere may have had something to do with it, but I thought "Darker than a dungeon" was one of the definite highlights this time around. The band saved "Lonely light" for the encores this time, and followed it up with the obligatory "My Flag". To add a new twist to the song, however, Jan and Michiel each played it in a different key, thus adding a whole new dimension to it and making it sound very avant garde!

On Saturday, we travelled to the Outer Rim to attend the Kortrijk Congé festival. This took place at the Evolis site, which is intended for office buildings but is currently empty apart from four wind turbines. At the foot of one of these turbines, a number of performances took place under the name "Desert Sessions", the goal being to recreate the atmosphere of a generator party. One of the acts was The Chair At The Core Of The Planet, who played The Riff Of The Chair At The Core Of The Planet a large number of times (which is good, because it is an excellent riff and the guys play it very well). The band had been expanded with two new members: Jef Cuypers on guitar, and a keyboard player who was a complete stranger to me. Mauro wielded a shiny new double-neck guitar, which of course meant instant rock 'n roll! When the guys decided that The Riff had been played often enough, they tried to steer the show towards a graceful ending with little success. Mauro put his guitar away and explained to the audience that an anticlimax is cooler than a climax these days, and encouraged them to boo him until he was brought to tears. Stéphane and Alain, meanwhile, hadn't quite caught on to the anticlimax idea, and stubbornly kept repeating the drone that they were playing before things started to go south. When Mauro was satisfied with the booing, he instructed them to "just stop", which they then finally did. Peculiar show, but it really is quite a good riff!

The Porn Bloopers recently made an appearance at the Camping Zoid festival, which took place halfway between Scheld'apen and the Sinksenfoor. A difficult place to be, so it would seem, because the attendance was less than spectacular. The festival's ambitions seemed to be set pretty high, though, because they had a stage that would have been big enough to hold both the band and the few dozen people that made up the audience.

The band went off in a slightly different direction than we've come to expect from them. Instead of the dirty rock tunes of yore, they now played -- brace yourselves -- pop music! Complete with vocal harmonies! Well, I say "harmonies", but they might need a bit more practice here and there. Things will probably fall into place after a while, but for now I still consider "Emancipation" to be the band's magnum opus.

The night after, we saw Helder play a solo set on a small market square in Zandvliet. Alarmingly, we arrived just before 7 PM, when the show was scheduled to start, to find that the square held even less spectators per square meter than the Camping Zoid festival site. Luckily, people started to creep out of their houses once they heard the noise, so the place didn't stay empty for too long. Helder's next album has been in the pipeline for quite a while now, which meant that I could already sing along to most of the songs that he described as "new". Not that I'm complaining, though: they're good singalongs! In addition to a good selection of Helder's own tunes, one of the highlights of the show was a great rendition of TLC's "No Scrubs" on detuned banjo. Way better than the original! Furthermore, just being able to take this picture made the trip to Zandvliet more than worthwhile!

At the first of their "Four Fridays" last month, the Braakland crew had quite a busy evening plotted out. No less than five acts were to put their thing down. In ascending order of brownness, which also just so happened to be the order in which the acts played, these were: Teuk Yuri & Henri Vanuffelen, Liesa Van der Aa, Capsule Redux, Dez Mona ft. Sjoerd and Sukilove. Of these, only the latter two could keep me entertained from start to finish.

Dez Mona played in the hangar behind the main buildings. Gregory stood away from his microphone at the beginning, flaunting his powerful voice and using the hangar as an analog echo unit. Nicolas and he started the show as a duo, but later turned it into a hot, sweaty and especially hairy threesome when they were joined by Sjoerd on guitar and backing vocals. The guys played a couple of new tunes, as well as a particularly memorable and gripping rendition of "Flawless Daughter".

Another trend that could be observed in the line up was a very high degree of loop station dependency. Sukilove, in fact, was the only band that didn't use a loop station at all. Pascal realized this, and tried to make the band seem less out of place by describing Stoffel and Tim as a sort of "mechanical loop station". Their set was pretty good in all its loopless glory, with most of the songs taken from the band's forthcoming (and undoubtedly platinum-bound) album. It's a crying shame that not more people came out to see the show, though. The guys try so hard to sell out, and it just doesn't work! Maybe they should have hired Timbaland to produce the album...

On the third of the four Fridays, the first act we caught was Gerrit Valckenaers, whose performance was being recorded for a DVD release. I will say only two things about this. The first is that it's going to be a really good DVD, and the second is that I'm being sarcastic. We actually ran out after about three songs, it was that good. Gerrit gave the audience a brief explanation of how he liked to record various sounds out in the field and then put them together to create songs with different layers. Onions have layers too, Gerrit, and they make people cry!

The next performance was by Het Zesde Metaal, which was also pretty forgettable. After that, however, DAAU played in the café and single-handedly made the evening worthwhile. Well, technically it may have been eight-handedly: the band appeared as a quartet (cello, clarinet, accordion and bass), and I don't think any of their instruments could be played very well with less than two hands. The guys played a completely acoustic set full of new songs which sounded absolutely great!

Finally, the evening ended in the hangar with an improv performance by Eric Thielemans, Rudy Trouvé, Lynn Cassiers and Ephraïm Cielen. Eric handled the drums, Rudy played guitar, Lynn did vocals and electronica, and Ephraïm played guitar and provided quadraphonic sound effects. He did the latter by walking around the hangar (and consequently also around the audience) and then banging on stuff that he found in his path. Fun! The show was accompanied by visuals which I suspect were made by Rudy, although I haven't actually confirmed this. It was a good show, but it was definitely too long. The DVD with the visuals was almost an hour, and the guys tacked on another pretty long encore after it was done. To my taste, around 45 minutes would have been the sweet spot, so if any of the musicians should happen to read this: just play 25% faster next time and you'll be golden!

It's a busy month at Molens van Orshoven. They're organizing a series of concerts on four consecutive Fridays, and decided to kick this series off with a concert on the Monday preceding the first of the four Fridays. The line up on this Monday consisted of Pawlowski and I Love Sarah, in that order.

Pawlowski's gig was to be recorded for a future live album release, which you can expect no later than Christmas of 2025, and maybe even before then. For some obscure reason the band played with all the house lights on, which was odd to say the least. I'm not a fan of fluorescent lights in any circumstance, but least of all at a rock show. To add to the general strangeness of the show, Mauro repeatedly urged his minions not to rock too hard, but rather to strive for a certain mediocrity. A most peculiar gig -- not their best one, but certainly one that I won't soon forget!

After the show, Jeroen moved his drumkit to the café, where he and Rutger laid the shit down hard all over again. Previous reports of the band's Casio problems being over turned out to be false: both the Casio and the loop station crapped out on the guys during the finale of "De Gokchinees". Apart from this slight anticlimax, however, there was precious little reason to complain about the band's performance. Jeroen's banter was sometimes answered with awkward silence from the audience, but he didn't let that get to him. Speaking of banter, the word of the evening was "kankerhond", for reasons I have yet to uncover. I don't know if anyone took it personal or not, but if they did then this might explain the awkward silence. Of course, it might also have been because the guys were bold enough to play "InBev Awoe" right there in the lion's den! Whatever the case, I Love Sarah certainly proved themselves a worthy headliner for the evening.

El Guapo Stuntteam are calling it quits, and played for the last time ever at Trix. For real this time, they promise! Unless someone drives another truck of money to their door, probably. Before they laid the club to waste, however, the crowd was warmed up by no less than three opening acts: Bear Wolf, To The Bone and the Seatsniffers.

Bear Wolf started over half an hour late because the bass player's zipper got stuck while he was taking a preventive pee before the show. The band consists of two lads and a lass, all of whom had tattoos and monobrows -- although I'm not 100% sure if the former were real. The lass handled most of the vocals and did the drumming, one of the lads played guitar and did the rest of the vocals, and the other lad played bass whilst looking incredibly bored. Their show was amusing for a little while, but not for much longer than a little while, so you can't really blame the guy.

If nothing else, To The Bone demonstrated fine taste in music by playing Ween's "Falling Out" during sound check and ending their set with a cover of "Dr. Rock". They were assisted during the latter by Younes Faltakh, whom you may know as the CEO of the Hickey Underworld. To The Bone also covered the Desert Sessions tune "I Wanna Make It Wit Chu". Despite their apparent love for songs with falsetto vocals, however, they had a bit of trouble actually hitting the high notes. Having said that, the band's own songs were mostly falsetto-free and compensated for this with guitar riffs that were so brown they sounded African.

The Seatsniffers were neither awesome nor awful. The guys worked until the sweat streamed down their backs (especially their drummer, Piet Sniffer), but after half an hour or so I got the impression that I'd just about heard it all. Not a bad attempt by a long shot, but to my tastes they were only the third-brownest band of the evening.

There was much excitement and anticipation in the air by the time El Guapo Stuntteam took the stage, as well as a distinct whiff of sweat and stale beer. The guys took care of this by opening with "Battles Across The Stereo Spectrum" and bringing out Captain Catastrophy right at the start of the show. After the Captain had done his thing, all that was left in the air was the thick smell of kerosine. With that taken care of, the band quickly went to work to create a whole new whiff of sweat and stale beer, fouler and more penetrating than before. The mosh pit was soon in full swing, and crowd surfers passed by at an unseen rate.

It's a bit odd to hear a band say "this is a new song" at their last concert ever, but there you have it. Not only did they have new songs, the stuntteam even had one last new album on sale. Cedric urged everyone to purchase it (and as much other merchandise as they could afford), to ensure that the band would have plenty of money to buy drugs with for the foreseeable future.

Cedric also urged people not to despair, for even after El Guapo Stuntteam was gone, other bands would surely follow in their footsteps. After a moment of pause, he named the Killbots as possible successors, and sarcastically added that Antwerp still had A Brand and Triggerfinger. "But we were the best", he added with justified confidence as Captain Catastrophy set himself ablaze for the second time that night. It's true: their flaming guitar licks were as brown as an ounce of chocolate that you've let melt in your hand and then moulded into the shape of a winkle!

This is a lesson that Seatsniffers front man Walter Broes learned the hard way when he came on stage during the encores to have a guitar duel of sorts with Cedric. Poor Walter! Even in their final minutes, El Guapo Stuntteam took no prisoners. They will be missed, unless of course they continue on their trend of doing a "last show ever" in every major Flemish city, in which case I look forward to seeing them in Gent!

Last week, Trix organized an event aimed squarely at lovers of contemporary alternative rock. The line up was thus: Drums Are For Parades first pummeled the audience until they could stand no more, then Birds That Change Color allowed them to recover a bit, only for Creature With The Atom Brain to pummel them again.

Once you can get past thinking of the beard as the main attraction, Drums Are For Parades have plenty of qualitative heavy metal on offer for your headbanging pleasure. Not only that, but lovers of shiny, sweaty man-flesh are bound to appreciate the band's drummer! However, if drums are in fact, as they claim, for parades, then why weren't these guys parading? They could be the land's first heavy metal marching band, travelling from town to town to spread panic and fear!

Birds That Change Color, for some reason, seemed to be a better match for the AB club (where I first saw them) than for Trix. It may have been simply because my ears were still ringing from the damage done to them by Drums Are For Parades. Nonetheless, the band still played an enjoyable set. Whereas they appeared as a duo at the AB, they now appeared as a four-piece band, with drums and synths added to the acoustic and electric guitars. The singer's peculiar accent alone makes this band more than worth checking out!

CWTAB's set was very similar to the one they played at the AB some weeks ago, and just as good. The songs were mostly off Transylvania, with highlights including "The Lonesome Whistle", "I Rise The Moon" and of course the album's super awesome title track (with which the guys ended the show). The encore was once again an epic rendition of "My Flag", which ended with a few minutes of gratuitous guitar noodling by Michiel after Aldo had left the stage. Gratuitous guitar noodling is always good!

To help itself in its quest for a new home, Magasin4 organized a benefit last weekend at the Ecole de la Batellerie. This proved to be an excellent location. They had some stalls in the courtyard where you could buy sausage rolls and other regional delicacies, and in one of the rooms they had a small music fair where one could purchase the latest and greatest Japanese progressive rock releases and more! Finally, another room hosted a stage where, among others, I Love Sarah and Lightning Bolt performed. The plaster was falling down from the ceiling even before Lightning Bolt played, though, so I'm not sure if the building is still structurally sound after what it's been put through.

I Love Sarah did everything en Français, pouring plenty of energy in interaction with the audience. Hardcore fans and faithful SoundsBrown readers may remember that Jeroen dealt a deadly blow to his Casio during another recent gig at De Singel. Thanks to the hugely successful release of "Isle Of Sarah", however, the band are loaded with cash and thus were able to purchase a new Casio with a complete keyboard and with all other options. The guys rocked hard as always, with highlights of the set including "Baby Croco" and "Mauro".

Lightning Bolt played for about an hour, but it still felt like I was only just getting warmed up when it was over. As always, the mosh pit was in full swing pretty much from the first note to the last, the crowd was surfed, people got knocked into the drum kit every now and then, and the unprepared stuffed their fingers in their unprotected ears in the hope of preventing permanent damage. The guys kept the pace and the volume up until everyone was black and blue and soaked in their own sweat. The set ended with "Dracula Mountain" (which most of you will no doubt know better in Muse's version), a final blow after which the guys (or the drummer at least) had to give in to sheer exhaustion and call it a night.

On Wednesday night, the Strumpets played a show at Café de la Campine in front of a select audience. The gig started with just Alex and Miguel on stage, both on guitar. Later on, they were joined by Rob van Eelen and Aarn van Severen (who are also members of The Black Denver together with Alex) on drums and bass. With this expanded line-up, the guys were all set up to unfold their hit potential to its fullest!

One of the songs was about how Miguel was biking through town once and came across a little black dead cat. I didn't understand all of the lyrics, but I'm pretty sure I heard the word 'lobotomy' in there more than once. I can only hypothesize that this was the cause of death, but what kind of sick person would lobotomize a helpless little kitty?!? I hope Miguel found the guy that did it and gave him his comeuppance! But I digress. The guys also earned plenty of extra brownie points for playing a cover version of Santo & Johnny's timeless classic "Sleepwalk" and getting away with it. Another great show by the Strumpets, in other words. A guy behind the bar videotaped the whole thing, which means that a DVD release is not out of the question!

Peter Vermeersch seems to have developed a fetish for anagrams recently. Flat Earth Society played a show at the Beursschouwburg last week to present their new CD "Cheer Me, Perverts!", which is an anagram of Vermeersch's name. It doesn't end there: look through the track listing and you will find anagrams of "Margaret Thatcher", "Benito Mussolini" and "Bin Laden". And those are just the ones that I know because Vermeersch gave them away. Peter made it obvious what the goal of the concert was: the first thing he said when the band took the stage was "we're Flat Earth Society and we're here to sell you CDs". Well, it worked on me!

The show was most excellent, as FES shows tend to be. The entire setlist consisted of new material: I think they played pretty much the whole album, plus one song ("Betwixt and between") which isn't on any album yet, but which Peter ensured us would find its way onto some release by approximately the year 2012. Other highlights included "Blind Inside", which was announced as "a composition for flute, supported by the Flemish government". The show was good enough to make me go back for seconds last Wednesday at the Arenberg. It's probably just a matter of time until the band members report me to the police for stalking!

Coffee or long drink? This was the dilemma that faced Jani Jani when I Love Sarah played at De Singel on Saturday. The show took place in the artist foyer, and it was pretty short because Jeroen's Casio crapped out on him. This forced the guys to dish out an extra helping of guitar and drum noise during the grand finale of "De Gokchinees", which was pretty spectacular! In spite of the gig's short length, the guys were confident that they had proven their worth, so they wheeled out a whole shopping cart full of merchandise for the legions of newly convinced fans. After this brief commercial intermission, however, the cart was quickly wheeled out of the way again to make room for a crazy dance party!

I'm sure you're all very busy people and stuff, so to make things easier for you, SoundsBrown now has an RSS feed. Subscribe to it using your feed reader of choice and you'll be notified when the site is updated. It's like magic, only better!

There's nothing like eardrum-piercing loud noise to end a lazy Sunday and help you get ready for the start of another working week. Swiss noise rockers Monno and Japanese metal sensation Zeni Geva happily delivered the goods last Sunday at the AB club.

Monno kicked off the festivities with some spooky but gentle noise emanating from a laptop. Even though you could see it coming from miles away, I was still caught off guard when the other instruments fell in with a monstrously heavy bass drone. While the laptop and a saxophone continued to dish out big wallops of noise, the bass and drums propelled the whole thing forward at a slow but determined pace. These guys were so loud that they sent a warm, vibraty feeling all through my guttiwuts, but after a while I had just about heard what I needed to hear. To my tastes, the set was at about 10 minutes too long.

Zeni Geva's set, by comparison, was at least 10 minutes too short. Their current touring line-up includes drummer Yoshida Tatsuya, also of Ruins fame and one of my personal heroes. For this reason, the show was a winner before it had even begun, because where there is Yoshida Tatsuya, there are obscure CD and DVD releases to be purchased at the merchandise table! Furthermore, the gig itself was so brown that it made my poop hole ache with delight! Singer KK Null's Japanese take on heavy metal grunts was great, the guitar riffs were totally badass, and Tatsuya was his usual rocking self on drums and backing vocals. Both Null and Tatsuya occasionally rocked out on mini Kaoss pads, which was also fun. I couldn't help but feel sorry for guitarist Mitsuru Tabata, though. Immediately after the show, he had to rush back to his post at the merch table, where he was greeted by a pack of hungry wolves who snatched things from the table as fast as he could lay them out. He looked really stressed out, but hey: if he wanted it to be quieter at the merch stand, he should have tried harder to make gig suck!

Up until now, the little guy at the bottom right corner of this site linked to a page with some random old photos on it. I got rid of that old crap, so from now on, clicking on the little guy will take you to the brand new "Mr. Brown's music" page! On this page I will bundle all of my own musical outings. This includes my yearly Christmas singles, of course, but I am also launching the one and only "SoundsBrown Protcast". You can subscribe to it via iTunes or some other podcast receiver, but you can also just play or download the first episode straight from this site. Protcast 1 contains six songs, which together form the "Broodje Poep" EP. The download link and the track list can be found on the music page. Please have a listen and let me know what you think in the recently repaired forum!

Creature With The Atom Brain played a show at the AB club on Wednesday night. The opening act was Birds That Change Color, a singer/songwriter duo of sorts. The singer first played part of the set alone, on an acoustic guitar. Later on, he was joined by another dude who accompanied him on electric guitar. I usually think of "singer/songwriter" as a dirty word, but this guy was not your average Jasper Erkens. He played some sort of psychedelic seventies folk which was most enjoyable. One of the highlights was a song called "Strange Creatures". The singer explained that it was about scary monsters and a Spanish hotel filled with Germans, and lo and behold: that's exactly what it sounded like!

Creature With The Atom Brain, bringers of hard rock and good times, proudly presented their new album "Transylvania". Before the show, visuals were projected behind the stage which showed the band members appearing in various dark and sinister locations -- very ominous! After their promising tryout at Novonov, the guys now confirmed that their new material is indeed shit hot. The album's title song is one particularly bad mofo, clocking in at more than 6 minutes and proving that a single good riff is really all you need. The rest of the set also consisted of mostly new songs, and they all kicked ass six ways from Sunday. The atomic age has only just begun!

Last Saturday, Zaal België hosted a performance of "Cinema Soloriens & The Cosmo Drama", a series of experimental short films by James Harrar accompanied by live music. The live band includes Harrar himself as well as Marshall Allen, whose main claim to fame is that he plays in the Sun Ra Arkestra. I personally felt that the artistic merit and entertainment value of the films was highly questionable, and unfortunately the soundtrack wasn't much to write home about either. Maybe I'm just not intellectual enough to "get it", but I found the whole affair to be part annoying (the vocal bits in particular) and part boring (all other bits in particular). Also, I would like to urge the drummer to keep his shirt buttoned up on future occasions. If I want to see sweaty, wobbly man-flesh, I'll unbutton my own shirt, thanks.

Thankfully, it wasn't actually Marshall Allen and his posse who brought me to Hasselt in the first place. The opening act was Voodoo Trance Sound System, a project by Eric Thielemans, Chris Corsano and Jeroen Stevens. The three amigos used drums, loads of percussion elements and various other contraptions to put their thing down. Corsano had a particularly interesting toy: a drum with a string mounted over it that he could play with a violin bow. The guys also used effects units to turn some of their percussion sounds into slightly more abstract noise. All this was backed up by repetitive rhythms, which explained the "trance" part in the band's name. Because the guys played non-stop for about 40 minutes it's hard to point out highlights in the show, but I do remember one particularly good bit where Jeroen played on Eric's bongos while Eric himself alternated between muted and open beats on his toms. This was the trio's last show, unfortunately, so if you missed them, you lose!

I never thought I'd live to see the day when I would go to a club that has bouncers and a metal detector by the entrance, but yesterday was that day. The club was Bab Mansour, which describes itself as an "oriental dance café". Between the metal detector, the bouncers and the fact that you can't look inside from the street, it's not the kind of place I'd walk into on my own initiative. Yesterday, however, Der Phixer and the Strumpets provided a compelling reason to take the plunge. The club looks really cool: it has comfy seats, a raised dance floor, mirrors on the walls and blacklights on the ceilings. It also looks like a mafia den, which only adds to its charm.

Der Phixer (a.k.a. Stijntje of Porn Bloopers and Tim Vanhamel fame) played an acoustic solo set. He played a handful of compositions of his own, but the majority of his songs were covers. Victimized artists included Mauro, Beck, Daniel Johnston and Dr. Dog. For the Dr. Dog song, Stijn was joined on stage by his fellow Porn Blooper Yannick, who did an epic parlando over the end of the song. It all sounded mighty nice, but unfortunately the crowd didn't seem to be paying much attention and was often louder than the music.

The Strumpets are Miguel Sosa on laptop, guitar, vocals and keyboards, and Alex Van Herk on guitar. Also, at one point during the show, Teun de Lange came on stage to do a guest appearance. The song Miguel and Alex were playing at that time was not the song in which Teun wanted to do his guest appearance, but when Teun de Lange wants to do a guest appearance, Teun de Lange does a guest appearance! Hence, Miguel and Alex had no choice but to cut their song short so that they could start the one that Teun wanted to do. They don't call Teun the "Chuck Norris of European jazz" for nothing! But I digress. With their cheesy synth sounds and Miguel's distinctive vocals, the Strumpets' music somehow fit Bab Mansour perfectly. Their set full of heart-felt pop ballads left none untouched -- in fact, Miguel is so real that even the way he tunes his guitar can move you! Hail to the Strumpets!

Sukilove played a show at the Parochiecentrum in Tienen last Saturday. The neighbourhood seemed pretty dead for a Saturday night: the streets were so empty that I was reminded of the movie "I Am Legend". I half expected to find mannequins in the middle of the street, or to hear menacing growls emerge from darkened doorways. When we arrived at the venue, luckily, we were relieved to find that it was nor completely empty, nor inhabited by flesh-eating mutants (although I did have some doubts about the sound guy).

Sukilove's line up was slightly non-standard: Toon wasn't there because he had to play at the Sportpaleis with his other band. Furthermore, former member Pieter Van Buyten, who left Sukilove a few years ago to focus on his roadie career, stood in for Tim on bass. To make sure that he didn't feel too much like coming home, however, Pieter was not given a microphone. You could tell by the look on his face how much he resented this situation. All bitterness and intrigue aside, though, the show was actually really good. The setlist consisted largely of new songs. "Choose Your Gods" (with a badass guitar solo by Sjoerd) was one of my personal favourites, but they were all good! I heard through the grapevine that the new album won't be out until September, so here's hoping for some more live shows until then to tide me over!

This year's Sonic City festival, curated by Dälek, opened last Friday at Budascoop. Three short movies by Cameron Jamie were shown, followed by a live performance by Mauro. The main attraction in the movies was the soundtrack, which used music by the Melvins. It was all previously released stuff, though -- nothing written especially for the films. The movies themselves were nothing spectacular, unfortunately. The first one, about some sort of backyard wrestling event, was tolerable. The second one was halloween-themed and was downright boring. Only the last one, about the highly disturbing Austrian version of Zwarte Piet, left a lasting impression.

Mauro had an interesting selection of gear set up in the bar, where he played after the movies were done. He had a thumb piano, a lap steel guitar, some drums and a load of effects units. He laid down a layer of noise on top of which he read a selection from his poetry bundle "Tonelen van kalme waan". The highlight of the 20 minute spectacle was the end: Mauro suddenly whipped out his infamous cornet and started to blow on it to no avail. He tried and tried, but no sound emerged from the horn apart from the rushing of air. When he finally managed to squeeze a single hesitant note out of his instrument a few minutes later, he triumphantly declared that to be the end of the gig. Opinions were divided: was a simple lack of skill at the root of Mauro's inability to turn brass into sound, or did he purposely plan the whole thing in advance? One person in the audience was obviously in the former camp, as he declared with a loud "You suck!".

Hulkk cancelled their scheduled appearance at Trix last Sunday, and so the line up for the evening was reduced to the Experimental Tropic Blues Band and Bob Log III. Coincidentally, this is the same line up as on that fateful evening five years ago when I was first introduced to Bob Log III at the Botanique.

I wrote back then that the Experimental Tropic Blues Band sounded neither tropic, nor experimental -- a statement that still holds true to this day. I have, however, grown more appreciative of the band since their monumentally marginal performance at the 2006 Motherfucker Festival in Mol. Even though I described their music as painfully boring afterwards, I still remember the show vividly. One can only admire the relentless enthusiasm with which these guys put their thing down in even the most dire circumstances. One might even argue that dire circumstances are the best circumstances in which to see the Experimental Tropic Blues Band!

At Trix, the circumstances were only dire to the extent that various bits of drum kit kept falling off the drum riser, but the guys still made the best of it. After a good half hour or so of rocking hard, they gave the audience the chance to vote for one of two cover songs that they would end their set with. The winner was a song whose title sounded like "Pussy stank", although I won't rule out that I simply need to get my mind out of the gutter. Singer/guitarist Boogie Snake sang this one from between the audience, and urged his companions Dirty Wolf and Devil D'Inferno (these are all their real names, by the way) to conclude the song with ten beats on the same chord. They complied, which prompted Snake to ask for another one hundred beats. They seemed a bit more reluctant this time, but went for it nonetheless. Snake then shared with the audience that he could ask for a thousand, but that that would take too long. A shame, because as far as I know, I Love Sarah holds the record with 142 beats. Let the competition begin!

Bob Log III came on stage in a suit, but dropped his pants after the first song to reveal a golden jumpsuit underneath. Bob played tunes from his latest album called "My Shit Is Perfect", although of course his classic hit singles also weren't overlooked! Bob's outrageous guitar playing skills have not diminished over the years, as he happily demonstrated by playing the fastest song in the world. In keeping with tradition, Bob invited some local females to sit on his knee (his very comfortable golden knee) during "I Want Your Shit On My Leg". He also played "Boob Scotch", of course, even though I did not see anyone dip any boobs (or other appendages) in anyone's scotch (or other beverage). A pity, but even without boobies, Bob's show was as brown as ever!

A big wet one goes out to Pascal for pointing out that the forum was broken. It should be working again, so get spamming!

According to the latest scuttlebutt last week, Jan Wijgers had shaved off his beard! Obviously, there was no choice but to go check it out at Novonov on Saturday, where the Chewbacca of contemporary rock music would be performing with Creature With The Atom Brain. Although the rumours turned out to be false (Jan was as hairy as ever), the gig was well worth the voyage to Hoboken. The guys have a new album coming out Real Soon Now, and unleashed some of the new material onto the jam-packed venue (which means at least thirty or forty people). The last song ("Trans", according to the setlist) was particularly cool: a long psychedelic trip, lingering around the same riff for minutes on end. Just the way I like it! Aldo also demonstrated a newly found talent: he can not only sing and play guitar, he also shakes a mean maraca! It looked like the guys weren't in the mood for an encore, but after minutes of perseverent applauding, they finally came back after all and treated us to an 8 minute rendition of "My Flag". Epic!

Carla Kihlstedt, of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum fame, visited Vooruit last week with her band 2 Foot Yard. For some reason I expected that Erika Stucky and Sina would be the opening act, but it turned out the evening was a double bill, and that 2 Foot Yard were on first. Talk about an anticlimax!

2 Foot Yard are a trio featuring Marika Hughes on cello, Shazhad Ismaily on drums, guitar and morbid jokes, and Kihlstedt on violin. The band were also joined for two songs by a clarinet player whose name I forgot but which sounded French. Musically, the band borrows from a wide array of styles, ranging from pop to creepy noise to hard f'ing rock. Thanks to the excellent songs and the amusing banter in between them, there was not a dull moment to be had! Unfortunately, Kihlstedt might not be coming back to Europe with any of her bands in the near future, as she has a brownie in the oven.

The second act of the evening was a different affair altogether. Sucky and Sina are two Swiss chicks who sing in Swiss German. They were more of a cabaret act, with spoken word and videos in addition to the music. Unfortunately, I found the music and visuals to be bland, the dialogues to be anything but funny (although I was clearly with the minority on this front), and the yodeling to be unimpressive. I'll stick to my Bobbejaan albums, thank you very much! The ladies' only saving grace was the horn player who joined them on stage. He wore a rather silly hat, but he had some neat tricks up his sleeve. Apart from that, though, the whole show was just utterly boring. Putting two mountain goats in front of a microphone would probably result in a better show!

The latest monthly TrixTrax evening at Trix featured Missing Coins and The Unholy Tree. The former are a Dutch indie-pop band. Their music is decent, if unsurprising, but they are held back by their singer's lack of stage presence and vocal reach. He plays a mean tambourine, though, and he made a most cunning attempt to save face by name-dropping I Love Sarah during the gig!

The Unholy Tree sounds more like a name for a doom metal band to me, but they are in fact more of a doom country band. Fine by me, of course: I'm open to all kinds of doom! The guys need a bit of practice on their vocal harmonies -- especially the bass/keyboard player as far as I could tell. On the other hand, they more than made up for this in other areas. I was particularly entertained by the guitar solo duel between front man Jorg Strecker and The Guitarist Who Shall Remain Nameless Because I'm Too Lazy To Look Up His Name On The Interwebs.

The night after, we attended a performance of Tuning People's "Worm" project at Scheld'apen. The worm in question is a big-ass metal construction that's stuffed from end to end with countless noise-making bits and bobs. It was installed in the hangar behind the main Scheld'apen building, and the audience were seated around it on rolling desk chairs. The worm is also on wheels, and its metal frame has hinges so that it can be positioned in different shapes. Inside the worm are two tuning people, who operate the noise-making bits and bobs and also push the contraption around every now and then. They deliberately steer the worm into the audience, so people have to get out of its way or face certain death! The performance lasts for half an hour or so, during which people can move around to see the worm from all angles while listening to the hypnotizing loops and noises emanating from it. Jolly good!

Sir Richard Bishop played a show at Netwerk in Aalst a few weeks ago, on the evening before the carnaval. It was therefore with a certain sense of dread that we made our way to Aalst. Thankfully the area where Netwerk is located seemed fairly quiet, although it was draped in a distinctly ominous atmosphere. It felt a bit as if the town was preparing for an invasion of flesh-eating zombies, but I digress.

The opening act was Ignatz, who played standing up (a rare occasion, so I'm told). He jangled monotonously on his guitar while mumbling monotonously into his microphone. You might now be wondering if the gig wasn't too monotonous, but it wasn't. It was the kind of monotony that doesn't easily get boring (at least not to me). However, although it all sounded pretty good, I couldn't help but think that it was all a little bit easy.

This was a sentiment that I did not have about Sir Richard Bishop's set at all. Bishop (or Sir Dick as his friends call him) played acoustic guitar pieces that showed tremendous skill and great compositional prowess. With influences ranging from flamenco to The Wizard Of Oz, Bishop left no strings untouched! Being somewhat of an aspiring guitarist myself, I could only watch and weep as Bishop rubbed his talent in my face the way a black porn actor might rub his giant penis in my face if I were auditioning for a gay porn movie. Woe is me!

Last Friday, the AB hosted the second in a series of RAT Records events, with performances by Stahlmus Delegation and Bruno Vansina & Band. The former is an improv outfit featuring Teun Verbruggen, Jozef Dumoulin, Mauro Pawlowski, Pierre Vervloesem and the mysterious Jean D.L. -- in other words: Othin Spake and then some. The band also sounded like Othin spake and then some. Mauro started off kneeled by an assortment of stomp boxes, producing lots of noise and screeches. Later on, he switched to his guitar and produced slightly more recognizable sounds. Jean D.L. started the gig on guitar and pummeled it until all the strings were broken, at which point he just walked away. Teun accompanied all this with the appropriate drum madness, of course. Jozef (keys) and Pierre (bass) always looked busy, but from where I was standing their contribution mostly seemed to get lost in the barrage of noise. The gig also came with live visuals, created on the spot by two people standing by the side of the stage. As can happen with improv gigs, the brownness levels were somewhat variable. There were a few dull moments, but also some really good ones. The last piece the guys played was a particularly juicy one.

Bruno Vansina and his combo also got the juices flowing, albeit from entirely different orifices. The band consists of Peter Vandenberghe on keys, Pierre Vervloesem on bass, Teun Verbruggen on drums, Gilles Mortiaux on guitar and of course Vansina himself on saxes, flute and vocals. Note that the guitarist is the only member whose last name doesn't start with the letter 'V'. This creates a strong imbalance in the band's feng-shui, which shall only be repaired if they recruit Steve Vai. While he's recruiting, Vansina might also want to consider engaging the services of a professional vocalist. Even though their particular blend of funk rock was hardly my cup of tea, the musicianship in the band left little to be desired except for Vansina's singing. He tried to cover up his limited range by singing with funny voices a lot of the time, and this got old really quickly. No brownies for Bruno!

Earlier this week, Helder played a full band show at BAFF. I didn't even know this venue existed before I learned that Helder would be playing there, which is a shame as it's really rather nice. It's small but very tall, with theatre seats below and three or four levels of galleries surrounding it above. The band played a great selection of tunes from the first two albums, as well as a bunch of newer ones (a third album is on its way). It all sounded great, the band was clearly having fun, and the audience loved it! At one point during the show, Helder announced that they had a surprise in store for us and that we should stay in our seats, after which they disappeared into the backstage. There was a sound of people stomping noisily up a flight of stairs, and the band re-emerged in the gallery above the stage on the first floor.

From there, they played a couple of acoustic songs. Gino used shakers and drumsticks for percussion (and even drummed on Helder's banjo a couple of times), and Toon and Pieter had an accordion and a double bass stashed away up there. This was tremendous fun -- in fact, Helder himself had so much fun that he forgot the lyrics to "On A Saturday Night" and also had to play the outro of the song twice because he couldn't stop laughing. After the acoustic intermezzo, the guys returned downstairs to shock and awe the audience with some serious rock shit that was really bloody loud compared to the acoustic bits. Finally, as an encore, Helder returned by himself to play a song standing in front of the stage, with just his ukulele. Totally bitchin' show!

The venue formerly known as Hof Ter Lo is no more: it has been assimilated by Trix. What was once just "Trix" is now "Trix Club", and what was once "Hof Ter Lo" is now "Trix Zaal". Apart from a fresh coat of paint in the entry hall, however, not much appears to have changed after this merger. In Trix Club they serve Stella and the toilets are free, in Trix Zaal they serve Maes and the toilets cost you money. It seems that the two venues are one in name only -- at least for now. It's a bit like Flanders and Wallonia, with Hof Ter Lo clearly being Wallonia.

Although the merger seems like a bit of a non-event to the outsider, Trix deemed the occasion fit for a celebration. This celebration came in the form of a two-day festival named "We are o'pen". The line-up wasn't exactly earth-shattering, but the price of admission was low enough to make up for this. On the first evening, the first band on was also one of the highlights. The Flying Horseman played brooding rock tunes that are sort of reminiscent of Woven Hand. Their singer has a great voice, and he can lay down some seriously freaked out guitar solos, too. Good stuff! The other highlight of the evening followed immediately afterward: Creature With The Atom Brain played a set packed with all new material. Although the sound left a bit to be desired, the new songs showed a lot of promise. The guys have a new album on the way already, and it sounds like it'll be a brown one! The other bands I caught on the first night were Ter Haar, It's A Musical and Star Club West. The latter would have probably bored me if they had played earlier in the evening when I was still awake, but they were just what I needed at 1 AM.

The second night was kicked off by Benny Zen. Peter was his usual adorable self ("the chemo is starting to work"), and the show was classy as always. They should have put "I Used To Be A Sinner" on the setlist if you ask me, but are you going to ask me? I expect not! The next band on were Work, who have The Flying Horseman's singer Bert Dockx in their ranks. He only plays guitar in Work, though -- the vocals are handled by some other dude. The two bands sound a lot alike, really, except for the two rather different vocal styles. Work's singer is a bit more overtly melodramatic, whereas I really preferred Dockx's relative subtlety.

After Work's gig, things went downhill very quickly. Notable admissions to the hall of shame were Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat and Motek. If Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat kissed the anus of a black cat, then Motek kissed the anus of a dead sperm whale that washed up on the beach and has been lying there for five days. I hoped that Peter Houben would have a special hammer for these abominations, but he was nowhere to be seen! It sure hurts when your heroes fail you...

Anyway, there was nothing left to do but wait for Mauro (who was only due at 1:30 AM) to make his appearance. It turned out, however, that the man was in a really shitty mood. He dug into the same repertoire as he did in Ukkel two days before, but the cheerfulness with which he played that gig was now very far gone. He came to Trix after playing an Othin Spake show elsewhere on the same night, so perhaps he felt that he had already rocked hard enough for the day? He made a big fuss over the sound in his monitors, and hardly talked to the audience. He did apologize for his foul temper, and the songs themselves were well-played as always, but the show was nowhere near as enjoyable as the one in Ukkel. Next time, Mauro, try to think of a happy place -- you'll feel better almost immediately. It works for me every time!

Last week, Mauro played a solo show at the Candelaershuys in Ukkel. In this delightfully small and cosy venue, he performed a selection of songs mostly by Hitsville Drunks and the Grooms. The gig was introduced by Mauro's laptop playing a few tunes from its iTunes library. Other than that, though, the only equipment used was a microphone, a guitar and an amp. Oh, and a bewilderingly large effects unit that Mauro himself didn't seem to have fully mastered yet.

Due to a slight wardrobe malfunction, the sight of Mauro's chest hair is now burned onto my retinas. Other than this, though, it was a splendid show. The tunes were all top-notch, and Mauro's amusing banter in between songs was great fun. He even whipped out his old "I can't whistle" joke, which still proved to work great after all these years!

The Klappei team invited Elko Blijweert once again to host the latest of their "Keuze van de muzikant" evenings. The concept behind these happenings, for those not in the know, is that a musician chooses a movie to be shown, gives a brief introduction beforehand to motivate his choice, and then plays a short solo set afterwards. Elko chose a gripping and emotional drama by John Woo, titled "Bullet In The Head".

Boasting a lush new haircut, Elko started his solo set by confessing that he was nervous as hell. He played five songs, one of which was his interpretation of a piece by Bach. Another one was an autobiographical song about how Elko goes downstairs from his flat on the 10th floor to take out the trash. Judging by the sound of the song, this seemingly mundane chore is in fact a thrilling journey filled with dangerous monsters and grand adventures! Knowing that Elko lives on Linkeroever explains a lot, I guess. Elko was asked to keep the volume down to match the intimate setting, but he played this last song standing up, in the hopes of compensating for this lack of volume and still conveying a sense of imposingness on the crowd. Good thinking! Oh, and Elko, if you're reading this: I think you need lubrication. To fix your squeaky wah pedal, I mean.

Les Blauw's recent show at Nova was good enough to go back for seconds, so we went to see them at Vertigo last week. No big surprises, but another very enjoyable show. Nuff said!

Two days later, we went to Scheld'apen to celebrate the release of I Love Sarah's first full-length album "Isle Of Sarah". The evening was opened by the art-wank quartet Zwerm. Zwerm consisted of three wankers on the stage and one wanker on a video that was projected behind the stage. The physically present wankers stood with their backs to the audience, presumably so they could keep eye contact with the projected wanker. They performed a piece called "Icons of Pleasure" by Nico Sall, which you can read all about here. It basically boiled down to a warm, monotonous drone on the same chord for about half an hour. It sounded very warm and full, and was remarkably entertaining given its abstract and uneventful nature. Great stuff -- hurrah for art-wank!

I Love Sarah played all their greatest hits in front of an extatic crowd. Some people got a little too extatic, but Jeroen showed hecklers no mercy! There was one woman in particular who laughed loudly and annoyingly in between or during the songs. Jeroen accused her of witchcraft and threatened to exorcise her with his filthy penis!

The show itself was all good, though. One of the highlights was an acoustic rendition of "the ballad" (the band's anthem, for the uninitiated), which was unexpectedly accompanied by backing vocals from certain members of the audience (I won't name them -- their egos are big enough as it is). Apart from this introspective moment, the guys rocked hard as ever. So hard, even, that Jeroen got in a trance and salivated uncontrollably on his keyboard at one point. It's always a good sign when bodily fluids are involved!

The evening ended with a performance by Horatio Pollard, who did a very respectable job at driving people out of the room. You would think that a Scheld'apen crowd would be used to a thing or two, but apparently people weren't particularly in the mood for Pollard's eardrum-piercing loud beats and noise. The handful of people that stayed, however, were totally into it!

I H8 Camera played a free show at the STUK Café recently, at one of their regular "Jazz Op Zondag" evenings. I don't know who mistook I H8 Camera for a jazz combo, but there they were. The line up for this show consisted of Rudy Trouvé, Elko Blijweert, Jacki Billet (of Gore Slut fame), Jeroen Stevens, Heyme Langbroek, Teuk Henri and De Younes. I had only seen Younes in action playing bass for Pawlowski until this night, so I was pleasantly surprised to see him reveal some mad guitar playing skillz. He even exhibited some gratuitous double-tapping!

The concept was a familiar one: each member got a chance to direct one "composition". Heyme, for instance, requested something sludgy and Black Sabbath-like, and Elko started his bit with some shit hot hard rock licks. "Jazz Op Zondag" indeed! After everyone had had his turn, Rudy suggested that they play one more, with the concept being "everyone against Teuk". This worked out beautifully, with Teuk trying to play some mellow, ambient guitar lines, and the rest of the band interrupting him at inopportune moments with violent bursts of noise. It was the best I H8 Camera gig I'd seen in quite a while -- my only complaint is that they didn't play any songs off their recently released debut album "Volume 1"!

Evil Superfarce, possibly the finest Evil Superstars cover band in the world, recently performed their crazy shenanigans at Café Walvis in Brussels. The guys commanded my respect by managing to blow the fuse on the PA before the gig even started! Thankfully, a replacement was found, so that the gig could proceed with the loudness it deserved. Some of you may look at my pictures and be curious about the magazine on Yannick's music stand. Being the rock god that he is, he can easily play the guitar and read a porno magazine at the same time. No mean feat! Whether or not he can also play the one-stringed bass at the same time is a well-kept secret. He doesn't need to, at any rate, because Evil Superfarce already have a four-stringed bass player. I don't know whether this person can also play four one-stringed basses simultaneously, but I'll happily give him the benefit of the doubt.

But I digress! The setlist included all my old favorite tunes, with the possible exception of "Nice Feelings Now". "Love Happened" and "Mystery Puke" provided an emotional touch, "Darkagedisco" rocked hard as ever, and "Holy Spirit Come Home" took a deceptively slow start only to end in complete chaos. There were no indoor fireworks or silly outfits this time around, but there was plenty of rock and roll!

Dear Mr. Van Uffelen,

I recently attended a performance by your band N!euw, which took place at Trix on the 29th of January. I found the performance to be quite enjoyable: the merger between tRAM and the Turnhout noise rock sensation Gasoline DC seems to work out very well. The use of two drummers allows you to lay the proverbial shit down hard, and the more aggressive guitar sound of Gasoline DC complements your own playing style very well.

However, the latter is exactly what I wanted to talk to you about, Yuri. Do you mind if I call you Yuri? Yuri, there is such a thing as too much echo. I noticed that you had no less than three delay pedals in your assortment of stomp boxes. Not only that, but two of these were the same! They lend your guitar playing a distinctly postrock-ish feel, and I find this deeply disturbing. Surely you must agree that postrock is a force of evil, which should have long ago been eradicated from this world? For the sake of humanity, please dispose of at least one, but preferably two of those delay pedals. When the ongoing war on terror turns its focus towards postrock (and it inevitably will), I would hate to see you in the line of fire. Act now, Yuri, before it's too late!

Faithfully yours,

Mr. Brown

Flat Earth Society recently did a tryout for their "Modernski" show at CC De Meent in the swinging town of Alsemberg. To get there I had to undertake a long and hazardous journey through dark and perilous woods, but of course I'm not afraid to risk life and limb to get my portion of brownness. Most of the audience never made it out of these woods alive, though, so that the gig had to take place in a near-empty venue. FES being the big band that they are, I think there may have literally been more people on stage than in the audience. This made some portions of the show feel a little awkward. The guys played a number of "marches" written by Mauricio Kagel, for instance, but because these were pretty unstructured and inaccessible, most of them ended with silence rather than applause. The show also included pieces by Stravinsky, Morricone and others, as well as some of FES' own repertoire. These songs, thankfully, got a much warmer reception. Highlights included "Wet is wet", "The arm but happy" and "Betwixt and between". It was a good show -- I only hope the actual performances draw a bigger crowd than this tryout.

My New Year's resolution for 2009 is the same as it was for 2008, only this time I believe I might actually be able to keep my shit together. I've finished working through my truckloads of pending pictures, so feel free to browse through the photos page for the recent additions. There's no way on Earth I could ever catch up with writing reviews for all these gigs, though, so I apologize to anyone who played a brown show but will not be getting any compliments for it from me. I'm going to start with a clean slate and talk about gigs that are still fresh in memory.

The first gig I saw this year was by Les Blauw at Nova. Les Blauw are Bjorn Eriksson, Peter Pask, Lenn Dauphin and John Birdsong. Their repertoire consists of old jazz songs (or jazz songs that sound old), and they play them well. The audience seemed to consist mostly of regulars, who would have been there regardless of whether the band were playing or not. Nonetheless, by the end of the show the band got some people dancing, so they must have been doing something right! All four members played flaming hot licks, although Peter's constipated-looking expression suggested that he required a bit more concentration to keep up than the others. This being SoundsBrown, of course, we don't wish constipation upon anyone -- quite the contrary! The guys normally would have played two sets, but because they were on a roll they played without pause for about an hour and a half (apart from a quick potty break by Lenn). Then they stopped because Peter's fingers were about to catch on fire from all those flaming hot licks.

I hope you're all well on your way to recovery after the holidays. If you need a little something to improve your digestion, please remember to check out my latest Christmas single, Silent Night (Holy Shite). There is of course another yearly tradition that I need to uphold, which is my list of the brownest shows and albums of the past year. Without further ado:

If you feel an urge to either confirm or deny the total awesomeness of any of the above, by all means do!

Merry Christmas, everyone! I'm aware that updates to this site have been somewhat, err, sporadic, but of course I wouldn't dream of skipping my traditional yearly Christmas single. This year's masterwork is titled Silent Night (Holy Shite). I hope you enjoy it, and I'll be back with more updates soon.

We recently caught two gigs by Tim Vanhamel's new band: first at Charlatan, and the week after at Trix. Tim is touring to promote his "solo" album "Welcome To The Blue House" with a band which features, among others, Stijn Boels (of Porn Bloopers fame), Sjoerd Bruil and a pair of sunglasses. And not only does Sjoerd play in Vanhamel's band, Black Cassette is the regular opening act as well -- Sjoerd overdose!

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!

We also caught another show by Mauro & The Grooms (the other show, for now), this time at Merleyn in the distant and far away town of Nijmegen. Apart from the order of the encores, the setlist here was exactly the same as the previous show at Charlatan. Nonetheless, the Merleyn gig was more enjoyable overall. The club was a lot less crowded than Charlatan was, so you actually had room to lift up your hands and applaud in between songs. Mauro also seemed a bit more relaxed and more in the mood than he was at the first show. Great stuff, so let's hope we won't have to wait too long for more.

During a recent excursion to Berlin, I suddenly found myself in someone's living room, watching an Ignatz gig. I was sceptical at first on account of Ignatz's involvement in Silvester Anfang -- a band whose shows I have found to be far from entertaining. It turned out, however, that seeing Ignatz play solo is far more enjoyable. Armed with a microphone, a guitar and an assortment of electronic bits and bobs, he played three pieces (or at least: there were three rounds of applause) of mellow, droning music that suited the intimate atmosphere perfectly.

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!

The set flew by way too quickly: it's a shame that only one other gig is planned at the moment, but I guess it's better than nothing. Here's hoping that those cows will be home soon!

Helder has been a regular visitor at Charlatan for some time now, performing more or less monthly alongside a variety of guests. Yesterday, he invited none other than Sjoerd "I Am The Walrus" Bruil to join him. Helder used his one-man-band setup, whereas Sjoerd played guitar and bass. The guys performed some of Helder's tunes (mostly new ones) as well as some Black Cassette songs. They also played some most delightful covers, including "Sign Your Name" by Terence Trent D'Arby and a rather excellent version of "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp" by Led Zeppelin.

Finally, they concluded with a particularly rocking rendition of Helder's "Head Hunt". This left the crowd yearning for more, but the guys had already used up all their material. Hence, the only thing left for them to do was to embark on a spaced-out jam of epic proportions. This demonstrated great skill and courage, although I did get the impression that the spaceship's brakes were malfunctioning. Other than that, though, no complaints. Quite the contrary, even -- they should do this every week!

As mentioned in an earlier update, my New Year's resolution was to keep SoundsBrown more up to date. I've since worked my way through the big pile of photos from last year that still had to be uploaded, so that in 2008 I'll be able to post updates here in a more timely fashion.

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.

The plot further thickened a few days later, when the Archetypes played at Kavka. It then appeared that, in stark contrast with his snowy white hair, Elko was now growing a black moustache as well. A bold choice, which is bound to be the start of a fashion trend! Miguel reached the stage a bit later than Elko and Jeroen, who played some gentle ambient music while they waited for their band leader. Once Miguel joined them, however, the mood immediately took a vicious turn. It was later revealed that the guys had been listening to Slayer before the gig, and it showed! Driven by Elko's ferocious shredding, the band marched forward into war, and they were taking no prisoners. Once the crowd had been beaten into submission, however, the guys eased up a little and went down a more psychedelic path. Unfortunately, Miguel never used the triangle that he brought with him, but Jeroen did use his cowbell, and all was well that ended well.

I hope everyone's had an enjoyable holiday season. As promised in the previous update, I've compiled my traditional lists of the concerts and album releases that I thought were the brownest of 2007:

As always, feel free to disagree!

'Tis the season to be jolly, and in keeping with tradition I have recorded another Christmas single. This year's release is titled "We Wish You A Smelly Christmas", and is available for download right here. Give it a listen, and let me know what you think! The song was recorded at the Brown Mansion and features myself on all instruments and lead vocals, and the following people on backing vocals:

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

Also coming soon are the obligatory lists of the brownest gigs and album releases of the past year. My new year's resolution is to update this site a little more often, so please don't forget to stop by every now and then. Until then, enjoy the holidays!

On the 28th of July, Mauroworld celebrated its 5th anniversary with a party. A better idea had not been had since the time when ... decided to celebrate ... with a ...! (Fill in the blanks)

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!

Evil Superfarce are a super group featuring all members of Borokov Borokov and the Porn Bloopers. They covered songs by an old band called Evil Superstars, which some of you may remember as the band that forever altered the course of musical history. The Borokov Borokov guys incorporated some elements from their own carefully choreographed shows into the Evil Superfarce gig, including the fireworks (which they used twice!) and the leaf blower stuffed with paper shreds. Boris even dressed himself up as a robot, because he knew you can never go wrong with shiny things! The setlist covered a broad range of styles, ranging from pop tunes like "Love Happened" and "Miss Your Disease" to slightly less subtle songs such as "1,000,000 Demon's Can't Be Wrong". Much to my delight, it also included what I believe may be the two hardest rocking songs ever composed on Belgian soil: "Darkagedisco" and "Holy Spirit Come Home". Covering Evil Superstars is dangerously close to sacrilegious (*cough*Sharko*cough*), but lo and behold: what could have been sacrilege turned out to be more like the Easter Mass!

Back when the summer was still hot, Miguel Sosa played an acoustic solo show at Bar King Kong. Most of you probably know Miguel as the godfather of the Belgian noise scene, so it might come as a bit of a surprise (shock, even) to hear that Miguel played gently on a classical guitar and even sang on some of the songs. His setlist consisted of a few classical pieces and some poppier tunes. Some of these were covers, others were penned by the master himself. An example of the former was "When I Saw You" by the Ronettes -- amongst the latter was a song called "Strumpets Of The Galaxy". And with a title like that, it should be immediately obvious why I referred to Miguel as "the master"!

There were a couple of fine shows to be enjoyed at Gentse Feesten this year. On the 18th, we caught the Crab Four's one-but-last show ever at Charlatan. The setlist was pretty much the same as on previous occasions, as far as I could tell (not that I was expecting them to have written new songs). Still, despite being unsurprising, it was a highly entertaining gig, with one singalong after another.

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!

Finally, on the 22nd, we caught Sukilove at Boomtown. The guys played a fine show as usual, with highlights including "Ballad Of No Apology" and "Sun Sun Sun". The latter is off the band's latest EP, and I hadn't heard them play it live before. It worked out great: the vocal harmonies are excellent, and Sjoerd played a drum, thus adding a whole new level of visual spectacle to the band's performance. Before the end of the set, Pascal snuck in a quick reference to the Van Jets, who were the main act for that evening. Pascal praised them for their new album, which he said was excellent mostly thanks to its fantastic producer. This was funny, because Pascal produced it himself. Despite Pascal's blessing, however, we were not convinced and bailed out before the Van Jets started their show.

This year's Open AIR festival featured Vaast Colson, Jeroen Stevens, all members of Bum Collar, and some other people I can't name. Throughout the evening, they performed in various configurations, alternating music with spoken word. Highlights of the evening included:

• 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.

In the dank, claustrophobic basement of Envers-swa, amidst the rats, spiders and roaches, Benny Zen played a show that left none untouched. With songs that covered a variety of subjects, ranging from the movement of particles in the air to itchy genitalia, just about anyone could find something in there they could connect with. Drummer Herman Houbrechts is no longer with the band, allegedly because his dashing good looks drew too much attention away from frontman Peter Houben. Herman has been replaced by Jules Lemmens, of Donkey Diesel fame. The crowd was wildly enthusiastic -- so much so, in fact, that when Benny Zen played at Gentse Feesten some two weeks later, some people there were still shouting "Envers-swa!".

Scheld'apen has been the location for some of the brownest gigs I've ever been to. Two nights of which I remember being surprised that nobody got hurt were when El Guapo Stuntteam played there with Captain Catastrophy, and when Sickboy played at Sla-dag and everything from glass bottles to stage monitors were being thrown around. Hence, when Scheld'apen celebrated its ninth anniversary and booked Sickboy and El Guapo Stuntteam to play on the same night, I was both excited and very, very afraid.

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 crowd swiftly switched from moshing to dancing when Sickboy came on. He played a good set as well, with one of the highlights being a track based on samples from Marco Borsato's "Rood". At some point, a guy got up on the stage to take some pictures. Sickboy shoved him right back off, then climbed up on his table and -- with a pretty impressive leap -- went crowdsurfing himself. Rock and roll!

The 21st of June was Brian Wilson's 65th birthday, and what better way for him to celebrate than to come to Belgium and play a magnificent show at the AB?

You can't answer that, can you? That's because there is no better way! Sure, Brian can't hit those high notes anymore like he could when he was younger, and he has to sit on a chair throughout the whole show, but with a little help from his band he had no trouble at all doing justice to all those amazing tunes he's written over the years. And just to prove that he's not completely ready for the old folks home, Brian stood up and played bass during the encores. Here's to the next 65 years!

After years of inactivity, the Rudy Trouvé Sextet played a gig at Molens Van Orshoven. It was a most enjoyable show -- quite unlike the opening act, which I found dreadfully boring. I don't remember the name of the band and can't really be arsed to look it up either, but it featured Ephraïm and Yuri from tRAM as well as another guy and girl.

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 week after, the Porn Bloopers did a show at Envers-swa. The set hardly had any vocals, and although it was quite short, the songs seemed to be drawn out pretty long. Personally, I thought things were working out really well -- it was a bit different from their usual gigs, but it rocked hard as always. Yannick, however, didn't seem to be digging it the way I was. He appeared to be in a rather bad mood (probably having a bad hair day), and ended the gig prematurely by simply walking out. No amount of clapping or yelling from the crowd could persuade him to come back for an encore. Bassist Arne helpfully offered to take over the guitar and play some AC/DC, but the others ignored his suggestion and thus the show came to an anticlimactic end.

As mentioned earlier on this site, I Love Sarah have an exceptionally pink record out, called "Hoekzetel Bruno". This called for an official release party, of course, which was held at Scheld'apen. The first band on were Self Service Nuts Club, a hip hop crew from Luik. I'm pretty much against all forms of hip hop, but SSNC somewhat redeemed themselves by using live sounds from a Game Boy and a Commodore 64 in their songs, which I could appreciate because I am a nerd!

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?

Finally, I Love Sarah were up. Someone in the crowd (I won't say who) repeatedly shouted "De Kreuners!" at the stage during the show, but no amount of pressure could persuade the band to cover "Ik Wil Je". What they did play was a fine selection of their own classics, ranging from "Inbev Awoe" to their eponymous ballad "I Love Sarah", and there was much rejoicing.

I remember seeing Fennesz at this year's Domino festival and thinking "good grief, this is boring!". Hence, it was with mixed feelings that I returned to the AB to see him perform alongside Mike Patton. Because Patton is one of my heroes, I had the fullest faith in his ability to add some entertainment value to Fennesz's laptop drones. Unfortunately, my faith was gravely misplaced.

Patton's vocals added some interest to the music, but not enough by a long shot. Thankfully, the price of admission wasn't completely wasted, as the opening act were Bo Wiget and Simon Lenski, who played probably the best set I've seen them play so far. They started off with a low, menacing drone, but gradually shifted towards an eclectic mix of noises that even included vocals. I think their set was at least as long as Fennesz and Patton's, but there wasn't a dull moment in it. 1-0 for the home team!

On the first of July, Envers-swa hosted a triple bill featuring Borokov Borokov, Tip Toe Topic and Made For Chickens By Robots. Borokov Borokov kicked off the festivities in almost complete darkness, the only light coming from a bunch of small headlamps dangling from singer Arne's head. There was a huge American flag draped against the basement walls, and since guitarist Boris was nowhere to be seen when the other guys wanted to start, Arne decided to impress the audience with his knowledge of American history. I'm sure he could have named all states in alphabetical order too, if anyone had challenged him. The set itself was less educational, but at least as entertaining. The lights had to come back on after a while, though, because it turned out that some of the riffs were just too gosh-darned difficult for Boris to play in the dark.

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.

Helder played at Den Hopsack the night after, together with Pieter Van Buyten. As is his wont, Helder handled vocals, guitars, drums and many other instruments all by himself, thereby proving that it's not impossible for men to multitask. Pieter, meanwhile, contributed bass and a bit of backing vocals, which added a new twist to the otherwise familiar songs. Good stuff!

Wilco played at Vooruit on the 30th of May, supported by Carla Bozulich. It was pretty obvious that most people couldn't care less about what Bozulich was playing, as she had a very hard time capturing the crowd's attention. She obviously didn't enjoy being in this situation, as it got to a point where she practically begged people to be quiet and listen. One fan, who was trying to be helpful, yelled out to the crowd to "shut the fuck up". Bozulich apparently thought he was talking to her, and barked "no, you shut the fuck up!" back at the poor chap. When she later realized her mistake, it was embarassing for her and entertaining for us! Bozulich was backed up by Wilco's guitarist, and also by their drummer on a few songs. The latter in particular helped to add a bit of appeal to the set, but overall it could hardly be called a success.

Wilco, by comparison, had the whole crowd in the palm of their hand right from the start. They had a new album out, and played a selection of these new tunes as well as a good cross-section of their older stuff. The band enthralled the audience with catchy tunes (and some nice guitar solos to boot) and plenty of amusing banter. The crowd gulped it down greedily and prompted the guys to come back twice for encores. A good time was had by all.

Much like Shellac (see below), Cornelius also does not tour or release albums nearly often enough. His gig at the Botanique, hence, was the subject of much anticipation on my behalf. None other than I Love Sarah were given the honor of opening, and they did this with (I think) the exact same setlist they used earlier that week at Café Central. The fade-out at the end of "De Gokchinees" didn't go quite as planned, but other than that everything sounded tight and loud as it should be. Entirely befitting the show, the light man made liberal use of the strobe lights, until Rutger asked him to tone it down a bit. Before starting "QCQ L Zouk" (the last song), however, Jeroen expressed his disappointment in the fact that Rutger has epilepsy, and urged the light man to go for it nonetheless during the song's outro. Thus, the song got the extra dramatic effect it deserved, Rutger thankfully did not have a seizure, and so all was well.

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.

Great visuals, great songs and a great live performance, all done by Japanese people -- what's not to like?

Shellac tours are about as few and far between as Shellac album releases, but lo and behold, this year we got both! About seven years after "1000 Hurts", the band played at Vooruit in anticipation of their new album, which they said would be called "Dude, Excellent". This has since turned out false: the album is out and is actually called "Excellent Italian Greyhound". Why they lied about this during the show, I cannot say.

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.

One guy also asked "Why don't you play 'Crow'?", which Weston answered by starting that very song. Other than that, the setlist obviously included some stuff off the new album, as well as most of my favourites, such as "Wingwalker" and the aforementioned "Squirrel Song". Had they also added "Doris" to that, it would have been perfect!

Without a doubt, the brownest of all festivals is the Motherfucker Festival at Tydeeh in Mol. This year's edition featured the Archetypes and Black Cassette, both of whom played during the afternoon in an almost empty room. Despite the embarrassingly low crowd turnout, MoFoFest had every bit as much of the typical festival atmosphere as its larger counterparts: it had a camping, people were lying on the ground because they were too drunk to stand, and there was even a toilet with vomit all over it.

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.

The week after, we caught I Love Sarah at Café Central, opening for the Tellers. The gig being in Brussels, we were treated to plenty of French banter in between songs, as well as translated song titles and lyrics such as "Vomir, Café, Vomir, Lasagne". The crowd seemed to like it, although I Love Sarah clearly could not rival the main act in popularity. Whereas most people maintained a bit of a safe distance from the stage during I Love Sarah's set, the moment it was done people flocked to the front to get a good spot for the Tellers. Interestingly, almost the entire flock was female, so apparently I Love Sarah aren't quite connecting with that particular demographic yet. Work on it, boys!

Heavenhotel organized a label night at VK some time ago, featuring Pox, Ow, Tip Toe Topic, The Love Substitutes and I H8 Camera. The latter played lounge jazz intermezzo's whenever another band was soundchecking. Pox and Ow have never quite managed to convince me (the former less so than the latter), and did not do so on this night either. The other acts, however, were all swell.

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.

Having completed their somewhat tumultuous set, the Love Subs cleared the stage for one last I H8 Camera performance. The idea, apparently, was that all the musicians who appeared earlier would come on stage to play together, but initially Rudy and Elko were the only ones that could be bothered. They were joined a bit later on by Frans Van Isacker and Jeroen Stevens, but unfortunately the intended "Heavenhotel big band" never materialized.

On May 15, Battles played at the AB. The opening acts were Coca-Cola Met God and I Love Sarah. The latter played two short sets by the entrance in the Agora, one before and one after Coca-Cola Met God. Being able to play at the AB wasn't the only thing the guys could be rightfully proud of that night: they also presented their official debut "Hoekzetel Bruno" to the masses. It's pressed on pink vinyl, has a sleeve designed by Dennis Tyfus, and it has good tunes on it. What's not to like? Well, there is the fact that the guest vocalists didn't get credited (*cough*), but other than that it's all good! But I digress. I only caught the band's first set at the AB. Motivated by the thought of selling records and raking in cash, the guys put in an extra effort to sound brown. The crowd got bigger and bigger as the gig progressed, because a lot of people only arrived towards 8 PM, when the main acts were scheduled. Judging by the number of people that hung around rather than proceeding straight to the main stage, the show was a success!

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.

The big new thing on the album, compared to the earlier EPs, is the addition of vocals. Unfortunately, the big new thing is also what stops me from throwing in another bunch of superlatives. I thoroughly enjoyed their single "Atlas", but hearing the same type of vocals in several songs throughout the gig made them get old pretty quickly. This meant that to me, the highlights of the show were the older tunes, which I'm sure couldn't have been the intention. It was still a Good Gig by any standard, but to me it didn't entirely live up to the expectations the band set last year.

After a long journey through space and time, a small delegation of brownness lovers found themselves in the town of Snaaskerke on the 12th of May. Snaaskerke is essentially a one street town: even though it appears to have multiple roads, they are all called "Dorpsstraat". In one of these roads, there is a place called "Shibam", and in this strange and exciting place there were bratwurst and rock music to be savoured that night. I'll start with the most important matters, by stating that the bratwurst were a little too dry.

A bad and quickly forgotten cover band played shortly after our arrival, but we were there to see I Love Sarah and Creature With The Atombrain, both of whom played a slightly odd set. I Love Sarah are possibly the most reliable band I know when it comes to putting on a good live show, but for whatever reason, the not-so-numerous crowd at Shibam didn't seem entirely convinced. CWTAB were plagued by a technical problem: Aldo apparently couldn't hook up his voice effects units, which meant that he had to sing "au naturel". This was quite a change from the usual sound, and unfortunately it wasn't a change for the better. The struggle to get the effects units working meant that the set started with a bit of a delay, but eventually Aldo announced that they'd better start playing because "Bram will be here at 1 AM". We were puzzled, but later on discovered that Bram is a local who was having his stag party there that same night. The band cut their set short, and although a few people in the room applauded for an encore, the guys had to admit that they weren't rocking it as hard as they could have and dutifully made way for Bram.

Bum Collar performed at MuHKA a while ago, at an event organized by FRONTforyou magazine to celebrate the release of their latest issue (number eight, should you be interested). The band had a particularly fascinating idea: they covered Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" in all its epic glory. The performance took place in a narrow corridor under a stairwell, and visuals were projected above the band. The setup was as usual: AMVK and Paul Mennes operated electronic devices. Mennes had a particularly interesting one, with lots of blinking red lights on it. Mauro played the guitar riff (the guitar riff), and DDV did the vocals. He came on stage blindfolded and wearing a long green raincoat, and inched his way forward looking for the microphone. Once he found it, he continued to move forward into the crowd, who backed up in fear as DDV tried to feel up their groins. Later on, he dropped his raincoat and revealed a heroic shiny red cape underneath it. The performance was true enough to the original to be recognizable (and to leave you humming the riff to yourself for the rest of the evening), but of course it was served with a particularly brown sauce, in the finest Bum Collar tradition!

Flying Dutchman Sjoerd was there as well, and allegedly performed some sort of live soundtrack to some sort of film. Unfortunately, we missed this because nobody told us about it -- especially not that bastard Sjoerd himself. When confronted with this after the facts, his only reply was "it was on the flyer". Was it really, Sjoerd? Was it?

The band formerly known as Tin Hat Trio have a new album, called "The Sad Machinery Of Spring", as well as a new line-up. Since they are now a four-piece, they dropped the "Trio" from their name and came to present their album at Vooruit simply as Tin Hat. The band played acoustic chamber music, often with Eastern European folk influences, and with an experimental touch here and there. The main instruments are guitar, violin, clarinet and organ. Guitarist Mark Orton described the band as a "composers collective", and explained that on the new album, they had used the works of Polish writer Bruno Schulz as a common source of inspiration. Most of the songs were off the latest CD, and the very few older tunes they played were all off older albums -- their previous album "Book Of Silk" was completely ignored for some reason. This is not to say that the show was disappointing, though. The band members are all great musicians, and the music is beautifully atmospheric.

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!

I Love Sarah were late. They completed their sound check on time and started their gig at the scheduled hour, but apparently they were still told that they were late. The Kafkaesque frustration that resulted from this translated itself into pure brownness once the guys started their set. The sound was excellent, and they laid the shit down hard and tight. The show was a bit short, but that was because they were late!

Delboy records recently celebrated their tenth anniversary at Charlatan, with performances by Creature With The Atombrain, Blutch, Black Cobra and Acid King. Some seriously heavy rock, in other words. Even though the audience included notable hard rockers such as Frederik Sioen, however, there was no moshing, crowd surfing, fist fights or any other fun activities you'd expect at a rock show.

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!

The night after, Helder played a one-man-band show at Charlatan. He-who-can-play-more-instruments-simultaneously-than-Vishnu has gathered quite a bit of new material since his latest album release, and all of it is consistently top-notch. One of the highlights was a mean slide guitar tune that I don't believe I've heard before, called "Head Hunt". The noisy crowd didn't make it easy on Helder, but those who could be bothered to listen were treated to a superb show.

A while ago, Trix exposed its visitors to dangerous amounts of noise, courtesy of Wolf Eyes and support acts Silvester Anfang and Coca-Cola Met God. The latter started off with some catchy hooks, made all the more enjoyable by the band's crazy stage antics. Towards the end of the set, however, they settled into a more monotonous drone, and even though the gig wasn't all that long, it was hard to keep paying attention.

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!

Two days later, Coca-Cola Met God played another gig at De Singel. Erik wore his classy red stage outfit: Coca-Cola sweater, very short shorts, and weird headgear. Tim spent half of the show with what looked like his granny's curtains draped over him. The guys brought along a big bag of children's toys, which helped add variety to the set, resulting in a show that was more enjoyable than the one at Trix, even though it was a good bit longer.

Being a big fan of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, I was well pleased to hear that they were going to embark on their first European tour. Unfortunately, they didn't visit Belgium, and so the brownmobile undertook the epic journey to Amsterdam, where the band would perform at the Bimhuis. The venue is in a big building with lots of glass, so that from the bar you have a nice view over the water, and the central station behind it. There's a huge window behind the stage as well, but the curtains were drawn during the show, possibly to keep people's attention from wandering outside. The Bimhuis is a seated venue, which was a bit weird, but the crowd's enthusiasm more than made up for this.

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 gig ended with "Sleep Is Wrong" and the aforementioned encore "1997". If you were to twist my arm and force me to say something negative about the gig, it would be that they didn't play "Bring Back The Apocalypse", which is one of my favourites. It was one of the finest shows I've ever witnessed, and so it came as good news when Nils announced plans for a second European tour in October. Here's hoping they visit Belgium when they come back, and if they do, I expect to see you there! Yes, you!

Being a big fan of (the) Melvins, I was well pleased to hear that they had been added to the line-up of this year's Domino festival. Unfortunately, security confiscated my camera at the entrance, so I have no pictures of this joyous event. The bastards!

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.

The guys did not come back for an encore. This prompted some people to throw all sorts of junk at the roadie who started to break down the equipment. Porn's guitarist Tim Moss, who was watching from the side stage, didn't find this very sympathetic. When he saw someone throw an apple core and hit the roadie right in the head, he jumped off the stage and into the crowd to go smack the guy in the guts. A great ending to a great rock show!

The Shovels have a new album out, titled "Dig It!", and they recently presented it with an in-store gig at Fnac Antwerp. The guys didn't bring their drummer, but they did bring a tambourine, and sometimes a tambourine is all you need. The set was short but sweet: the band's light-hearted guitar pop tunes probably aren't going to alter the course of musical history, but they sure as hell are fun! In a rather unfortunate twist of events, however, it turned out that Fnac didn't actually have the CD in stock yet. Hence, the pressure was on the band to sound brown enough that people would want to come back a week later and fork out their hard-earned. It sort of worked on me: I went and bought it somewhere else -- possibly not quite what Fnac had hoped to achieve by booking the band.

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.

Tip Toe Topic finally have a full album out as well, and they proudly presented it at Scheld'apen. Opening act were Backback, a jazz trio featuring Filip Wauters, formerly of Admiral Freebee fame. Using guitar, drums and sax, they cranked out some pretty cool riffage, although I did have the impression the best parts were all packed together at the start of the set. Might have been the old attention span getting in the way, I suppose. Tip Toe Topic's set was up to usual standards, which means it was very good. I later found out that encore "Big Daddy", with some serious shredding by Elko, is sadly missing from the CD, but other than that: no complaints!

Ceramic Dog, one of Marc Ribot's numerous projects, played at Vooruit recently. Ceramic Dog features Ribot himself on guitar and vocals, Shahzad Ismaily on bass, guitar, moog, percussion and vocals, and Ches Smith on drums. The trio played a set packed with challenging jazz rock, blending some superb repetitive riffs with wild and chaotic-sounding improvizations. Ribot wore his serious face throughout the show, even though at times he actually revealed a sense of humour. The gig started with a poem about airport security, for instance, and later on he also told the audience an amusing anecdote about a homosexual writer in Vietnam. It was an all-round excellent show, and so I was pleased to hear that the guys had not one but two CDs for sale. Unfortunately it turned out that they meant two copies, not two albums, and so I sadly missed out.

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!

Bum Collar, the eight-legged monster that rose out of the ashes of Club Moral, recently played a gig in Berlin. It took place at Galerie Barbara Thumm, where AMVK exhibited some of her work. A bunch of newspapers lay scattered across the floor -- one of them read "Frauen mit Migräne wollen häufiger Sex" and had a picture of a scantily-clad migraine patient. DDV picked pages from the floor at random to read from them, while the other band members produced a barrage of beats, feedback and all sorts of other poopy noises. Visuals were projected behind the band throughout the show, often prominently featuring the word "topless". As the gig progressed, DDV got crazier and crazier. At one point he was stumbling around with the mic in his mouth, and a bit later he was lying on the floor, screeching and spastically flailing his arms and legs about. Woohoo!

Rudy Trouvé exhibited some of his paintings in the Tweebronnen library in Leuven some time ago, and I H8 Camera were invited to play there when the exhibition opened. The guys performed an improvized soundtrack to a nature documentary about lions, and had the biggest lineup ever:

• 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 headling act were Das Pop. Like, whatever.

A while ago we caught the Decemberists at the Botanique. For the uninitiated, the Decemberists are an indie pop outfit from Oregon, who invaded our country on a mission to entertain! The band's catchy tunes had the whole room singing along more than once during the gig, encouraged by singer Colin Meloy, who even went so far as to split the room into four groups to see who could sing the loudest. The guys built up a very nice sound with a variety of instruments, including guitars, organ, accordion, and -- for one song -- even a hurdy-gurdy! The band's healthy sense of humour helped put the finishing touches on the show. Things like Meloy's amusing banter, the drummer's crazy dance moves, or the sudden appearance of couples in formal dress all added to the show's already high entertainment value.

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.

The first gig started with a serious delay because Craig's guitar turned out to be broken. To make up for this, however, the gig had a very memorable finale. Craig was playing the drums, but beat through the snare drum skin during the song. This prompted Mauro to pick up the snare drum, place it over his head and strike a very dramatic pose (see pictures). Technical problems aside, though, it was a most enjoyable show, as was the second one, which progressed in a somewhat more orderly fashion. The café wasn't exactly roomy, though, and so I once again found myself so close to the action that I feared being struck in the face with a guitar. Thankfully I made it out unscathed, although I am now contemplating the purchase of a helmet for use at future gigs that involve spastic guitarists (no offense).

One month ago, El Guapo Stuntteam presented their latest album at Muziekodroom. There were two opening acts: Saturday Night Beavers and Blackbox Revelation. The former were a run-of-the-mill guitar rock trio, who concluded their set with a cover of AC/DC's "Let There Be Rock". There would indeed be plenty of rock that night, but only a little of it was supplied by Saturday Night Beavers.

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!

On the 7th of February, we saw Donkey Diesel play at the AB club. The guys brought along Buni Lenski (former ex-member?) and Miel Fingertips, and played a fine selection of songs from their first album as well as from their brand new release "Bravado". It was a fine show, tighter than the previous one in CC Brasschaat, and to top it off, the guys handed out free copies of the new album to everyone who wanted it! One can't help but wonder who paid for all that, but of course that doesn't stop one from grabbing a copy. Thanks lads!

A relocation of SoundsBrown Corporate HQ has caused some ever so slight delays to the site's regular update schedule, but here's a first attemt at catching up.

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 main act for the evening were Burial Chamber Trio. When I said "monotonous in a good way" earlier, this is exactly the sort of thing I was talking about. The Burial Chamber Trio played some of the darkest, most menacing shit I've ever heard. The whole stage was shrouded in smoke, so that most of the time vague silhouettes were all you could see. Every now and then you could catch a glimpse of the band members: the guitarist wielded an axe with half of the body sawn off, the bass player wore a gas mask, and the singer (a bloke named Attila) was dressed in a jute bag, a blonde wig and a pair of frightfully ugly shoes. Attila's scary squealing and grunting was accompanied by a seemingly endless barrage of subsonic, unchanging noise. I can imagine this sort of thing to be quite a test of endurance to some, but god dammit, I liked it!

For those of you who were planning to attend the Love Substitutes gig at Café Beatnik this Sunday, please take note that it's an early gig. The band will be on stage by 18:00, so be sure to get up on time!

I am once again hopelessly behind with my updates to this site. There is a good reason for this, though: I have been busy writing a track for the compilation album "Carnaval, Een Feest Voor En Door Het Volk", which is available now on Unlimited Edition Records. Hoempapa on over there and order your copy now!

CC Brasschaat invited Donkey Diesel to play last Saturday. What stood out most was the new drummer, who added a variety of additional percussion to the band's sound. For one song, he even used a bicycle wheel! The band had quite a bit of new material, most of which I presume will be on their forthcoming new album. I wouldn't have objected if the set had been a little longer, but it was good while it lasted. Some of the new tunes sounded like they could use a bit more work, though, and I would really like to see just what a "rockabilly French cancan" looks like. Maybe one of the guys would like to demonstrate it the next time they play?

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!

Ghost Of Mercury turned out to be none other than Sickboy, operating under a different alias. I was quite curious to hear what he had up his sleeve, but fate decided otherwise: just a few minutes into the set there was a power failure, and the whole store was shrouded in complete darkness. Ghost Of Mercury couldn't just do an acoustic set instead, but Ludo Mich could! Ludo's act consisted of trashing a case full of junk by beating it with other junk (including a big, heavy chain), and he happily did this in the dark. Highlight of the set was when someone in the audience fainted. For a second there, I thought Mich had (accidentally or purposely) struck some poor fellow in the face with his chain, but when the subject was carried outside to where there was light, his face seemed to be intact. Still, it was a lot of excitement for a Sunday night!

On December 22, Dez Mona played at CC De Werft in Geel. The performance was dubbed "Dez Mona Nodigt Uit", and the band played two sets. The first one was a regular Dez Mona performance, and the second featured a big bunch of special guests: Gunter Nagels, Sjoerd Bruil, Guido Belcanto, DAAU and Andrew Claes. The guests all played or sang along to Dez Mona songs as well as performing some of their own work. Those who weren't currently performing sat at a table in the back of the stage, so nobody ever had to leave the stage. Of the guests, Belcanto contributed the largest portion of brownness -- in particular with his first song, which was about what he likes to have for breakfast. Gregory, of course, did his utter best as well -- at one point his screeching and squealing even made a little kid in the audience cry. Quite the accomplishment!

One week later, Volkshuis in Kalmthout held a benefit for Waiki the Chilean Indian. I forgot most of the details, but the gist of it was that Waiki is in jail and doesn't like it there. Several bands played at this event, the good ones being the Porn Bloopers and White Circle Crime Club. The Porn Bloopers appeared as a four-piece, with bass, keyboard and an extra guitar added to the usual line-up. Guest guitarist Stijn (of Joeri Fransen fame!) threw in some particularly hot licks, so the band rocked the shit even harder than usual. And that's pretty hard! The guys even covered "Holy Spirit Come Home" and got away with it. WCCC had a hard time topping all this brownness. They laid their shit down tight, loud and fast, but they couldn't quite hold on to my attention for some reason. The guys made a valiant attempt, but ultimately had to settle for being second best.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, JH Integendeel hosted a triple bill with I Love Sarah, John Wayne Shot Me and Tip Toe Topic.

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!

Two days later, I Love Sarah (them again!) played at CC Spinoy, opening for Goose. Goose was entertaining for a while, but their act wore thin pretty quickly. They played a really short set, but that was probably a good thing in this case. I Love Sarah (despite being the opening act) actually got to play longer, I think, which was also a good thing. In a better world, Goose would have been opening for them instead of the other way around!

Due to the gluttonous holiday season and the required revalidation period that followed it, I am badly behind with my updates to this site. You can't complain, though, because you get what you pay for. Ha!

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!

More updates are coming tomorrow...

Happy New Year! 2006 was another great year for brownness, and as usual I've compiled my selection of the most chocolatey gigs and album releases of the year:

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

I still have over two weeks worth of pictures to put online from last year, so check back for those soon. After that's done, we'll be all set for another year's worth of brownness!

Some of you may remember last year's critically acclaimed release "(I'm Dreaming Of A) Brown Xmas" (still available for download). This year, in an attempt to paint things an even poopier shade of brown, I've recorded a new hit-bound masterpiece titled "Rudolph The Brown-nosed Reindeer". Get it while it's smelly!

It's always a good sign when the DJ plays the Melvins before a gig, and that's exactly what happened when Colour Haze played at SOJO on Saturday. By the looks of the gear they had set up on the stage, Colour Haze did not come to play gentle acoustic tunes! The guitarist, bare-footed and with a bit of a "Cousin It" thing going on, boasted an impressive stack of no less than four amplifier heads and speaker cabinets. The band cranked out long psychedelic jams, carried by very hard rocking Kyuss style riffs (hence the need for such a big-ass amp setup). This sort of thing is very much my cup of tea (even without hitting the bong), but I had one problem with the show: it was too damn long. This probably wouldn't have bothered me if I had hit the bong, but as it stood, after an hour and a half of brownness, I didn't really need another half-hour song for an encore. If they had left that one off, it would have been spot on, though!

I caught two Franco Saint De Bakker gigs in the past few days: one on Saturday at Rataplan and one last night at CC Brasschaat. Both gigs consisted of two 45-minute sets with an intermission for tea and biscuits. Stefaan Blancke joined the band for the Rataplan show, but not for the Brasschaat one. The set lists struck a good balance between older classics, such as "Tang" and "Solar Lottery", and newer tunes, highlights among which include "Cross", "Calvaire" and "Marcha Escosesa".

It's hard to pick one of the two gigs as the better one, since they were both of considerable brownness. What I can say, though, is that the seats in Brasschaat were a lot more comfortable than the plastic chairs at Rataplan. You know you've seen a good show when the only thing you can think of to bitch about is the seats!

John Zorn, who needs no introduction (does he?), recently came up with yet another project, called Moonchild. Moonchild features Joey Baron on drums, Trevor Dunn on bass and Mike Patton on vocals. Zorn himself acts only as the composer, not as a performer. This apparently came as a bit of a surprise to a few people, who expected to see Zorn on stage when Moonchild played at the AB on Tuesday. You didn't hear me complaining, though, because with or without Zorn, we were treated to one of the brownest shows in recent memory!

Moonchild's sound was a thick one: the absence of guitars or other typical lead instruments meant that a lot of weight was on Trevor Dunn's shoulders. He carried it well: supported by Baron's excellent drumming, he cranked out hard rocking, menacing riffs, often breaking into unsettling noises at the drop of a hat, only to return to the riff just as quickly. Over all this, Patton made matching vocal sounds -- squeals, hissing, grunts, coughing, screams, and sometimes even things that sounded almost like words.

The crowd was clearly pleased with all this brownness. When the band left the stage, the whole room clapped and cheered, hoping for an encore. The band came back to take a bow, and John Zorn came on to show his face as well, but no encore. The applause still went on for minutes on end, well after the house lights had been switched on, and eventually our persistence was rewarded. Zorn and the band returned to play an improvized piece, which Zorn conducted in his own inimitable fashion. My ass is still itchy from the whooping!

Yesterday afternoon, l'Archiduc hosted a performance by Coca-Cola Met God, a project featuring Tim Vanhamel on guitar and electronica, and Eric Thielemans on drums. The two had also invited Miguel Sosa, who played Moog and piano. The set was introduced by a menacing drone, which steadily grew into a barrage of noise. Rather than going for the full-on sonic assault, though, the band built quite a bit of variety into their set. Yes, there were the loud noisy parts, but there were also hard rocking guitar riffs and even gentle jazzy bits. The latter were about the only times where you could hear Miguel play the piano, and it has to be said that he played it like a pro! Tim had some intermittent technical problems with his Casio guitar, and the amp he used for vocals couldn't quite crank out the volume required to actually hear the vocals, but in light of so much brownness, who can nitpick about such minor details?

Some particularly fine brownness was to be enjoyed over the past week or so. On Friday the 3rd, Quasar Noise Lab performed at SMAK. Quasar Noise Lab are (were) Aldo Struyf and Dave Schroyen, and they played inside an installation by Philip Metten. The installation looked somewhat like a set piece from Power Rangers, and Aldo and Dave were dressed up accordingly! The set started off with some gentle ambient noise, which gradually got louder and louder. After some time, some particularly tasty guitar riffs emerged from the noise, and the set came to a loud, droning conclusion. Badass!

The night after, Othin Spake and the Nihilist Spasm Band played at Zaal België. Othin Spake played for an hour, but didn't really seem to know where they were heading. The set went back and forth between quiet, atmospheric bits and louder, more intense playing, but ended rather blandly and abruptly.

What Othin Spake lacked in brownness, the Nihilist Spasm Band had in excess. The NSB are a bunch of old geezers that make eardrum-piercing noise. They introduce most songs with a spoken word bit, and then proceed to make a racket using a variety of conventional and self-made instruments and other trinkets. Awesome stuff!

On Monday, Mike Patton's latest project Peeping Tom played at Het Depot. The opening act was Dub Trio, who also joined Peeping Tom on stage later on. Anything with "dub" in the name is enough to make me want to run for the hills, but Dub Trio had me pleasantly surprised. They often unexpectedly interrupted the dub bits with heavy, edgy guitar riffs, which made for interesting listening.

Peeping Tom played a nice set as well. Peeping Tom isn't exactly my favourite Mike Patton project, but with a loony like him on stage, there's never a dull moment. Patton was backed up by Imani Coppola, DJ D Sharp, Dub Trio and Rahzel. The latter's particularly badass beatboxing solo was one of the highlights of the show. Other highlights included "Five Seconds" and the Lovage tune "Anger Management", which they played as an encore.

On Thursday, Man Man played at Petrol. The band played one of the most energetic shows I've seen in ages. They all stood in a close circle around the drummer, who sat at the front of the stage, and played a wide variety of instruments including lots of percussion. All band members were dressed in white, and used headbands, hats, face paint or even beards to ensure that they looked as crazy as possible. I'm not sure if I can adequately label their music, so I will just say that it sounds just as crazy as it looks. Amazing show!

Philip Metten sent over a flyer for the Quasar Noise Lab gig tomorrow at SMAK. Since this looks like it's going to be a smelly one indeed, I figured I'd post the flyer here. I can taste the brownness already!

Last week, Flat Earth Society put their thing down at Het Depot. They mostly borrowed work from other composers on this occasion. In particular, they played all ten of Mauricio Kagel's "Zehn Märsche um den Sieg zu verfehlen". They played them in random order, though -- cheeky bastards! I wasn't familiar with any of the original pieces, so I can't say how much brownness FES added to them and how much of it was already there. What I can tell you, though, is that there was plenty of brownness to go around. The band also played a couple of their own tunes, including "In Between Rivers" and the magnificent "Damesenheren / The arm but happy". In the latter, which was co-written by Josse Depauw, Wim Willaert performs a monologue that starts as a cheesy ode to the beauty of life. As the piece progresses, however, Willaert begins to descend into madness as he realizes that not everything is perfect in the world. The music intensifies along with Willaert's performance, and by the end of the piece he's screaming at the top of his lungs about everything that's wrong with this world. This includes, apparently, immigrants who come here to threaten our way of life. When Willaert can't possibly scream any louder, the band takes over from him and sings "De Vlaamse Leeuw", after which the music degenerates into a total cacophony. Scary stuff!

The night after, we caught Sukilove played at the Muziekodroom club. This small and cozy venue did the band a lot more justice than the large and virtually empty Kuub a few weeks ago. The setlist was more or less the same, with the notable exception that it now included the absolutely wonderful "Let's Dive". Swell! By the way, Stokki, if you're reading this: we really need to have a talk about those sunglasses, buddy...

On Saturday, Helder entertained the masses at Jokot. Helder was accompanied by Jeroen Tilkin, Mario Goossens and Pieter Van Buyten. The set had a good mix of tunes from both albums, and was good fun from start to finish. Highlight of the show were the encores, for which the band stepped off the stage and played two acoustic songs in the middle of the room. Helder played the banjo on the first and the ukulele on the second, and was accompanied by accordion and contrabass.

Het Depot invited the Kamikaze Freak Show to come and do their thing on Tuesday, and the mighty El Guapo Stuntteam was sent in to warm up the crowd. The guys didn't ease us into it: right from the first song, they laid the shit down so hard that it hurt. I would have thought that opening for a freak circus would have been a perfect opportunity for them to bring out Captain Catastrophy, but no such luck. Also, they didn't play their magnum opus "Battles Across The Stereo Spectrum", but what they did play rocked so hard that they are forgiven!

Tuesday night, I H8 Camera convened at Scheld'apen. The band were set up in the back of the venue, which made for an interesting change of perspective. Members for the night were Rudy Trouvé, Mark Meyers, Jeroen Stevens, Ephraïm Cielen, Bert Lenaerts and Youri Van Uffelen. The previous time I H8 Camera played at Scheld'apen, I later suggested via this website that the gig could have used more cowbell. This time, the guys brought not one, but two cowbells! I feel so flattered! Other tools of the trade included melodicas, guitars, bass, drums, some more percussion, and no less than three keyboards. As usual, the band members took turns starting and conducting the improvisations. Youri suggested that the band should play their "disco hit", which lead to a particularly entertaining piece. Another funny bit was when Rudy suggested that they play something in the key of A. Jeroen played an A chord on his keyboard and asked whether Rudy wanted it major or minor, to which Rudy replied: "I was thinking more along the lines of using only one finger". In addition to funny bits, there were also some quiet bits, some loud bits and some really loud bits, almost all of which were brown bits. Good gig!

Yesterday, Vooruit organized a Pixies tribute, titled Here Comes Your Band, for which a number of Belgian bands came by to cover and/or massacre their favourite Pixies songs. Here's a comprehensive list:

• The Germans didn't stray too far from the Pixies sound, but did do some neat stuff with a keyboard and a pair of cymbals. A great warmup, but not a real highlight.
• The Diary Sucks (featuring David Bovée, Tom Wouters and Tom Theunis) played acoustic renditions of "Bone Machine" and "Where Is My Mind?". The latter was particularly brown: the dark and moody original was turned into a delightfully upbeat and danceable tune.
• Pornorama were the least exciting act of the evening. They didn't sound very convincing, and didn't really bring anything new to the table.
• Coca-Cola Met God (featuring Tim Vanhamel and Eric Thielemans), on the other hand, brought so much new to the table that you might have wondered if they were even playing Pixies tunes at all. The two started their set by dishing out some pretty hefty beats, larded with all sorts of filthy noises. Tim, dressed in a stylish red jogging suit, had fashioned a mask with a microphone built into it. The vocals came out so badly distorted that he could have been singing just about anything, but let's give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he was singing a Pixies tune. Later in the set, Tim strapped on his guitar, and began to jump around on stage like the raving lunatic that he is. Soon afterwards, though, a song miraculously emerged from the noise, and the set came to a relatively accessible conclusion. The set was only about 15 minutes, but it had enough brownness to last me a week!
• A Brand were the last band on. They started with a long instrumental, which sounded glammy and tight, as one would expect from A Brand. They also played "Yeah", off their own first album, which to the best of my knowledge is not a Pixies song. Cheating bastards!

Last week had a busy couple of days, starting on Thursday when the Love Substitutes played at the VUB Kultuurkaffee. The place was pretty packed, so the band had a lot of ass to kick. They delivered on all fronts, with a setlist that included tunes off both albums as well as some new stuff.

One of the highlights of the set was "Hey, did you see me coming?", which was opened by the band members randomly shouting "hey!" at one another. After a while, Craig decided to toss his microphone into the crowd, where it landed right in the hands of yours truly (although I presume Craig was actually aiming for the head). This afforded me a unique opportunity to shout "hey!" as well, although my bliss was short-lived, as someone else almost immediately snatched the mic from my hands. While the band started the actual song, the microphone thieves blurted out all sorts of drunken gibberish, which after a while brought a look of mild despair over Craig's face. Luckily, his irresistible puppy eyes made the thieves feel guilty, and prompted them to return the mic.

When the show was over, Mauro packed up his drumkit in a hurry and headed to Recyclart, where he was expected for a solo performance at a Glasvocht label night. The gear he used was pretty much the same as at other recent shows: laptop, effects pedals, portable record player, microphone, and of course the fearsome double-neck bass/guitar. The venue was filled with helium balloons, and Mauro hooked some to the head of his guitar, thus making it look even more fearsome! Mauro also had a number of maps spread out on the floor, although their purpose remains uncertain.

The set sounded somewhat like the recent one at Open AIR, with dark-ish soundscapes that were at times interrupted by the cheesiest of schlager tunes. The set ended with a slice of pure bliss, when Mauro finally delivered what I had been begging for for years: an elaborate shredding guitar solo, complete with a bit of double-tapping. Oh happy day! The crowd begged for an encore, and we got a particularly brown one: Mauro played a record with a rendition of "For he's a jolly good fellow", and accompanied it with some downright silly dance moves!

The next night, Creature With The Atom Brain played at Trix, opening for Parts and Labor. The latter played loud noise rock not unlike Lightning Bolt, but ruined it by adding melodic vocals to it. Props to them for trying, I suppose, but for me it didn't quite work. Their drummer made some great facial expressions, though, so at least that was fun to watch.

CWTAB's recent show at Recyclart left a bit of a foul aftertaste due to the technical problems and poor sound, but they more than made up for this at Trix. The gear behaved itself and the sound was great, so the guys got to lay their shit down the way it is meant to be laid down: hard. All the best songs from the two albums were there, as well as a couple of new tunes that rocked equally hard. I wouldn't have minded to hear "Streetlife Cherry" as well, but who am I to complain after such a delightful butt whooping?

On Saturday, Sukilove played at Kuub. Nono Newton had the dubious honor of warming up what little audience there was. It's really a crying shame that there weren't more people there to see the show, because even though Sukilove played a perfectly good set, it's hard to fully enjoy a gig when everyone is standing 15 feet away from the stage. I guess that's the price you pay for playing in a remote neck of the woods...

Also on Saturday night, Zaal België held a little festival called "Hard Gaan", and Mauro was the headlining act. He invited Jeroen Stevens to play drums, and used a guitar with only one neck this time. Mauro started by setting up some ambient noise loops, and then went on to give the crowd a lesson in Limburg geography. He named a whole bunch of towns, and pointed out the direction in which they lay. After that, he started laying down some seriously badass guitar riffs, which Jeroen complemented with some equally badass drum parts. The set ended with steady, menacing drums while Mauro mumbled something unintelligible (but undoubtedly badass). Awesome!

The inimitable Flat Earth Society played at De Singel last Friday, performing a live soundtrack to the movie "Die Austernprinzessin" by Ernst Lubitsch. Conducted by Peter Vermeersch (with a little help from a metronome), the band did a great job at matching the music to the events in the movie. They didn't just play background music, of course -- they also mimicked a lot of sounds. The clicking of a typewriter, for instance, was mimicked by rattling the keys on a saxophone. On another occasion, a room full of chattering women was accompanied only by the sound of duck whistles. Touché!

Also highly entertaining were the many onomatopoeias Wim Willaert came up with. He mimicked speech by mumbling a bunch of Mr. Bean style gibberish, made grunting and panting noises as a fat man ran down a flight of stairs, and so on.

One of the definite highlights of the film was when a foxtrot epidemic broke out (I shit you not!). The screen showed a big band, conducted by a raving lunatic, while a room full of people danced a rather, err, peculiar version of the foxtrot. It was an absolutely hilarious sight, and the scene was accompanied by some particularly cool music.

It was a good film, and an absolutely brilliant performance by FES. To quote from the movie: "das imponiert mir"!

Last week, Sebastian Reier and Mauro Pawlowski played at an exhibition called "Break Down the Walls", by Dennis Tyfus and Vaast Colson. Entirely befitting the name of the exhibition, people entered the gallery through a hole in the wall. In the exhibition room, there was an oval wooden "cage", inside which the musicians had set up their gear. You could peek into the cage from the ground floor, but the best view was from the first floor, from where you could look down into the cage.

Reier's gear consisted of a guitar hooked up to a load of effects units. He went at it with an assortment of things that aren't normally used for playing guitar: a steel brush, a violin bow, shakers, a miniature fan, paint brushes... This provided a steady stream of crackling, buzzing and squealing background noises, over which Mauro made some slightly more recognizable noises.

Mauro used an electronic drum pad and a loop station to lay down some slow but steady beats. He also brought a record player, and played an instructional record for drummers during the show. Over all this, he used his double-neck axe to whip out some heavy bass lines and detuned guitar riffs. Vocals and a bit of harmonica were used for the finishing touch.

About half an hour later, the noises faded to a gentle hum, and whistling birds announced the end of the set. We crawled back through the hole in the wall, and returned to a world less brown.

Last weekend, a new edition of Maldudler took place at Pekfabriek. The first band on was Hawaii, who played some sort of generic brand guitar rock. It was a rather boring set, which wasn't made any better by the acute lack of spectators. Hitch, who were up next, fared a lot better. The air of steely determination on the drummer's face revealed that these men came here to rock! They did exactly that, dishing out songs with plenty of edgy guitar hooks. The drummer's totally daft facial expressions and the bassist's overly enthusiastic dancing made the singer look kind of boring in comparison, but hey -- appearances aren't everything.

The main event for the night were the Porn Bloopers. They laid the shit down hard, as usual, and had an extra special surprise in stock for us: they brought no less than five bass players! The five of them took turns throughout the set, playing a couple of songs each. Up until now I had only seen the band play as a duo, and although that was already really good, the bass added a welcome extra bit of "oomph" to the sound. This was especially so during the last song, when all five bassists got on stage together, and laid down some of the most punishing Hard Rock I'd heard in ages. Hail!

Trix opened a brand spanking new club this week, and the honor of inaugurating it went to I Love Sarah, Helder and Sukilove.

I Love Sarah only got to play for twenty minutes, so they carefully selected their five greatest hits. They opened with "InBev Awoe" -- a direct sneer at Arne Van Petegem, who had thanked InBev in his opening speech just before the gigs started. Also notable is that Rutger sat on the right-hand side of the stage, offering the audience a unique opportunity to see the left half of his face, which until now had been as elusive as the dark side of the moon. It was a short but sweet gig, but the guys missed an amazing opportunity here: they were the first band ever to perform in this club, and they didn't break anything!

Helder performed as a one-man band. Mostly he played guitar and drums, but during one song he managed to play accordion, drums and banjo! It was a really good set, although Helder had quite some trouble getting the attention of the people in the back, who were jabbering throughout most of the gig. For his last song, Helder was joined by Toon from Sukilove, and they played a duet for accordion and ukelele. Ukeleles rock!

It was an extra special night for Sukilove: not only were they headlining the first night at the brand new Trix club, they could also present their new album, which was for a large part recorded at Trix. The gig certainly raised high hopes for the album -- "Black Heart", "Let's Dive" and "Even The Angels Sin", to name but a few, sounded like instant classics to me. It seemed as if Pascal had a spot of trouble remembering the lyrics to "Girl On The Moon", but a minor niggle like that couldn't keep this from being a really great show. More highlights included a cover of "Love Me To" by the Beatles, and "Moon" for which the band was joined by a string quartet. Helder also joined his old bandmates on stage for two songs. Awesome stuff!

Last week, Alan Muller played at Video. Those who were expecting hard rock might have been disappointed. The band's drummer apparently bailed out the night before, so we had to settle for the Alan Muller Folk Trio instead of the Alan Muller Rock Quartet. Apart from two songs by The Band (not just any band!), as far as I could tell the set was all new material. It was a pretty entertaining gig, helped along by Muller's geeky banter in between songs -- the band, for instance, was introduced as "Hi, we're Alan Muller. This here is Alan and that's Muller". The songs sounded somewhat less catchy than those of Muller's previous bands, but I suspect this had a lot to do with the fact that they hadn't planned to do an acoustic set. It certainly sounded good enough to make me want to see them again with a full band.

Last weekend, a new series of Undercurrent gigs was kicked off at JH Kavka. The first band on were Keiki, a duo with vocals and guitar, backed by pre-recorded beats. The music sounded okay, but the rather bland and monotonous vocals made it kind of hard to appreciate. I Do I Do were up next. They can boast some credentials: they scored well in various band competitions, and have recently recorded an album in the States with the help of Chris Brokaw. None of this makes their music any less forgettable, though.

Just when I began to fear that I would fall asleep right there and then, Droon took the stage. His breakcore set was in stark contrast with the earlier bands, but unfortunately it didn't go down quite as well with the crowd. One by one, people headed for the bar, until there was hardly anyone left to watch the show. You can't really blame people for walking out, I guess, because the first half of Droon's show felt more like a warm up than an actual show. Droon wielded his "keytar" seemingly at random, trying to find samples that sounded good together. Whenever he found something he liked, he let it run for a few seconds until he got bored, and then started over again. This was entertaining for a while, but it made it nigh impossible for people to really get in to it. Things started to get more coherent towards the end of the show, but the room was all but empty by then. For those who did stay, highlights of the show included a neat DJ Tiësto spoof, and a little pop quiz in which I made an ass of myself by mistaking Peter Maffay's "Du" for "Bohemian Rhapsody". I don't know if the show could be called a success, but it was certainly brown!

The last act for the night were Wixel, who added to the feeling that Droon was seriously misplaced in the line up. Wixel played quiet, warm instrumentals, using guitar, bass, laptop and some live drums. It sounded nice for a while, but the slow pace and the band's dire lack of stage presence made it very hard for me to enjoy the show. To Wixel's credit, though, the people that ran away from Droon came back in for their set, and stayed in, too.

AIR Antwerpen, an artist residency project somewhere in the harbour, kicked off their new season last week with a little festival curated by Mauro. The festival, dubbed "Open AIR", featured visual arts, literature and live music. We caught gigs by Uské Orchestra, Missy Hawaii and of course the headlining act, Mauro himself.

Despite the name, Uské Orchestra turned out to be a one man band, and despite being a one man band, he needed more time for his soundcheck than he did for his actual gig. The time spent setting up microphones for his percussion instruments was utterly wasted, because it took him all of two minutes before he slammed right through one of his drums, and sent most of the other stuff crashing to the ground. The rest of the gig was mostly played on a trumpet, which he ran through an effects unit to produce loads of noise. Nothing very inventive, really, and because of the long soundcheck, we'd already heard most of it before the gig even started.

Missy Hawaii is a hiphop artist. I'm allergic to hiphop, but Missy Hawaii had one thing going for him: he's Japanese. Although the gig essentially involved lots of fiddling with knobs, Missy was damn fun to watch. The squealy Japanese vocals lent a nice touch of brownness to the show, and the heavy beats had the kids dancing in the aisles in no time (well, perhaps not all of the kids). Good show!

We don't get to see nearly enough of Mauro these days, so it was nice to see him squeeze out some serious brownness again. He did a semi-improvized set, with the main attraction being a double-neck bass and guitar. Other tools included a full drum kit, a laptop, a loop station and a record player. The record player was used to splice in a cheesy schlager tune every now and then, and in between Mauro looped all sorts of droning riffs and beats for himself to improvize over. The guitar was dramatically underused -- my pleas for an epic guitar solo were unanswered -- but it was an excellent gig nonetheless.

Last week, I-H8 Camera and Creature With The Atombrain played at Recyclart. The gigs took place on a stage in front of the venue, in open air. A bit chilly, but thankfully they served pancakes!

I-H8 Camera had to get by without Craig Ward this time, but tried to make up for this by bringing Frans Van Isacker (sax) and Bart Maris (trumpet). Also present were Elko Blijweert, Mark Meyers, Bert Lenaerts, Jeroen Stevens, Teuk Henri and Rudy Trouvé. As on previous occasions, each band member conducted one song. Maris's "composition" was one of my favourites, and by running his trumpet through an effects setup, he contributed all sorts of really neat brown noises throughout the gig. Bert's composition was another highlight: he decided that at one point, on his signal, everyone should "go crazy". When asked what the signal was, Bert came up with some particularly impressive footwork. Rudy's enthusiastic head nodding confirmed our suspicions: this was a good show!

Creature With The Atombrain were not so fortunate. The band introduced a couple of new songs, which sounded like they might rock really hard. However, Aldo's guitar amp was apparently broken, and the sound dropped out several times throughout the gig. To make things even worse, the guitar sounded sharp and hollow -- nothing like the obliterating mudslide that we know and love from CWTAB. It's a crying shame when one of the hardest rocking shows in town gets thwarted by technical problems, but I'm sure the guys will get their revenge!

The next night, we attended the opening of the Majestic offices. Majestic is an initiative started by Gregory Frateur and Nicolas Rombouts, which aims to act as a record label and as an organizer of club shows and theatre productions. To celebrate the opening of the new offices, Majestic invited Daddy's Darlings to come play a gig. Daddy's Darlings are a contemporary version of the Andrews Sisters, of whom they covered such tunes as "Bei Mir Bist du Schön" and "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy". The three ladies were backed up by their band, the Big Bang Boys, and were also helped out by Gregory Frateur for a couple of songs. It was plenty of fun, although the gig was just a tad too long to my tastes.

We've been reliably informed that Metal Molly are heading for an inevitable break-up, and so we seized the opportunity to see them once more at this year's Marktrock, where they headlined the Vismarkt stage on Sunday night. As was to be expected, people once again threw oranges at the stage. The band should really consider themselves lucky they called the song "Orange", and not "Coconut", "Watermelon" or some other potentially hazardous crop! No surprises in this gig, but of course we weren't expecting any to begin with. What we did expect, and get, was an hour's worth of superb pop tunes. Hurray!

A long time ago, when dinosaurs could speak, Sjoerd and I Love Sarah played in a basement affectionately known as "Envers-Swa". The basement was small, jam-packed full of people and incredibly hot. The pictures of sweaty armpits prove it! Last time (the only other time) I saw Sjoerd, he only played three songs, but he has since then built up a nice set list for himself. His tunes sound a bit like what Mauro might have written if he weren't too busy selling ou... Err, I mean playing with dEUS. Bass player Pascal Deweze was sadly absent from the gig, but Sjoerd and Jeroen got the message across nonetheless, even though Jeroen sometimes had to whisper the message in Sjoerd's ear:

Jeroen (whispering): Don't forget to announce our next gig!
Sjoerd: We're playing another gig next week in, err...
Jeroen (whispering): Nossegem!
Sjoerd: Nossegem.

I Love Sarah tried out their set list for the Plink Plonk and Dour festivals -- two big steps on the road to global domination! Jeroen used the drain pipes that ran across the basement's ceiling for extra percussion. I can't help but wonder how he compensated for their use at the festivals, where I presume there would not have been any large pipes running across the stage at shoulder height. Then again, Plink Plonk was in Estland, so who knows?! Anyway, the set was excellent as always, with the possible exception of "De Gokchinees", which was painted a bit too brown by a malfunctioning keyboard. That's what you get for rocking too hard!

A long time ago, in a city far, far away, Penguins Know Why played at a location known to some as the "Loft". A sign outside kindly asked visitors not to piss in the hallway -- a good sign if ever I saw one! Considering this sign, though, it has to be said that drinks were dangerously cheap. The Penguins's gig came complete with visuals, in which a camel played a prominent part. The band played all their hits, including "XOYO" and, err... Did I mention "XOYO"?

That same night, Hank and Lily played at the Vooruit. Palmeira and Cecil weren't with the band, but to make up for this, Hank and Lily introduced a couple of new songs, and obviously most of the old classics were there as well. The Jungle Bunny on duty was a particularly colorful figure, who nearly killed himself trying to climb onto the stage, and made it up there just in time for the end of the song. Hank had some problems with his monitor and/or amp early on, unfortunately, so the gig had to be stopped for a while to get that sorted out. Other than that, it was a fine set, although it has to be said that their music works a lot better in smaller venues.

Last Tuesday, Canadian dance sensation Les Georges Leningrad played at 't Lokaal in the booming metropolis of Stevoort. Les Georges were hampered by technical problems early on in their set, but once they got things sorted out, they laid down the brownness by the wheelbarrow full! The band pounded out ass-tight beats (including some mammal beats), while singer Poney P shrieked out loads of gibberish. Crazy shit, man, crazy! The visual spectacle was right up there with the music, too. The band's outfits were highly appropriate, and Poney P's dance moves were downright impressive. Drummer Bobo Boutin (with "Stevoort" written across his chest) also impressed by doing a handstand on stage. Shame about the sound problems, but other than that it was one of the browner shows in recent memory!

It's never a bad time to see an I Love Sarah gig, and we saw one at Kaaiman last week. It was a good one, too! The guys introduced a new song, called "Inbev Awoe!", and concluded the set with a cover of the theme from "Cheers". Also, Rutger vocalized powerfully on no less than two songs in a row! Other sources of brownness included a "Dirty Dancing" poster, and of course Jeroen's stylish pink headband. It has to be seen to be believed!

Last night, Donkey Diva played at Kinky Star. Craig, Gregory and Gunter were in good shape, and played a set that was sometimes funny, sometimes moving, and always brown. Gunter and Gregory were forced to improvize when Craig had to go for a wee-wee, and did so in a most entertaining fashion. Another highlight was Nina Simone's "Sinnerman", which featured powerful vocalizing by both Gregory and Craig, as well as cosmic guitar sounds. The encore was another improv, which started off with some really cool vocal free noise by Gregory. An all-round excellent show!

Last week, Franco Saint De Bakker played two consecutive nights at the AB club, to record a new album. The set list, hence, was all "new" material -- some of the songs we'd heard before, but none of them were on the first album. Stefaan Blancke joined the band on slide trombone, and Tim Van der Poel (a.k.a. the Human Crow) did vocals on a song that he wrote. Excellent song, by the way! Other highlights included the rather disturbing "Calvaire" and the highly amusing "Baden Powell". I have pictures of the first night, which I thought was the browner of the two. Since the two sets were virtually identical anyway, I didn't bother to take pictures again the second night.

On Friday, the AB club was once again the place to be for a brown night out! Flat Earth Society came to present their excellent new album, "Psychoscout", and their exhilerating big band jazz is entirely my cup of tea. There's plenty of room for experiment, which makes it challenging listening material, and there's just as much room for outright silliness, which makes it damn fun to watch. The silliest one of the bunch has to be accordionist Wim Willaert, who did some very emotive chanting, as well as making all sorts of brown noises with a balloon, a kazoo, a coffee mug and at least one other unidentified item. Honorary member Roland contributed some mean guitar solos to "Edward, Why Don't You Play Some Blues" and "Little King Ink", as well as doing vocals on the excellent "Hilton's Heaven" (a song dedicated to Herman Brood). No use in trying to pick highlights out of this show -- it was all brown!

Saturday night, we boarded the good ship Péniche Fulmar for an evening of nautical-themed rock and roll. Sea shanties came courtesy of Naifu, tRAM and I Love Sarah. Naifu didn't rock the boat hard enough to get me out of my comfy chair, but the other two bands certainly delivered the goods!

tRAM is making good progress. They're already up to number XVI, which must be a good thing (even though I don't know what number they're aiming for). Tight, heavy, and with none of that distracting singing business going on -- I like it!

I Love Sarah were equally tight and almost equally instrumental. They may not sound as heavy as tRAM, but tRAM didn't play a 10-minute rendition of "Jingle Bells"! tRAM also didn't instruct people to cram things up their arses until it bled, nor did their drummer balance a cymbal on top of his head. It's little touches like these that earned I Love Sarah the honor of being the top of the bill!

Dez Mona played at Charlatan last Thursday, with their new lineup of vocals, bass, organs and drums. The extended lineup added some variety to the set, but at times it also felt like it took away some of the tension that is present when Frateur and Rombouts perform as a duo. Which is not to say that this was a disappointing show, however, because it would take a lot more than a bit of rearrangement to make a Dez Mona gig sound any less brown!

On Friday (a day that will live in infamy), an Arty Farty Party took place at an undisclosed location in Gent. This party had it all: live music, art, Disney movies, and even tiramisu. The first band to perform were Penguins Know Why. If the penguins know, why won't they tell me? Up next were I Love Sarah. The band, with a little help from the Eliminator, rocked the shit so hard that chunks of plaster fell off the ceiling! Jani Jani provided comic relief by taking every possible occasion to bash Goddeau. The last band to perform were You Raskal You. Their gig was rather hard to enjoy, though, because there was a gay-looking asshole in the back who incessantly hammered on a pink ukelele in a vain attempt to steal the band's thunder.

On Sunday night, Tip Toe Topic played at a packed Plaza Real. Saar and Elko were squeezed into a little niche in the back of the café, together with their instruments. Thank god Elko can rock without needing a big-ass Marshall stack, because there wasn't enough room for one! This cozy setting was a perfect match for the band's jazzy tunes, and as always, Tip Toe Topic's distinctive blend of beats, clarinet, guitar and casio sounded superb. Hopefully the ever expanding setlist will result in another CD release soon!

Today's update begins a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Two weeks ago in Hasselt, to be precise. We went to the Play Festival at Zaal België, and caught Julie Mittens, Heliogabale, Pox and Don Caballero. The first three bands, unfortunately, were of the easily forgettable variety. Thankfully, Don Caballero saved the day with a tight and heavy math rock show, the likes of which we had not seen in weeks! Extra thick drum sticks, liberal use of double tapping, and stylish white socks are but a few of the factors that contributed to the success of this show. The power outage halfway through was rather unfortunate, but it only made the second half of the show all the sweeter.

Having rated the Hackensaw Boys the best live act of 2005 just a few months ago, I was obviously looking forward to their gig at the Handelsbeurs last Wednesday. Although the gig was enjoyable, however, it seemed sorely lacking compared to the two shows I saw in November. The main reason for this, I suspect, was the absence of singer David Sickman. Substitute Ward Harrison took over Sickman's guitar parts, but mostly left the vocal duties to the other band members, none of whom could adequately replace Sickman's distinctive voice. A damn shame!

The night after, we headed to the AB to see the Fiery Furnaces. The band played their edgy pop tunes using a straightforward line up of guitars, bass and drums. This seemed like a far cry from their studio material (what little I've heard of it, at least), which prominently features synths and effects. Fine by me, though: I like guitars! With no less than 18 songs, the set list may have been a tad lengthier than strictly necessary, but other than that it was a more than decent show.

Last night, we caught Metal Molly at Het Depot. This being a full-length gig, it was even more enjoyable than the recent short set for Brussel Vlaams Deluxe. People actually threw oranges at the stage during "Orange" -- so clever, I wish I had thought of that! Although most of the set was light-hearted and fun, the absolute highlight to me, as proven by the goose bumps on my arms, was "Zebra". A brilliant song, and a damn good gig!

After several months of abstinence, I was more than a little excited at the prospect of a new Millionaire gig. The guys opened up a can of whoop-ass at the AB Box on Sunday night. The opening song was both new and excellent, and "Ballad Of Pure Thought" was a pleasant surprise as well. Tim had apparently become the victim of a car burglary that day, and he thanked the assholes that did it by not dedicating the song to them. The rest of the set list was familiar material, all of which rocked as hard as ever. There was some crowd surfing -- always a good sign -- and some people even threw wigs at the stage! Must be some sort of new trend?

On Monday, Andrew Bird played at MaZ. Accompanied by Martin Dosh on drums, the multi-talented Mr. Bird played violin, guitar and glockenspiel, as well as doing the vocals and some damn impressive whistling! Liberal use of looping pedals lent a very rich sound to Bird's dreamy and atmospheric folk tunes. My mind involuntarily wandered off after a while, but the gig made for a pleasant soundtrack to chill out to, which is also commendable.

After years of silence, Metal Molly are doing a reunion tour. The premiere was Tuesday night at the AB, for Brussel Vlaams Deluxe. It was a short set of seven or so songs, mostly from the first album. It was great fun to see these tunes played live once more. I'm not just being a sentimental old fart here, either -- they really are good tunes, and they haven't staled a bit! Not even the inevitable "Orange", which was treated to a, err, peculiar new outro. There's a couple of full-length gigs coming up soon, so check them out! The band have announced that they will split up on August 19th (reason to be determined), so it's now or never!

It had been way too long since I last saw Franco Saint De Bakker, but last Wednesday my patience was rewarded. And how! The band played a memorable set at Molens Van Orshoven. They introduced a bunch of new material, both covers and songs of their own, and all of them sounded equally brown. One of the highlights was a fucked up waltz from the soundtrack of the movie "Calvaire", to which Elko even performed the appropriate dance moves. The band are recording a new album at the AB in June -- I can hardly wait!

Yesterday, the mighty FantômasMelvins Big Band invaded our country, and they were on a mission to destroy! The set had a good selection of Melvins tunes as well as stuff from the different Fantômas albums. It has to be said that King Buzzo (my hero!) looked positively badass in his pajama pants. Melvins bass player David Scott Stone, on the other hand, looked positively dorky in his pajamas. This only went to show that appearances can be deceptive, however, as Stone was responsible for some of the browner elements of the show. Using all sorts of interesting gadgets, Stone produced noises that were the perfect complement to Buzzo's crushing guitar riffs.

The band was conducted by the raving lunatic known as Mike Patton, who can still take claim to one of the most impressive throats in contemporary rock (or should I say jazz?). One of the highlights of the show was an extended rendition of "Page 14", which had over three minutes of almost total silence. The only sound coming from the stage was an occasional gentle tap on a cymbal by Dave Lombardo. The rest of the band stood and waited motionless, waiting for Patton's command. The crowd started to go wild, and after a while just about the whole room was yelling shit at the stage. Lombardo carried on, and the rest of the band still waited. And waited. And waited some more. Then, out of the blue, Patton made a quick gesture and the band burst into ear-shattering noise.

Ah, it was one of those gigs that I could rave about all night. But I won't, because words cannot convey the sheer brownness of this rock show anyway!

My last visit to this year's Domino festival was on Thursday. The first band on were Black Dice. I remember seeing them at Domino two years ago and being fairly bored. None of that this time, though -- their sound lay roughly halfway between Sickboy and Merzbow, and the result was painfully loud noise that you could dance to. Fun! They played in the dark, though, so no photos. Sorry!

Up next were Kieran Hebden and Steve Reid. Hebden worked a laptop and various other high-tech devices, while Reid played the drums. The two played a superb improvized set, in which Hebden's clicks and bleeps blended perfectly into Reid's exhilerating drum work. Impressive!

The main act for the night were Battles. Their music is damn hard to describe (math-jazz-rock-thingamajig?), but even harder to dislike. The live show is ass-tight and exciting from start to finish, and the level of musicianship these guys put on display is amazing. A worthy headliner for an absolutely great evening!

On Saturday night, Donkey Diesel played at De Woeker in Oudenaarde. It was the second time I saw them without Buni Lenski on violin, and the rearranged songs are really falling into place nicely. A good gig, as we've come to expect from the band, albeit with an above-average amount of goofing around on stage :-)

The fourth night of the Domino festival had some particularly brown shizzle in store, courtesy of Magik Markers. Three guitars spewed out all sorts of lovely filth, while the drums kept the crowd hooked with a steady beat. Singer Elisa Ambrogio whispered and howled, while beating up her guitar like a red-headed stepchild. She almost smashed me in the face with her guitar, too! Wouldn't that have made for a particularly cool way to lose an eye?

Today's update starts last Wednesday, when I Love Sarah opened for 31 Knots at Scheld'apen. It's starting to feel like just about every other gig that appears on SoundsBrown is an I Love Sarah gig, but as long as the dynamic duo continues to deliver the goods, that's fine by me. And yes, Wednesday's show was a good one -- and a bilingual one at that! Here's some pictures.

Main act 31 Knots were, to say the least, an interesting bunch. They played moderately noisy guitar rock, which by itself would have been easily forgotten. Their stage act saved the day, though. Stylish dance moves, some amount of double tapping, and even a change of clothes in the middle of the room -- it all added to the entertainment value of the gig. Check out my pictures right here, although I should tell you up front that the singer's undies do not appear in any of them.

Fast forward to Thursday night. You can't dislike a man who plays resonator guitars and banjo, especially not when he plays them as well as Helder. Backed up by Gino Geudens, Pieter Van Buyten and Antoon Offeciers, Helder did a tryout at Charlatan. The setlist was about half new and half old material, and by the sound of it, the new album is one to look forward to! Here's some pictures...

On Saturday, we headed out to distant Cortil-Wodon for the Rhâââ Lovely Festival. The first band on were none other than I Love Sarah, who played yet another fine set. Most notable fact: Jeroen may have set a new record by losing one drumstick and breaking two others, all over the course of a single song! The other highlight of the festival was Deerhoof, although I didn't manage to get pictures of them. The rest of the line up mostly sounded fairly boring from where I was standing, but ILS and Deerhoof alone made the festival well worth the price of admission!

Sunday night, the AB kicked off this year's edition of the Domino festival with a bang! After a nice warmup by Bo Wiget and Simon Lenski, Boris took the stage and put on a rock show. They played equal parts fast, classic hard rock and loud, droning sludge. The vocals took some getting used to, and I'm still trying to decide whether the drummer's high-pitched squeaks and squeals were the icing on the cake or completely unnecessary and annoying. Other than that, though, a fine show! I have a few snaps right here.

The main event for the night was Sunn O))), who left their guitars at home and played Moogs. For the first half of the set, a guy carrying a laptop (a most peculiar sight) recited, err, stuff. It could have been poetry written by a fourteen year old girl for all I know, but as I could hardly understand a word he was saying, it sounded like some pretty dark and menacing shit. Throughout all this, the moogs produced deep, loud and unbelievably monotonous tones. It was so loud and bassy that it could be felt more than it could be heard. The laptop man disappeared halfway through the set, and we were left with the sound of the three moogs, with a gong being the only source of variation. The set lasted about an hour and a half, and in spite of all the times I've mentioned my short attention span on this site, I enjoyed every last minute of it! Pictures!

Last night, I went to see the Reverend Horton Heat at Hof Ter Lo. The Reverend put on a classic rock and roll show, with some shit hot guitar playing, excellent drum work, and of course the one and only J-I-M-B-O on the bass. The Reverend even took the time in between two songs to taunt Bon Jovi (and power ballads in general). My kind of bloke! Here's some pictures.

Scheld'apen held a "Heavenhotel night" on Friday, with appearances by Teuk Henri, Tip Toe Topic and I Hate Camera. Teuk played a solo set on guitar, and used all means available to squeeze interesting noises out of his instrument. With a looping pedal, he built up quiet, dreamy soundscapes that sounded very nice, but also made my mind wander off very quickly (although for once I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way). Here's a few pictures...

Highlight of the evening, as far as I'm concerned, was Tip Toe Topic. Elko was clearly on a roll, using all available limbs to play the guitar, operate his set of effects pedals and dance around like a loony at the same time. Saar complemented this with clarinet, keyboards and some lovely jazzy vocals. Two thumbs up!

I Hate Camera, on this occasion, were Rudy Trouvé, Elko Blijweert, Craig Ward, Mark Meyers, Teuk Henri, Heyme Langbroek and Rohal De Ridder. The set seemed rather slow and uneventful compared to the one in Leuven -- I think it needed more cowbell. I'm not exactly a big fan of Meyers' lovely singing voice, and Craig looked like he was about to fall asleep on stage after a while. His blog reveals that he was in fact dying rather than dozing off, but I didn't know that at the time, so it's no excuse.

On Saturday night, A Brand played at MOD. The band had a new guitarist, Thomas something something (ad interim I believe), and although it was his very first gig with A Brand, they still sounded tight as ever. The set was excellent from start to finish, and had a good selection of tunes from both albums. One thing I really didn't get, though, was why on earth they would want to play "Hammerhead" twice (once to end the set, once as an encore). Surely two full CDs should give them enough material to fill a one-hour set?

Last Wednesday, tRAM and I Hate Camera played at Molens Van Orshoven. tRAM seem to rock a little harder every time I see them -- or is it just me ? In any case, it was another thoroughly enjoyable show. The guys laid the shit down so hard that the drum kit fell apart during the last song, and like everyone knows, it's always a good sign when things start falling apart! Here's a few pictures.

I Hate Camera were (in clockwise order) Aarich Jespers, Bert Lenaerts, Mark Meyers, Rudy Trouvé, Jeroen Stevens, Craig Ward and Elko Blijweert. Each of the seven band members was tasked with conducting one song. Mostly, this amounted to the conductor deciding up front in which order the others would join in. Craig, ever the prankster, had a more interesting challenge lined up for his band mates and requested that the song be played in a 7/8 time signature. It was all good fun, and the addition of percussion made for a nice change in sound, too. I have some pictures here.

Thursday, Sint-Lucas Gent organized a festival of sorts at Vooruit, by the name of "Fuck The Students". The event had a pretty diverse line up, boasting everything from ambient electronica to folk, rock and "post-core screamo" (I'm not making that up). And then there was also Borokov Borokov, who defied categorization. Much like the last time I saw them, the set started off in a fairly coherent fashion, with some very decent electro-rock tunes. And even more so than last time, the set also ended in complete and utter brownness. At some point a guy in a Spongebob Squarepants costume appeared and started a little mosh pit on stage with the band members. A bit later, Noah (of Porn Bloopers fame) joined in on live drums. He was soon followed by his cohort Yannick, who was dressed up as if he came straight out the E.R., and played through a little guitar amp that was strapped to his back. He was on stage for all of ten seconds before he dove into the crowd and joined the mosh pit. Surprisingly, nobody got smashed in the face by his guitar, but if future Borokov shows continue to evolve in the direction they're going now, people are bound to get hurt! Hooray! Check out my pictures right here.

Saturday night, the finale of Latent Talent took place at Hof Ter Lo. The five winning bands played on the main stage, with Absynthe Minded as the headlining act.

I'm not feeling particularly inspired at the moment, and am having some difficulty coming up with clever and original ways to pimp I Love Sarah. They deserve better, but hey, I'm only human. You, however, are of course free to post your own rave reviews right here!

The Hickey Underworld may have won Humo's Rock Rally, but they have yet to convince yours truly. While their stuff isn't bad as such, most of it sounds exactly alike to me. A bit of variation wouldn't hurt -- maybe some dance numbers? Anyway, here's some pictures that I took to kill the time.

tRAM, by comparison, had my attention right from the start and held on to it for the whole gig. Their heavy instrumentals occasionally lean towards post rock, but stay far enough clear of it that it doesn't become offensive. Excellent! I have a few pictures here.

Last Friday, the brownmobile undertook the epic voyage to distant Lembeke, the town which most of you probably know for its "Speculoosfeesten". It was not speculoos that inspired this journey, though: at "Straatje Zonder Einde", a number of bands took a shot at being even browner than speculoos. These bands were Angst, Penguins Know Why, Carbon and The Barco Morsato Orchestra.

Angst didn't quite attain speculoos status. What we heard from afar didn't sound brown enough to make us overcome our laziness and move closer. Things picked up nicely from there on, though. Penguins Know Why played pretty straightforward guitar rock, but it certainly had its moments, and thankfully the set was short enough to fit in my attention span. There were some technical problems with the microphone towards the end of set, and of course it always adds to the entertainment value when things go wrong. (Am I an asshole for saying that?)

Carbon were two guys with laptops, which they used to play music and produce visuals. Apart from the visuals, the room was shrouded in total darkness. We couldn't see a thing, but at least what we heard sounded pretty good: distorted, noisy electronica, somewhat in the vein of Eavesdropper.

The main event, however, was undeniably the performance by the Barco Morsata Orchestra. The B.M.O. was a seven-piece, with drums, guitars, electronica, violin and keyboards. Their mission: to make more noise than the other three bands combined. We saw a guitar being played with a high-heeled shoe, we saw a violin bow lose hairs at an alarming rate, and most of all we heard nothing but disgusting, eardrum-piercing racket. This went on for all of three minutes before someone rushed in and asked the band if they could possibly keep it down a bit. The band didn't pay too much attention, and continued to dish it out. Another three minutes or so later, they were politely but urgently requested to stop, and thus the B.M.O. went down in a blaze of glory. It's a shame Lembeke wasn't ready for the brownness, but it was certainly a show to remember! The few photos I could get in a six minute time span can be found here...

Last Thursday, a number of fine and not-so-fine bands performed at SLA-dag, which took place at Scheld'apen. The two acts that I took pictures of are I Love Sarah and Sickboy. I Love Sarah introduced two new songs, of which especially "De Gokchinees" is just bound to become an international smash hit! Sickboy had some trouble with his gear, which was frustrating both for him and for the crowd. Lots of stuff went airborne during the show -- mostly plastic cups, but also a few glass bottles and even one of the stage monitors. Holy shit!

Another highlight that night was the performance by Erwin, who I've been told no longer goes by the names of Schizoide or Dirk Freenoise. Unfortunately, I have no idea by which name he does go these days, so we'll have to stick to "Erwin". "Erwin" did what he does: he raped a guitar. He did this from the center of the room, right in the middle of a brutal mosh pit. Spastically swinging the guitar around, it's a miracle he didn't strike anybody in the face with it. We nodded approvingly from a safe distance. At some point, a drummer emerged from the crowd and started to play along. For a moment there, I feared that Erwin would hurt the poor fellow. Instead, the two fought a battle of endurance, and needless to say the drummer gave up long before Erwin did. Hail!

Friday night, we headed out to Mol for the Motherfuckers Festival at Jeugdhuis Tydeeh. The line up consisted of Kazuamsumaki, I Love Sarah and the Experimental Tropic Blues Band. Kazuamsumaki were enjoyable, but easily forgettable. I Love Sarah played at least as well as the night before. The Experimental Tropic Blues Band started off with painfully boring blues rock, and made us retreat to the back of the venue. By the end of the gig, though, the band had the more intoxicated members of the audience so riled up that the crowd was more entertaining to watch than the band. When the band finished, the DJ announced his intention to play nothing but AC/DC for the rest of the night, which was a-okay by us!

Saturday night, we caught Johnny Dowd at Lintfabriek. Dowd, on guitar, was accompanied by a drummer and a keyboard player. The music was rather hard to pigeonhole, with touches of country, jazz, Black Sabbath and what-have-you. The songs were often on the dark side, but Dowd's healthy sense of humour provided a nice counterweight to this. Excellent!

Right after, we headed out to Petrol to catch Maxon Blewitt. They were spared of the technical difficulties that plagued their recent gig at Vooruit. I even think all guitar strings survived the ordeal this time! Hopefully this made the show more enjoyable for the band -- it certainly sounded good to the crowd (yes, I speak for everyone that was there). Eva, no longer an official member of the band, joined them on stage for one song to do vocals, and there was much rejoicing.

Yesterday, Dez Mona played at L'Archiduc. Gregory and Nicolas were accompanied by Bram Weijters on piano and Andrew Claes on sax. This added a touch of jazz to the set, which was nice. The audience listened carefully, and shivered on command.

Donkey Diesel played at a fairly packed Scheld'apen on Friday night. Although they were short one violinist, the band put on a great show. Several new songs were introduced into the setlist, including the rather excellent "My Fit", which some might have recognized from the Ward/Nagels/Frateur gig at Glamor Is Undead. The encores featured a guest appearance by Miel Fingertips on washboard. What Miel was lacking in overall sense of rhythm, he more than made up for in sheer coolness. Hail to the bearded one! Check out some pictures here.

The night after, we headed for Den Drempel to catch Borokov Borokov and the Porn Bloopers. We didn't know whether the gig would take place in the basement or in the café, and we tried our luck in the latter. Interestingly, the people in there didn't look at all like typical Borokov Borokov fans. It soon became obvious that we had accidentally wandered into a gathering of vampires, and that the bands we were looking for were, in fact, playing in the basement. However, we hung around anyway and caught Opus Nocturnales. I would say something profound about them, but I think the pictures speak for themselves.

Down to the basement then, for Borokov Borokov -- three loonies (bass, vocals, guitar) with a backing tape. Dirty electronica, heavy bass, plenty of guitar trash, and more than enough brownness to go around. Great stuff, and bonus points for doing a Mclusky cover! Pictures here.

The Porn Bloopers were off to a slow start due to technical problems, but picked up damn nicely once those were sorted out. The guys laid down some serious trash, like they do, and daringly concluded their set with a cover of "Satan Is In My Ass". Respect! Here's the money shots...

Day of rest, my ass! Last night, Amen Ra, Made Out Of Babies and Red Sparowes played at Lintfabriek. I would have happily paid the price of admission just to see Amen Ra, and as a matter of fact that's exactly what happened! But more on that later. Amen Ra played in almost total darkness, with the only light coming from the visuals behind the stage. This helped set the mood for their set, which was an hour-long merciless ass whooping! Amen Ra rocked the shit hard. Often pounding on the same riff for minutes on end, these guys know exactly how I like my heavy metal. Check out some pictures here.

Having suffered enough hearing damage to last me several weeks, I skipped the other two bands at Lintfabriek and joined the hipsters at Plaza Real for a gig by Ward, Nagels and Frateur, now known as Donkey Diva. Cozily squished into a small niche in the back of the café, the three played a set that was equal parts comedy gold and top notch musicianship. Frateur's voice is what stood out most to me -- from screeches that sounded like something dying in a most unpleasant fashion to his great rendition of "Tip Toe Through The Tulips", that man can sing! Here's the happy snaps!

Wednesday night, I caught Maxon Blewitt at the Vooruit. The troublesome gig at Zeezicht still fresh in my memory, it was a pleasure to hear the band's new material in a venue that did it justice. That said, apparently there were plenty of technical problems on stage. Wolf broke a guitar string about 20 seconds into the gig (a new record, no doubt), and Lenn's bass amp broke down during soundcheck, forcing him to play the gig with nothing but a single monitor. None of these problems could stop this from being a good show, though. The new songs rocked hard and went down very well, and the old stuff of course is still as good as ever. Nice! My happy snaps can be found here.

Last night, Marc Ribot and Fred Frith played a double bill at De Singel. The two guitarists each played a solo set, and then concluded with a shorter set as a duo. Ribot played first. He was armed only with a quaint looking (spray painted?) resonator guitar. He started off with something that sounded relatively classical, but quickly degenerated into free noise -- acoustic free noise! It was an excellent set, which meandered skillfully between structure and chaos. Then, in a move that surprised friend and foe, Ribot reached for a microphone and the chaos made way for a cheesy love song that went "I found love!" a large number of times. Yeah baby!

Fred Frith's set was quite different. Frith did everything in his power to make his guitar sound not like a guitar. This was achieved through liberal use of effects, by detuning, by playing with a violin bow, by dragging a length of rope over the guitar strings, by pouring grains of an undefined substance over the guitar, et cetera, et cetera. Frith made the right noise at the right time, and the result sounded bloody excellent. Still, it felt to me like Frith took a much easier path than Ribot. I've seen people take violin bows to their guitars once too often to still find it clever or amusing.

For the grand finale, Ribot and Frith took the stage together. Ribot now played an electric guitar as well, and made it scream and squeal while Frith layed down all sorts of interesting textures (all different shades of brown). Good stuff! Check out my pictures here.

Tonight at Trix, we witnessed the first ever concert of Benny Zen the Recording Artist Featuring the Removal Instructions. The mood was set even before the first song, when Peter Houben introduced himself as "I'm Benny Zen, and I have cancer". The band combined poppy vocals, trashy guitars and weird organ noises to great effect. Their set list featured instant classics aplenty, such as "I can scratch my balls whenever I like" or "I wish you were a slut". Singalongs! I have pictures for your perusal right here...

"We learned a Flemish word today, and that word is AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!"

Proving that alienation is not only for the rich, the Liars played at the AB club tonight for the low low price of 10 euros. The show was about as brown as they come! The shit was laid down hard and without mercy, and I think we were about half an hour into the gig already before the band gave the crowd its first chance to breathe/applaud. The set ended with Nirvana's "Territorial Pissings", which was announced as "a song we've been working on for ten years -- it may sound a bit nineties". The only thing that didn't leave quite as positive an impression was the drummer's outfit -- women's lingerie that left little to be imagined about the size and shape of his genitals. More than I wanted to know, thank you... It was such a brown show, though, that he is forgiven. Check out my pictures right here.

Holy crap, it's been two whole weeks since the last update to this site! What's the world coming to? Thankfully, things should start picking up again right about... now!

Friday night, a small but select crowd gathered at the Oude Badhuis for some free improv action. The first band on was the Bear Guts Quartet, a four-piece band (I shit you not!) featuring Andrew Claes, Simon Lenski, Fré Madou and Boots. Their arsenal consisted of sax and filterbank, cello, bass and drums. Although my head nodded approvingly throughout the set, I did feel it was missing that special touch of brownness. That's not to say that the musicians are entirely to blame, though, as I suspect the depressingly low crowd turnout had a lot to do with it as well.

This was even more obvious during the other act, Low Tide Digitals (a.k.a. Bo Wiget and Luigi Archetti). There were hardly any people left by the time they played, and on top of that their set was quieter and more challenging than that of the Bear Guts Quartet. I liked it though -- if I must criticize something, it would have to be the frightfully ugly headless guitar that Archetti played. If you must play an ugly guitar, at least play some hair metal, dammit!

Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to announce that there is finally a good double-tapping action shot on SoundsBrown! Some might consider it cheating, because the musician in question was double-tapping gently, but I'm still happy as a clam. The picture was taken Friday night at the Beursschouwburg, at a performance by The Books. The Books are a duo that combine lots of weird noises and electronica (off a backing track) with live vocals, guitars, bass and cello. They delivered all this with a healthy dose of humor, and topped it off with some pretty entertaining visuals. I have pictures here.

Yesterday, preselections for Latent Talent were held at Lintfabriek. I have pictures of General Mindy, The Porn Bloopers and I Love Sarah. The latter two were by far the brownest sounding bands of the evening, and the audience happily voted I Love Sarah into the finals. Unfortunately, they apparently failed to appreciate the Porn Bloopers, who didn't even appear in the crowd's top three. The judges didn't seem to think that highly of them either, and elected the Hickey Underworld as the second finalists. An outrage!

Last Wednesday (I know I'm late, bite me), the Love Substitutes played a double bill with Nozzle Slag at the AB club. The guys put on a hard rocking show, and concluded with "Meet The Love Substitutes" with Teun Verbruggen on drums. It might be just me, but it felt like way too long since we last heard that one. Hooray! The rest of the set was focused more on songs than on improvs, which made for a pretty stark contrast with Nozzle Slag...

Nozzle Slag could hardly be accused of playing pop songs. As impressed as I was by their earlier gig at De Warande, however, the AB gig felt very unbalanced to me. There was a seemingly endless ambient bit in the middle of the set, during which virtually nothing interesting seemed to happen. As hard as I tried, my attention span once again proved to be too short. A shame, because the rest of the gig went really well, and just shuffling the set around a bit to create more variation would have worked wonders...

Thursday night, Suspicious played at Kaaiman. The girls put on a fun electro-rock show, backed up by a drum machine and a minidisc player. What these two do isn't going to forever change the face of popular music, but who cares, it's entertainment! I would have danced to it, too, if I were the dancing type. Unfortunately, it seemed that nobody in the audience was the dancing type, and the gig felt awkwardly unilateral. Better luck next time?

On Friday, Maxon Blewitt did a tryout at Zeezicht. They, err, tried out material off their new album, and played without Eva for the first time. While the new songs were definitely okay, though, the sound in there was pretty abominable. From where I was standing, Wolf was often barely audible. I'll reserve my judgement until I've heard the album and/or seen them play a better venue...

This year's De Nachten didn't quite live up to the expectations set by previous editions. Unless of course Zornik or Gorki are actually hip these days, in which case I guess I must be getting old.

Friday night was still pretty decent, though. We saw cellists Bo Wiget and Simon Lenski in the darkrooms, which made for some interesting listening. The two squeezed all sorts of unsettling noises out of their cellos, helped by liberal use of effects units. Neat!

Another good gig was announced as Nathalie Delcroix and Bjorn Eriksson. Between the two of them, though, there were no less than five people on stage, one of whom looked surprisingly like Len Dauphin! They played two sets worth of country tunes (on different stages), and they sounded brown enough that I just had to go see both. Good thing I did, because the second set had some particularly mean bits of bluegrass in it. We want more!

A Brand played a set with almost entirely new material, off their just released album "Hammerhead". The new songs are great, and the live show is highly entertaining from soundcheck to finish. The geek in me loved the harmonizing guitar parts and vocals, and the rest of me just thought it was damn good fun!

Saturday night wasn't anywhere near as good as Friday. We spent a significant portion of the evening just roaming about trying to look hip. The highlights for the evening were limited to another Wiget and Lenski set and, god bless, Fritzi und Heidel. The latter played "L'Ile Sonnante" by Hugues Dufourton, on guitar and percussion. The gigs took place in the drum boxes, for audiences of five people at a time. Intimate brownness! I forgot to check who was Fritzi and who was Heidel, but I'm sure one of them will be kind enough to fill us in!

On Sunday, Nozzle Slag played at the Warande. Nozzle Slag is a project featuring Teun Verbruggen, Jozef Dumoulin, Hilmar Jensson and Trevor Dunn. All of them are impressive musicians, and they played a very varied set, ranging from weird ambient noises to loud eclectic jazz. Good stuff!

Last week was pretty busy, and I've amassed quite a stack of pictures to put online. Here's part one, the rest will follow tomorrow!

Wednesday night, Braakland/ZheBilding organized an improv gig featuring Rudy Trouvé, Gerrit Valckenaers and Geert Waegeman. The trio's arsenal consisted of guitars, keyboards, electronica, mandolin, sax, sleazy novels and various other contraptions. Musically, the three covered quite a bit of ground, ranging from quiet and intimate to downright danceable! Check out some pictures right here.

Thursday night, I Love Sarah and Sjoerd did a try-out for Humo's Rock Rally at "Casa Angelica". Both of them played the three-song set that they would be doing for real the night after, and both of them did a damn good job at it. Here's hoping they both win! Check it out: I Love Sarah and Sjoerd.

Last Friday, the Crab Four played at Café Welkom in Noorderwijk, which was jam-packed (or should I say "jammy-pacced"? Ha!). This was probably because the local teenage pop sensation "X Factor" was the opening act. I'll not go into details, but goddammit it was brown!

Gino, Helder, Sjoerd and Pascal realized that there was no way they could live up to the standards set by the opening act. After two full sets worth of trying hard, the four gave up and went for a bit of anarchy instead. For the last song, "Owner Of A Lonely Heart" was blended with the lyrics of "Summer Of 69". Now I'm not sure about the latter, but the former is almost certainly not a Beatles song! Then, to paint things an even poopier shade of brown, Pascal first lost his guitar strap and then his sense of equilibrium. For some unclear reason, he fell head first off the stage and into the crowd, frantically holding on to his guitar and mic. Another battle scar closer to becoming a true rock hero! I have some pictures of when Pascal was still upright here.

Saturday night, the Seatsniffers played at N9 in Eeklo. Of all places! Willy Willy & Dobrojean opened for them. Now of course you would think that you can't go far wrong with dobros, but you would be mistaken. The duo had picked a fine selection of old blues and country tunes, but played them so sloppily that all the brownness went down the drain.

The Seatsniffers fared a lot better. They put on a highly entertaining rock and roll spectacle that lasted for well over an hour and a half. These guys may not do anything that hasn't been done before, but dammit, they do it well! Here's some pictures...

Upon our return from London (see below), we brought the newlyweds along with us and treated them to a particularly brown afterparty. The party took place at the new Wonderbar, and all Alison and Martin were told was that they were going to have a few drinks with their Belgian friends. The very moment they walked in, however, the Love Substitutes burst into "Summer Of Mars". "Well color me surprised!", the happy couple gasped.

After a short but sweet set, the Love Subsitutes made room for the Poop Cruisers. I couldn't take pictures of these guys, because I was one of them. I would tell you the whole story, but I'm still in denial. Fifty years from now, I'll tell you all about it in my memoirs :-)

After the poopening, the Parallels did a unique reunion gig dedicated to Alison and Martin. Sickboy created a loop of Mauro chanting "Alison... Martin...", and worked with that throughout the whole set, as a constant reminder of why everyone was there. Miguel played the Moog, and Mauro... Well, Mauro was Mauro. Pictures!

Last but not least, in between gigs (when other bands were setting up their gear), the Ambrassband entertained the masses with their brasses! Here's a few happy snaps.

The honor of being the first band on SoundsBrown in the year of our Lord 2006 goes to I Love Sarah. The gruesome twosome played a gig in London last week, in a pub called the Betsey Trotwood. The guys were their usual entertaining and energetic selves, although by the end of the gig Jeroen got perhaps a little too energetic. During the last song, he laid waste to the drum kit (which wasn't his own)! This got the crowd very excited, with the notable exception of the owner of the drum kit. The Ballad of I Love Sarah was played as an encore, with the lyrics subtly transformed into "I love Kingsley, I love King Kong as well". London didn't know what hit it! Here's some pictures...

The honor of being the second band on SoundsBrown in the year of our Lord 2006 goes to I Love Sarah as well! For you see, the whole reason we were in London was that our friends Alison and Martin, of Moid fame, were getting married! After the wedding ceremony and the obligatory overeating, the happy couple invited I Love Sarah and Buttonhead to entertain their guests.

I Love Sarah went first, and just because it was such a special occasion, Jeroen even showed some restraint! The guys played softer, jazzier versions of their songs, and it worked amazingly well. Needless to say, the entertainment value was right up there as usual. Highlight of the show was when Jeroen explained by example what the difference between free and non-free jazz was. Brilliant!

Buttonhead surprised friend and foe by performing with a microphone that was taped to another microphone! A stranger sight was not to be seen for yards around! Ross played all of his instant classic singalongs, an although not everybody sang along, a good time was had by all. I'll bet that when Ross wrote "Gay Pub", he didn't think it would ever become the soundtrack to a wedding, but there you have it. Brownness found a way!

The last gig I saw in the year of our Lord 2005 was the Hank & Lily show, at the Double Deuce in Berbroek. Of all places! Entirely befitting the location, the band put on a show that was so brown you could smell it from three miles away. At one point, Cecil the Weasel even got out a laptop, and the band played a dance number. You wouldn't hand it to him, but Hank has a mean bit of interpretive dancing in him! The setlist had all the classic hit singles on it, and the guys even threw in "Janet the Winged Girl" at my request. Hallelujah! Here's some pictures, to keep you occupied while we all wait for them to do another tour!

This will likely be the last SoundsBrown update of 2005. I hope you've all downloaded the Brown Xmas mp3 -- if you have, please don't forget to let me know what you think!

Of course 'tis also the season for lists, and so here is my selection of the brownest gigs and albums of the past year:

Don't hesitate to comment and/or post your own lists. Enjoy the holidays, and see you next year!

Hof Ter Lo held another "Belgian Roots Night" on Friday. The headlining acts were Donkey Diesel, the Rhythm Junks and Roland. Donkey Diesel didn't put on a bad show at all, but none of that matters, for this gig will always be remembered for another reason: the violin incident. At one point, Buni went off stage because his help wasn't needed for the next song. When he returned (all of two minutes later), it appeared that he had abandoned his violin in the backstage area somewhere, and couldn't remember where. Stay off the herb, Buni!

The Rhythm Junks were swinging as ever, and managed to make it through their set without even once losing a violin. Respect! Immediately after the set, Steven came back on to announce Roland. He also backed him up on harmonica for a while, and then brought back the entire band for the rest of the set. De Bruyn and Roland were a perfect match, and clearly enjoyed playing together. A collaboration that bears repeating!

The day after we went on a road trip to Den Haag, for a festival called "State-X New Forms". I caught what should be my last (but also my fourteenth) Millionaire gig this year. Despite some technical problems, the guys had no trouble laying down some serious rock shit and showing the Dutch people what it takes to be brown.

Hank and Lily were scheduled to play at the same time as Millionaire, so unfortunately we had to miss them. A damn shame, because there was a bit of a gap in the line up that they could have filled perfectly. Instead, we roamed idly until 2:30 AM, waiting for The Locust to take the stage. Ah, The Locust! Their recent gig at Recyclart was a bit of a mess due to technical problems, but none of that tonight! The shit was ass-tight, bloody loud, and played with sickening skill and precision. The band would often build in bits of (relative) silence, filled only by the satisfying drone of the moog, only to burst out into obliterating noise at the drummer's command. Impressive! Impressive, I tell you!

I'm mostly quite content to see and hear other people play music, but every now and then I also try to record some stuff of my own. Usually this results in embarrassing crap that I keep to myself, but because 'tis the season I decided to actually unleash something upon the unsuspecting world. I present to you my own rendition of Irving Berlin's Christmas classic "White Christmas", titled "I'm Dreaming Of A Brown Xmas".

Wait! There's more! Because I'm such a nice bloke, I will be giving away ten copies of this on CD-R, each one with lovingly crafted artwork. I'll try to post a picture of it tomorrow. To get one of these CDs, all you have to do is mail me and explain why you think you deserve a copy. I plan to get the CDs in the mail on Monday, so that everyone can hopefully get theirs in time for Christmas. You have until then to present your case to me! Don't forget to tell me which address to mail it to in case you're one of the lucky ten.

Tuesday night, a small but enthusiastic group of people gathered at Recyclart to see the Hank & Lily show. The show was opened by Thomas Truax, a singer- songwriter who builds his own instruments. With the exception of a single guitar, the stage was filled with odd-looking contraptions that made odd- sounding noises and listened to such odd names as "Sister Spinster" or "the Hornicator". Add some clever and humorous lyrics to all this weirdness, and great entertainment is what you get! Check out some pictures here.

Hank and Lily were a duo last time I saw them (at MOD), but they were now accompanied by Cecil the Weasel (on bass and guitar) and Palmeira the mermaid (on vocals). I really can't pick highlights out of this show, because it was all bloody excellent. They played a lot of tunes that aren't on their album, and these ranged from haunting ("don't be afraid until I tell you why you ought to be afraid") to absolutely hilarious ("David Hasselhoff"!). The next album will be one to look forward to! Thomas Truax also joined them for one song, dressed up as the "Jungle Bunny", while Lily did a tapdancing routine. It was a brilliant show, and it's a damn shame there weren't more people there to see it... Here's some pictures.

With a show this brown, I didn't need much convincing to go back for seconds! Last night, Hank & Lily played again at Video in Gent. An interesting venue, to say the least: the stage is tiny, and you actually have to walk across it if you want to get to the bathroom (which a few people needed to do during the gig). It worked a lot better than Recyclart: the crowd was probably about the same size, but at least they were packed together in a small, cozy café rather than being spread out in a large concrete bunker. The band clearly appreciated this as well, and played a gig that was about two hours long. It started out as roughly the same set as the night before, but they tacked on a couple more songs off the album at the end. We were treated to such classics as "Olde People", "Necrophilia", and others which were sadly missing from the Recyclart set. The band even took a couple of requests. Good stuff! Check out some more pictures here.

Last Friday, Prima Donkey II played at the AB club. The set consisted of songs by Rudy Trouvé, Donkey Diesel and others, and also included a few particularly brown covers ("Lilali"!). One of the definite highlights of the show was when Rudy Trouvé blew his nose. Check out some pictures here.

The night after, we returned to the AB to see Daan. He played a long show, in three parts. He started off solo, on the piano. Then he brought in the band and played some of his soundtrack work. The last part of the show was the gay disco fest that everyone was waiting for. I'm not a big fan of the recent dance stuff, but seeing it played live is still quite enjoyable. I have pictures here.

Rudy Trouvé did a solo gig last night at Molens Van Orshoven in Leuven. Rudy was in a good mood, and poked fun at girls with long necks, Dutch people, and even his own depressions. The setlist was roughly what it was a few weeks ago at the Arenberg: part acoustic, part electric, and with songs picked from Rudy's past and present projects as well as some new stuff. Nice! Check out my pictures here.

Tip Toe Topic played afterwards. They played their entire oeuvre, and then some! Two new songs were introduced for the encores, and although Saar and Elko apologized for these not being quite finished or well-rehearsed, I thought they were probably the best songs in the set. One was a very moody tune, with a jazzy feel to it, and the other was an eclectic rock tune with some shit hot guitar licks. We want more! My pictures can be found right here.

Bob Log III played at Magasin4 last night, and the honor of opening for him was bestowed upon I Love Sarah. The guys put in an extra effort to sound brown for Bob, and it payed off. I asked Bob for an opinion before he took the stage, and he said they were "fucking amazing"! There you go, what can I possibly add to that? That they introduced a new song, in which they looped Jeroen's screeching? That they had a new, super exclusive demo for sale, and that it is destined to make me a ton of cash on eBay five years from now? Or should I just add that I have pictures here and be done with it?

Bob Log III is the one man band against which all other one man bands must be measured. Dressed in a stylish light-up Log suit and boasting a matching helmet, Bob put on a show that was browner than a chocolate-covered turd! There was unfortunately no boob scotch to be degusted, but all the other classics, such as "Big Ass Hard On", were there! Also, Bob showed everyone what it takes to be a rock hero, by doing 42 pushups on stage while waiting to start his encores. You can't beat that with a stick! Check out my pictures here.

Yet another busy week! Four nights, four completely different gigs, thereby proving once again that brownness comes in all colors!

Wednesday night, Recyclart was the place to be. The first band, 400 Blows, had cancelled, and so the doors opened more than half an hour later than previously announced. This means that probably around 100 people were left out on the street, forced to wait in the freezing cold for the doors to open. Not nice!

The bands that remained were Year Future and The Locust. Year Future played fast and loud hardcore, but of course compared to the headlining band they sounded like a bunch of girls. They were fun to watch, though, especially their hyperactive bass player. Check out a few pictures here.

The Locust played a fairly short set, and had some trouble getting things on a roll. The bass player had some serious problems with his amp, and the crowd response for the first part of the show was practically non-existent. After the technical problems were sorted out, though, the carnage really got started! The band continued to lay down their insanely fast and aggressive noise, properly dosed in 30 second songs. The drummer looked like he was about to have a heart attack by the end of the set, but the crowd, which was wholly warmed up to it by now, showed no mercy and insisted on an encore. We got one in the form of another 30 second ass whooping, and were left behind feeling brutally savaged but still wanting more. Pictures!

The next day, the Jef Neve Trio played at the AB club. Some gentle acoustic jazz was just what was needed to recover from the ultra-violence of the night before. The band played two sets. For the first one they played in their normal configuration of piano, bass and drums, and for the second they were joined by two trombone players. They could have been brought slightly more to the foreground, but other than that no complaints about this gig. Hightlight for me was the superb drum work by Teun Verbruggen. Here's some pictures...

Friday night, I Hate Camera assembled at the Wonderbar. The line up that night consisted of Rudy Trouvé and Mark Meyers on vocals, Elko Blijweert and Teuk Henri on guitars, Craig Ward on guitar, organ and sax, Pascal Deweze on toys and Jeroen Stevens on drums. Teuk busted out some particularly rocking riffs, and Jeroen happily joined in the action. So happily, in fact, that when the gig was over it took Rudy three minutes to get this message across to Jeroen. You gotta love improvized rock 'n roll! Throw in lots of deliberate (I think) feedback, and some incomprehensibly mumbled or screamed vocals (and everything in between), and you have a recipe for brownness! Behold, I have photos!

Finally, last night, the English dittycore sensation known as Buttonhead played a highly exclusive gig at Sarah and Jeroen's place. In this most cozy setting, Ross and Jeroen attempted to recreate the vibe that they had going a while ago on the Petrol parking lot. Jeroen did all the drumming on a Casio keyboard this time, and Ross played guitar and some more keyboards. Their short set included all their greatest hits, as well as a new song about vegetables from all corners of the globe. Good stuff, dammit! Check out some particularly crappy photos here.

As you may notice, something has changed at the top of this page. SoundsBrown now has its very own concert calendar. It's exactly like any other concert calendar, except that I'll only put up gigs which I think will be brown enough. Feel free to comment.

The second edition of Big Bang took place last night at Vooruit. Big Bang is a festival with a lineup of mostly big bands and orchestras. The most interesting acts (to me) were Absynthe Minded and Flat Earth Society, and in full accordance with Murphy's Law, their gigs were scheduled at the exact same time. The bastards! The coin toss elected FES as the lucky winner. They were joined on stage by Roland Van Campenhout, who did vocals and guitars. A lot of the songs were off the "Armstrong Mutations" album, and Roland fit right in, adding some texture and a bit of jazzy soloing to the songs. Another highlight of the show was when Peter Vermeersch pulled his T-shirt over his head and played a drum solo on his own belly. I bet nobody saw that one coming! Check out my pictures here.

Yesterday, the Liars played at the Muziekodroom. Just before the band came on, the DJ commanded both endless respect and endless disgrace, by playing Z-Rock Hawaii's "In The Meadow" and Boston's "More Than A Feeling" in the same half hour time span. I hope it was just a deliberate attempt to confuse people in preparation of the gig. But I digress. The band sounded so brown it was almost scary! They kept their set pretty short, probably to avoid permanent injury. The people demanded more, though, and were treated to a cover of Nirvana's "Territorial Pissings" during the encores. Good stuff! I have some pictures right here.

Fast forward about 22 hours, to more good stuff! The Crab Four did a tryout tonight at Trix. The Crab Four are Pascal Deweze, Sjoerd Bruil, Helder Deploige and Gino Geudens. As the name suggests, they are a Beatles cover band. This being their first gig, one or two things went wrong, but that only added to the charm of what was a really fun show. We were treated to approximately 25 golden pop classics in one hour. Now that's value for money! And did I mention it was free? Check out my pictures here.

Bluegrass one day, Japanese noise the next! Isn't music great? Friday night, Magasin4 hosted the latest edition of the Japanese New Music Festival. This travelling festival features only three musicians: Tsuyama Atsushi, Yoshida Tatsuya and Kawabata Makoto. Through various solo, duo, and trio configurations, however, the three have no less than seven different bands between them, and all seven of these bands appeared at the festival. Make no mistake: although the same three people were on stage all night, the bands all sounded completely different. They ranged from utterly daft noise improvs to incredibly technical free jazz pieces. The three may have looked like a bunch of stoned Japanese hippies, especially when something funny happened and they started giggling like schoolgirls, but they all proved themselves to be unbelievably skilled musicians. The bands that appeared were:

• Seikazoku (trio): improvizations with a lot of ethnic elements thrown in.
• Akaten (Tsuyama and Yoshida): free noise, produced by strapping contact mics to common household items. Tsuyama did a hilarious impersonation of Manneken Pis before playing a song on his zipper fly. Other sound sources included a hairbrush, a pan flute made out of plastic bottles, a camera and a toothbrush. The toothbrush was also accompanied by some impressive gargling.
• Shrinp Wark (Kawabata and Yoshida): fast and eclectic noise, with some neat polyrhythmic riffs and some incredible bass lines thrown in for good measure.
• Zubi Zuva X (trio): a cappella free jazz, with lyrics consisting mostly of the words "zubi" and "zuva".
• Ruins Alone (Yoshida): because he is currently without a bassist, Yoshida played the Ruins repertoire by himself. The bass track came off the sampler, and he drummed and sang along to it. If you know Ruins, you'll know this is no mean feat. With the sampler running, Yoshida worked his way through the countless tempo changes, complex rhythms and seemingly random delays without breaking a sweat. The guy is a machine! One of the highlights of the set was a medley of sorts, with small bits from various classical pieces blended together (think Für Elise, the Radetzky March, Bolero and others). The bits were all just barely long enough to be recognized, and the end result of course sounded 100% like Ruins.
• Zoffy (Tsuyama and Kawabata): the cover band to end all cover bands. They started off with what I believe was a traditional Japanese piece. Tsuyama played the flute and did some chanting, while Kawabata played the violin. They then proceeded to molest some more recent pop and rock classics, such as "Smoke On The Water", "Hotel California" and "Stairway To Heaven". They showed these songs no mercy whatsoever, and the end result was absolutely hilarious!
• Acid Mothers Temple SWR (trio): long psychedelic jams, with a pretty impressive wall of sound for just three people. Despite the psychedelica, this was possibly the most accessible of the seven bands.

Japanese noise one day, bluegrass the next! Isn't music great? Having been very impressed by their gig at the AB on Thursday, I had no choice but to go see the Hackensaw Boys again when they played in Turnhout on Saturday. The guys were once again in a very good mood, and played another bloody excellent set. They got the crowd riled up in no time, and kept the brownness coming for about two hours. These guys are not only amazing musicians, they're also great entertainers. I was half worried that I would get to hear the exact same setlist and possibly even the same jokes from Thursday night again, but none of that! It was an entirely different, but equally enjoyable gig, and I can't praise them enough for that. The band promised us they'd be back for another tour in spring, so I expect to see you all there! Meanwhile, here's a bunch of pictures.

The Arenberg organized solo performances on Wednesday night by two of Belgium's finest songwriters, Rudy Trouvé and Pascal Deweze. Rudy came on first and played a mixture of Sextet, Love Substitutes and other tunes. With all his recent improvizational exploits in such projects as I Hate Camera, it's easy to just think of Rudy as the King Of The Trash Guitar. Here, however, he reminded everyone that he is just as capable of writing and playing acoustic love songs as he is of squeezing disgusting noises out of electric guitars. See Rudy lay the shit down gently right here.

It wasn't the first time that we saw Pascal play solo, so we knew in advance that there was goodness to be expected. Pascal failed to disappoint! His set included plenty of Sukilove songs, obviously, but also some Mitsoobishy Jacson stuff and a few other covers. One of the highlights was a bone-chilling cover of Billy Holiday's "Strange Fruit", which Pascal announced as "a song about hanging negroes". Impressive! Check out some pictures here.

Last night, the Hackensaw Boys played at the AB club. Opening act was Johnny Hickman, a singer-songwriter featuring members of Cracker. Hickman invited some of the Hackensaw Boys up on stage to play with him, and they later returned the favour during their own set. Their combined sets lasted for almost three hours, but there was not a dull moment to be had for the entire evening! These guys were clearly having a blast up on the stage, and the crowd followed suit. From the fierce, full-throttle bluegrass numbers to the quiter, introspective songs, the band had the audience in the palm of their hand. And between the many jokes and the unforeseen circumstances such as the drumkit falling apart, there were plenty of laughs to be had, too! There is only one word that can describe this gig, and that word, ladies and gentlemen, starts with a "B"! Check out my pictures: Johnny Hickman and the Hackensaw Boys.

(P.S.: The word that starts with a "B" is not "bollocks"!)

Tonight, Millionaire played at a stone's throw from my doorstep, in the swinging city of Leuven. The gig took place in Het Depot, the venue formerly known as Zaal Eden. Apart from a slight screwup during "Body Experience Revue", the band was in good shape and got the crowd pumped up in no time. There were even some modest amounts of moshing and crowd surfing! The acoustics in there seemed pretty crappy to me, but since nobody seemed to care, the atmosphere was great and the gig was still highly enjoyable. In fact, now that I think about it, it's also quite possible that the acoustics were excellent, and that it's my ears that have finally gone to waste. That said, even the hard of hearing will be able to check out these pictures.

The opening act were Cream & Spices. They looked oddly familiar to me, and it wasn't until I rummaged through my vast photo archives that I realized why. Their songs were mostly a little straightforward to my tastes, but as I'm sure you are all aware, my tastes are not always representative of the general populace :-)

Friday night, four bands played at Hof Ter Lo. The line up alternated between post rock and proper rock. Opening act World's End Girlfriend sure had plenty of post, but a severe lack of rock. Time for a quick a nap...

I was dying for a little excitement, and White Circle Crime Club were sent in to deliver it. They started off loud and fast, but ended with a quiet, long and monotonous song that felt like a bit of an anticlimax to me. Maybe it was just me, but it sounded as if they had their setlist on backwards. Anyways, here are some pictures.

After that it was post rock time again, courtesy of Mono. Mono were a lot more interesting than the first act, but unfortunately not quite interesting enough for me and my notoriously short attention span. I expect more from Japanese bands, dammit! Check out my pictures here.

Now you're probably beginning to wonder why I went there in the first place, if I didn't really like any of the bands. Well, the headlining act were none other than Millionaire, professional suppliers of brownness! The band played a more diverse set than we've gotten used to. They threw in several songs off the first album, with "Petty Thug" being a particularly pleasant surprise. See how the day was saved here.

The night after, we drove out to Heusden-Zolder to see some of Belgium's brownest blues bands. The first band on was Donkey Diesel. The DJ, unsurprisingly, put on a Tom Waits record immediately after they finished playing. I can't help but wonder if this never gives Gunter an urge to kill (or at least maim). But I digress. Here's some happy snaps!

The next band on was Maxon Blewitt. Something seems to have happened to Wolf's face in recent months: before and after. My theory is that someone shaved him in his sleep. But I digress. In spite of my earlier complaints on the subject, the band still had no new material for us. We were assured, however, that a new album is in the works and can be expected around February. On a less positive note, Eva announced that this would be her last gig with the band, and there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth. Some more pictures right here.

The third and last band on were Durango, who played a damn fine gig as usual. Fred's hat waited until the encores to take flight, but rest assured that the brownness did not wait that long to descend upon us. Here's even more pictures!

And still there is more! Last night, the AB was the place to be for some sweet and some not-so-sweet jazz. The Dave Douglas Keystone Sextet played in the main hall, with a set consisting for the most part of a score (written by Douglas) to a silent movie from 1916 called "Fatty and Mabel Adrift". The movie was projected behind the stage, while Douglas and his band played along. I tend to like my jazz a little more challenging than what the sextet served last night, but the set had just the right length (helped by the visuals, probably) that it stayed interesting throughout. Hey, how about some more pictures?

After Dave Douglas' gig in the main hall, The Hub played in the club (probably because it rhymes). The Hub are a trio with a lineup of sax, drums and electric bass. They play a particularly trashy flavor of jazz, and are a joy to behold. It was loud and chaotic, but with just enough structure to keep you hooked for the entire set. The fact that these guys are amazing musicians doesn't hurt either. The drummer in particular is just incredible. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, though. When I went for a wee winkle tinkle after the show, the guy collecting the money sighed "boy, am I glad that's over". The more I think about this, the more I think I should have demanded to get my 40 cents back. But I digress. Here's some pictures.

Yesterday, the Japanese noise/punk quartet known as Melt-Banana played at a sold out AB club. It's not often that I see moshing in the AB club, but Melt-Banana had the pit going in no time. There was even a (cautious) attempt at crowd surfing! The band played it fast, loud and ass-tight, while singer Yako squealed out the lyrics like a turkey on speed. Damn good times! I have pictures right here. By the way, guitarist Agatha (a bloke, lest you should get confused) had what is probably the largest collection of effects pedals I have ever witnessed. It makes Craig Ward look like a beginner, I tell you!

Opening act was Raxinasky, a duo (guitar and drums) that plays aggressive free noise. Let's say... Vandal X meets Hella? Occasionally, something vaguely resembling a catchy killer riff emerged from the chaos, but it usually disappeared as quickly as it came. This left me with mixed feelings: I listened carefully for fear of missing something good, but I sometimes heard riffs that I wish they'd played more than just once. Check out my pictures here.

Last Thursday, Motörhead played at the AB. I wasn't able to get pictures, but I just thought I'd mention that they rocked really goddamn hard :-)

The day after, with ears still ringing, I went to CC Luchtbal to catch I Hate Camera and Zu. The lineup of I Hate Camera this time was Craig Ward on guitar, Simon Lenski on cello, Jeroen Stevens on drums, Rudy Trouvé on guitar, Pascal Deweze on toys and electronica, and Elko Blijweert on miniature guitar. Rudy once again managed to lay down some particularly smelly trash. At one point, the band was mellowing out when Rudy decided to go for the shock effect, violently breaking the silence with a gut wrenching burst of noise. Woohoo! Another highlight was Pascal's swinging rhythm section, played on what might have been a toy xylophone. Or not. Who will say? In any case, there was brownness aplenty! Check out some pictures here.

The main act for the evening was Zu, an Italian free jazz trio. Their setup consisted of baritone sax, drums and bass. The bass had a Melvins sticker on it, which could only be a good sign! Zu's set started off in a relatively structured fashion, and had some pretty cool heavy riffs in it. It later degenerated into almost completely random noises. It still had its moments at this point, mostly thanks to the bass player who kept showing off more and more interesting ways to squeeze dirty sounds out of his instrument. However, things dragged on for a bit too long. This would have been an excellent gig if the set had been a bit shorter and more balanced. It would probably also have been a lot browner if it had taken place in a dank basement somewhere rather than in a theater with comfy seats, but that's another story. Pictures!

On Saturday, I Love Sarah were supposed to play at the Antifa festival, which took place at Sint Andries. Unfortunately, the melodic half of the band had other last-minute obligations, and so the remaining half of the band was forced to improvize. The result was an improv band which (conveniently) went by the name of I Hate Camera. Mark Meyers did vocals, Elko Blijweert and Craig Ward did guitars, and Jeroen Stevens did the drums. The other bands that were on earlier were of the hardcore/ska and hiphop variety, and so one might have feared that I Hate Camera's free improvization would go down like a lead balloon with this crowd. The guys knew what they were up against, however, and started to lay the shit down fast and loud. It was mighty brown, and the crowd dug it. At one point, though, the brownness got so smelly that Craig had to run off stage to chat with Huey on the big white telephone. He came back just a few minutes later, and with an air of steely determination continued to dish out the brownness for the rest of the set. Now there's a true rock hero! Check out my pictures here.

Last night we went to the AB to check out Admiral Freebee, who, in the winter of his thirtieth year, was trying to find a balance between joy and dignity. No Shit! The admiral had once again gone through a change of personnel: there was no longer a second guitar, but there was now a keyboard player, as well as a new drummer and a backing vocalist. The band played for almost two hours -- plenty of classic rock with matching guitar solos, of course, and also an excellent acoustic part during the encores. Quality entertainment for the whole family! Check out my pictures here.

Last night at the Oude Badhuis, the second edition of a small festival called "Les Bains Douches Du Nord" took place. When we arrived, Vegas were on stage, desperately trying to make the PA system behave. They played a pretty short set, but to my taste their songs were a little too insubstantial to hold my attention even for 25 minutes. They sounded like they wanted to make up for this in sheer loudness, but between the technical problems and the sparse audience, it didn't work out that way.

The next band on was Vacuum Child. The lineup consisted of drums, bass, guitar, and two saxophones. Their set was entirely instrumental and reeked of jazz, funk, and other bits and bobs. The sound was still flaky early on in their set, with some instruments dropping out once or twice. Luckily, the problems seemed to be sorted out later on, so the band could still deliver an entertaining show. I have some pictures here.

Third band on the bill were One Louder. A band name that promises brownness, which the guys did not fail to deliver. One Louder plays angry guitar rock, with both the drummer and the guitarist taking on screaming and grunting duties. The lineup was completed with a bass player, but he needs to work on his angry face -- I don't think he scared anybody. Props to the guitarist, by the way, for the good use of feedback. Nothing says "I'm pissed off" better than a nice deliberate burst of feedback! Pictures!

Headlining act for the evening were Flat Earth Society, who were their usual brilliant self. One of the highlights of the show, oddly enough, was when someone claiming to be the police came in to shut them down -- during the encores, no less. This loony tried to do so by walking up to each band member in turn, waving a badge at them and signalling them to stop playing. He managed to visit two members before some of the organizers rushed in and lured him away. No sooner had he turned his back, or Peter Vermeersch stepped up to the front of the stage and spurred the band to play louder and louder, much to the delight of the crowd. Rock 'n roll! Check out a big bunch of pictures here.

Last night, I went for a double portion of brownness... And lived!

The first portion came courtesy of Craig Ward, Gunter Nagels and Gregory Frateur, who played at Glamor Is Undead. Craig played guitar, Gunther played accordeon, and all three did their share of vocals. The three played a selection of fine covers as well as some excellent original material. One of the highlights among the covers was Tiny Tim's "Tiptoe Through the Tulips". Mere mortals like ourselves would only be able to reach those notes with the help of a nutcracker, but Frateur sang it effortlessly. Respect! One of the new songs was called "Three Austrians Sodomizing in a Turkish Bath". This subject matter is obviously pretty brown in its own right, but that's only half the story: the song was an upbeat yodeling tune! It can't get much browner than that, and what a great initiative of these guys to support the Antwerp yodeling scene! I have some pictures of the show here.

After that, we hopped in the brownmobile and headed out to the swinging city of Willebroek, where Madensuyu, Waldorf and Sukilove were to perform at Perron 4. We arrived during Waldorf's set, and noticed that there was a disturbing lack of epic guitar solos, despite the fact that many songs had great potential for them. Work on it, lads!

It had been way too long since the last time I saw Sukilove, so it was a happy occasion. The band introduced a new song or two, and played some neat covers as well. One of them was a fun version of Mitsoobishy Jacson's "Violence (Don't fail me now)", and one of the encores was a John Lennon tune that I can't remember the title of. Sacrilege, I know. The rest of the set was mostly off "You Kill Me", and of course those tunes still hit the spot as well. A great gig -- it's a shame it'll probably be the last one in a while, but at least we can start looking forward to a new album. Check out my pictures here.

Last night I went to the AB for a helping of sweet jazz, served by The Bad Plus. The Bad Plus are an acoustic jazz trio with a lineup consisting of piano, bass and drums. The music covered all ranges from mellow to loud and chaotic, and even included a particularly brown rendition of "Chariots of Fire". Most of the other music was the band's own, and with such song titles as "The Empire Strikes Backwards", you can tell that these guys are not without a sense of humour. All this made for a highly enjoyable gig and led to an incredibly enthusiastic audience. Check out my pictures, then go out and buy these guys' new CD.

Last night, Glamor Is Undead hosted yet another Damn Fine Gig. The brownness was supplied by the elusive Central, who played their third gig in five years time. The line up consists of Jelle on electronica, Michiel an drums and Rudy on guitar, miniature music box and nine volt battery. The gig was instrumental, apart from the occasional sampled vocal. Rudy laid down droning guitar riffs while Jelle provided all sorts of electronic weirdness. One particularly fun tool in Jelle's arsenal was a small, unidentifyable red contraption with a contact mic attached to it. This made all sorts of fun noises when used by itself, but it got even better during the last song, when Jelle held it against Michiel's bass drum to great effect. Good times! Check out my pictures here.

Friday night, it was I Love Sarah's turn to entertain the in crowd at Glamor Is Undead. They kicked off their set as a trio rather than as a duo, with the third band member being Quinten, the human microphone stand. Rutger and Jeroen switched instruments for the first song, which was an appropriately brown cover of Ween's classic blues number "Strap on that jammypac". With the jammypac firmly strapped on, the band pressed on with their own songs. Each one sounded more deranged than the last, and the crowd was both confused and entertained. It was a damn fine show, and I have pictures!

Eavesdropper played at the AB club tonight, in the context of the KlaraFestival. He was assisted on this occasion by two guys doing visuals (yes, they had names, and no, I don't remember them). It's quite unlike me to sit through over an hour of minimalist electronica without falling asleep, so Eavesdropper must be doing something right! I have a few pictures right here.

Last night, Donkey Diesel played at café Monk in Brussels. The dark and smoky bar was an excellent setting for Donkey Diesel's music, and although the crowd turnout wasn't exactly overwhelming, the people that were there could definitely dig it. Things got pleasantly chaotic towards the end, culminating in a particularly brown version of "En den boom staat op den berg". Check out my pictures here.

Last night, Autistik Youth played at Glamor Is Undead. For the uninitiated, Autistic Youth is a duo consisting of Elko Blijweert and Tim Van der Poel. Both of them played guitars and keyboards and did vocals. They played some rather wacky electro pop tunes that went down very well with the audience. The guys apologized beforehand for not having properly rehearsed, but the lack of tightness only added to the brownness. Good fun for the whole family! Check out my pictures here.

Sunday night, Dez Mona played at the Zuiderpershuis. Boasting some of the most impressive vocal talent east of Mike Patton, Dez Mona left none untouched. Add to that the often dark and even menacing bass, and you've got a winner. I'm sure all of you already own the album (hint, hint), but to see the band play live adds a whole new dimension to their music. Check out my pictures here.

Yesterday, I went to Magasin4 for another ass-whooping dished out by Asva. The opening act this time was the Brussels local band Inner Death Experience. Their gig took a slow start due to a broken guitar string in the first song, but picked up quite nicely after that. I.D.E. plays fast and loud hardcore, somewhat reminiscent of Dillinger Escape Plan. All this hyperactivity made for a nice contrast with Asva, who once again laid down a slow but unstoppable sonic assault. Unlike at Scheld'apen, they decided to play with the lights on, so I even have some slightly more interesting pictures this time: Asva and Inner Death Experience.

Rejoice, for on Saturday I baptised a new camera! It was a baptism by fire, and it took place at the church of Scheld'apen. The ceremony was led by Möse and Asva. Möse, a local band, were on first. They played some pretty decent sludge metal. Unfortunately for them, though, what was to follow made their stuff sound like up-tempo dance numbers.

Asva is a five-piece band and features, among others, G. Stuart Dahlquist of Sunn 0))) fame and Trey Spruance of Secret Chiefs 3. Without a doubt the slowest moving metal gig I have ever seen, each chord Asva struck was like a carefully placed blow of a hammer to the skull. It was bloody loud, to the point where each hit could be felt just as much as it could be heard. This slow and painful bludgeoning lasted for almost a full hour, with very little variation. Some people might find this sort of thing boring, but I have only two words for it: hell yeah!

Pictures: Möse and Asva.

Today, my friends, is a sad day -- a weeping day. My dearest and most faithful companion, who has stood by me throughout the years, has now forsaken me. I am talking about my camera, known to many as The Brownness Device. Last week at Feest In Het Park, she was still bravely trying to withstand the ass-whoopings dished out by CWTAB and Millionaire. Immediately after the Millionaire gig, however, her condition began to deteriorate quickly and suddenly, to the point where she had to be put out of her pain. I take comfort in the knowledge that she died a heroic death out on the battlefield.

If a picture speaks a thousand words, then these are her last 27000 words:

• The Germans
• Creature With The Atom Brain
• Millionaire

May these pictures mark the end of an era as well as a new beginning, for of course SoundsBrown will resume regular updates as soon as The Brownness Device Mark II can go operational.

On Friday night, following a performance of the play "Galapagos" by Abbatoir Fermé, I Love Sarah played at the Kaaitheaterstudios in Brussels. The guys played one of their better sets yet. One might have feared the worst after seeing Jeroen get high on painkillers before and during the gig, but hey -- there's rock 'n roll for ya! The band's setup has been expanded since the last time I saw them: there are now more keyboards than ever before, and even a trumpet! Most importantly, however, there is the Iron Cobra Jr.! All this, combined with an excellent setlist that included their greatest hits as well as some new material, made for almost an hour of sheer, unadulterated brownness! Check out my pictures here.

It's been a long weekend, and there was quite a bit of brownness to be enjoyed throughout the land. It started on Friday afternoon, at Jazz Middelheim. Teun Verbruggen presented a program called "Around The Drummer". Teun stayed on stage throughout the gig, but a number of other musicians took turns to play along with him. The line-up morphed from the Jef Neve Trio, via the VVG Trio, into Othin Spake. All configurations put on excellent performances, although the last one may have scared and confused some of the many children in the audience. My pictures can be found here.

Later that evening, we headed to Scheld'apen for the latest edition of Undercurrent. The first act was Ynri, a solo performance based on guitar and electronica. It was interesting for a while, but took longer than my attention span could cope with. The next band on was Mitsels. They played weird folky tunes and concluded their set with a highly entertaining a capella song about haggis. Up next was Creatures Like Us, a painfully loud hardcore band. They played a really short set, presumably because this sort of thing is lethal in larger doses.

Painfully loud also describes the events that transpired on Saturday night at Jokot. Under the moniker I Hate Cameras, Craig Ward, Pascal Deweze, Mauro Pawlowski, Jeroen Stevens and Rudy Trouvé laid the shit down hard. It was so brown that when the gig drew to an end, even Mauro got off stage to cheer and applaud his band mates together with the rest of the audience.

It was most unfortunate that the Sweet Hips, the other band on the bill that night, were on second rather than first. Not only was their set considerably shorter than I Hate Cameras', it was also significantly less brown. It was far from a bad gig, but how do you impress an audience that already had their asses kicked and their eardrums shattered?

On Sunday night, we went to Petrol to catch Othin Spake again. There were far less children in the audience this time, and the band also had more time to build up their set than they did on Friday afternoon. The result was some serious brownness! Mauro went from shredding guitar riffs to heavy, powerful drones, pushed forward by Teun's amazing drum work. Jozef filled in the gaps with the Rhodes and assorted electronic noises.

Good stuff! But quite a contrast with the headlining act, Roland & the Great Atomic Power. Accompanied by an African backing band, Maskesmachine and and Nathalie Delcroix, this gig was brown in the poopiest possible way. Where you would normally associate Roland with blues, he now seemed somewhat misplaced between the feelgood world music of his band and the hyperkinetic dancing and out-of-tune singing of the four girls. "Surrealistic" is probably not a bad word to describe this gig...

Monday, then! Absynthe Minded played at Marktrock, programmed in between X!nk and Peter Evrard. The latter was then followed by Satellite City. This was either a very cunning ploy to ensure crowd circulation in between gigs, or the running order was determined by a blind and deaf monkey. Whatever the case, Absynthe Minded put on a good show as always. The encore was pleasantly surprising: the band ended their set with an a capella song called "Comfort and Joy", and pulled it off quite succesfully! Check out my pictures here. Satellite City was equally entertaining. They can boast some of the finest singalongs to be found in our regions, and it's always fun to see how much these guys enjoy themselves on stage. Not even having Peter Evrard as their opening act could bring these men down. Respect!

Vacation has left me running a little behind with the updates on SoundsBrown, but better late than never! Let's get right to it, starting on the 20th of last month...

The location was the Rivierenhof, and the guilty parties were the Rhythm Junks and Calexico. I love both bands and have seen them several times before, but neither of them were quite as enjoyable as they could have been that night. I suspect this had a lot to do with the venue, though. Not only is the audience seated, but they are also separated from the stage by a ten foot wide moat. Not ideal for this style of music, but what can you do?

The setting worked a lot better when Daan played a solo gig there on the 31st. His set included material from his own albums, both old and new, but also a few covers and some Dead Man Ray tunes (including "Woods", even). It has to be said: even Daan's recent forays into the gay disco business took on a whole new dimension when performed with only vocals and piano. Respect! I have some pictures here.

Fast forward again to last Saturday. The Lokerse Feesten decided to go brown! The first band on was Hulk, who tried hard but sadly lacked the "oomph". Hulk may boast some impressive credentials, but their music lags behind pretty badly. Also, their singer/guitarist made one crucial mistake: he played a double-tapping guitar solo with his back turned towards the crowd! Unforgivable, especially given the fact that the stage had a catwalk just made for epic guitar solos!

Up next was the terrorist formation known as Millionaire, and things immediately turned a deeper shade of brown. Millionaire laid the shit down so hard that the gig had to be stopped for a while because Dave stomped right through his bass drum. Hell yeah! If I had to complain about something, it would be the volume. I stood right in front of the speakers, without earplugs, and I can still hear from both ears. That means it wasn't nearly loud enough! ;-)

The headlining act was Iggy and the Stooges. The festival area was completely packed by the time they were on, and right from the start, I found myself right in the middle of a mosh pit of biblical proportions! It was a damn brown show, but the one thing I will always remember about it isn't the rock 'n roll -- it's Iggy's ass. He was dancing around like a madman, dressed only in a pair of pants that succumbed a little too eagerly to the forces of gravity. It was as if Iggy was trying to say "hey you, could you please inspect my manhole?". But, like I said, the show really rocked, and I suppose it wouldn't have been quite as brown without Iggy's butt crack.

Saturday night was the first night of the Boomtown festival in Gent. The first band on was Maxon Blewitt. A tight and rocking show, with more shit hot guitar playing than can really be deemed appropriate. After seeing the band play live for the tenth time or so, though, I'm just about starting to yearn for some new material. Come on Wolf, we know you have it in you!

Absynthe Minded, the second band on, did have some new material to surprise us with. It had been quite a while since I last saw them play, and since then they have released an excellent new album (although my copy seems to have eloped -- if anyone's seen it, contact Child Focus). The band seemed a lot louder than I remember them. In particular, bass player Sergei seemed to be in a very good mood that night, and showed his bass every corner of the stage.

The headlining act was Giant Sand, who made it three great gigs in a row. You can't go far wrong when your arsenal packs lap steel, mandolin and dobro, but Howe did us one better and also brought along a really cool-sounding organ, which added more variation to an already more than decent set.

Last night, the New Galaxy Orchestra assembled at Pekfabriek to pay hommage to Sun Ra, the renowned Saturnian jazz musician. If I counted correctly, there were 15 musicians on stage, including John Birdsong, Roel Jacobs, Stefaan Blancke and Mauro Pawlowski. If anyone wants to fill me in on the names of the other 11 people, feel free! :-)

The lineup consisted of a brass section, keyboards and electronica, guitars, bass and percussion -- the latter including Mauro on timpanis. My experience with Sun Ra's works is limited to a single Greatest Hits album, but the orchestra's performance sounded pretty faithful to me. A handful of tunes were played, culminating in the interplanetary smash hit "Space Is The Place". A good time was had by all! You can check out my pictures here.

Sorry for posting this with some delay, but the web site seemed to be having some technical difficulties last weekend, and I have been away from civilization for the past week. The events described below took place on the 30th of June...

That night was supposed to see the last performance of the Parallels, followed by the birth of a new band, the Archetypes of the Multisabanas. This was to transpire at Villadelfia, home of Parallels members Miguel and Sickboy. Needless to say, things proceeded in a slightly less orderly fashion than the announcement lead us to believe.

The evening was started off by two people -- not a clue who they were, but one of them had a really big nose. They played a very short improv set. Not that there was any non-improvized music to be heard that evening, of course. The duo used acoustic guitar and something I can only describe as "percussion".

The next performance was by Miguel, Wolf Eriksson, a piano player named Paul (I think), and a drummer I didn't know. The piano man was definitely the star of the evening. He combined cheesy Casio-like backing loops with improvized playing and some very soulful singing. All this happened while Miguel and Wolf were torturing their guitars, which resulted in something that sounded cheerful and disturbing at the same time. Fun!

Finally, as darkness began to fall, another performance featured Miguel, Sickboy, Wolf, Mauro and Jeroen (the Winkly One). Miguel and Wolf continued to torment their guitars, while Sickboy and Mauro laid down all sorts of disturbing noises. Meanwhile, Jeroen did his best to play the drumkit, which was set up on top what appeared to be the roof of a car (but without the car attached to it). It was very elastic, so the whole drumkit started bouncing up and down each time Jeroen tried to play something a bit louder. The band was later joined again by Paul the piano man. He kept playing even when everyone else had stopped, and kept singing even after Miguel had unplugged his piano. The party was only over after his mic got unplugged as well. Without a doubt, he was the brownest man of the evening!

Check out my pictures here.

Last night, Charlatan organized a "surprise concert". They hinted at "a Belgian band with international connections, who are doing a tryout for their gig at Rock Werchter". Hey, I know -- it's Millionaire!

I wasn't the only one that guessed correctly. People were queueing up in the street, waiting for the doors to open, when I arrived. By the time the band came on stage, the place was completely packed, and it was blistering hot. Just now that I was finally starting to recover from the CWTAB show on Friday! The guys boldly opened with "Champagne", and also reintroduced a few other old songs into the set later on, including "Body Experience Revue". The crowd loved it, but although I noticed five encores on the setlist, no amount of screaming and clapping could persuade the guys to play more than two. Is it possible that even rock stars suffer from the heat? The answer to that question will not be found here.

I apologize in advance if any of what I am about to write sounds a little bit incoherent and strange, but I am in shambles. You see, I have a lot to write about, but I am currently recovering from a three-day streak of unparallelled brownness, made all the more devastating by the heatwave that accompanied it.

It all began on Thursday, when Quintron and Miss Pussycat played at Hof Ter Lo. The opening act was the Australian blues sensation Made For Chickens By Robots (see below). His noisy blues tunes and incomprehensible megaphone mumbling were still as highly enjoyable as the week before. Fair dinkum! My pictures can be found here.

Quintron and Miss Pussycat, as usual, started with a puppet show. This time, it was about two cavemen who built a bar so that they would get more chicks. Also, one of the cavemen had a pet skunk. There was a profound socio-political message in there, I'm sure of it! Apart from that, however, it was also just really funny. After the cavemen had scored, it was time for the actual gig. For the uninitiated: Quintron is an organ player from New Orleans. He also plays a contraption called the "Drum Buddy", which is an analog synth/drum machine thingy that Quintron built by himself. Miss Pussycat handles some of the vocals and shakes both her booty and her maracas. Together, they are one of the most charismatic duos around, and they always get the kids dancing in the aisles in no time! The highlight of the show was when Quintron called upon yours truly to assist him while he looked for a missing drum stick. That's right, children: I got to hold down a key on Quintron's organ for a whole twenty seconds! I am truly blessed! I have some pictures here, and no, I'm not in any of them.

The day after, there was the dilemma of choosing between Love Substitutes and Vandal X in Nijdrop, or the Scheldapen festival with Franco Saint De Bakker and Creature With The Atom Brain, among others. I chose the latter, and I don't regret it.

FSDB were short two members that night. Sigrid was replaced by Stefaan Blancke (of FES fame, among others), and Gunter Nagels of Donkey Diesel took over the vocal duties for "Air Raid". The band now seemed to be missing some of the magic of the original line-up, in my opinion. That said, even if it wasn't the best FSDB gig ever, it was still a bloody good gig -- it is FSDB, after all, and Elko's guitar playing was still shit hot as always. My happy snaps are here.

FSDB played outside, but the other bands all played in the house. The band on after FSDB was the mighty Creature With The Atom Brain. It was way too hot for the guys to wear their shrinkwrap outfits, so they were forced to reveal their true identities at last. With the burden of secrecy off their shoulders, CWTAB now seemed ready to rock harder than ever before. It was still around 30°C outside when they played, so try to picture the heat inside the house, where the band, the stage, the spotlights, and the crowd were packed together in a confined space the size of an average living room. Then try to picture it even hotter, thanks to the obliterating rock show that CWTAB laid down on the crowd. In fact, just try to picture Death Valley at high noon. The setting was perfect, and it was probably the hardest rocking CWTAB show we've witnessed so far. And that's saying something, goddammit! Pictures!

Saturday night, we went to Mechelen to catch Buttonhead and I Love Sarah at Café Den Akker. Not the hippest venue ever, and the bands seemed a bit worried about getting shut down because of the noise. However, The Man turned out to be more tolerant than they pessimistically expected. This means we were treated to two excellent pop shows, filled with neat guitar riffs, cheesy keyboard sounds, wacky lyrics and other assorted brownness. My pictures are here and here.

Saturday night, Tip Toe Topic (a.k.a. Saar van de Leest and Elko Blijweert) played at the Wonderbar. Elko played guitar and operated a loop station, while Saar did vocals (with and without megaphone), clarinet, and keys. They played a very short set, but a surprisingly varied one considering its length. Funky, jazzy, rocking, it was all there, mixed in one highly entertaining package! I have some pictures here. Coincidentally, this is exactly the 200th set of pictures on SoundsBrown!

Set 201 is of Made For Chickens By Robots, an Australian one-man-band who played after Tip Toe Topic. He used a loop station for some backing, stomped on a tambourine, played guitar, and did all his singing through a megaphone. A great show, and the CD-Rs he had with him sold out in no time. All three of them! My pictures can be found here.

Saturday, cellists Simon Lenski and Bo Wiget got together for a performance titled "UHA!". The scene of the crime was the "Klotenatie" (hey, I can't make this shit up). Lenski and Wiget barely had room to sit in between the loads of effects pedals that they brought along, so as you can imagine those cellos didn't always sound like cellos! The pieces ranged from quiet ambient noises to loud, menacing roars, and covered everything in between. Check out my pictures here.

Last night, the Whodads and Flat Earth Society put their thing down at Charlatan. The Whodads borrowed some band members from FES as well -- if memory serves, there were thirteen people on the stage. The set blended classic surf songs such as Dick Dale's "The Wedge" with more laid-back tunes. And of course their version of Henry Mancini's "Experiment In Terror" was a pleasant surprise to the Fantômas fan that is me! I have some pictures right here.

Flat Earth Society put on a terrific show as usual. Unfortunately the place was packed during the Whodads' set, but it was half empty by the time FES finished. Maybe people got too confused, or maybe the last tram in Gent rides at 1 AM -- who will tell? Be it as it may, I loved every bit of it. From the hidden fragment of Ravel's "Bolero" to Wim Willaert's particularly brown vocal performances, it was excellent. My pictures are over here.

Almost two whole weeks have gone by without a decent gig to be found -- I was about to die from lack of brownness! Thankfully, Charlatan ended the dry season last night by booking the mighty El Guapo Stuntteam!

The opening act was Oxl Hair, an acoustic Guns 'n Roses tribute band. I was never much of a GnR fan, but thankfully the songs sounded a lot better without Axl Rose. Add a healthy dose of slapstick to that, and you've got a winner! I have some pictures here.

El Guapo Stuntteam's excellent new album "Battles Across The Stereo Spectrum" has been in heavy rotation at the Brown Mansion for a few weeks now, and last night's gig was supposed to be the presentation of the album's vinyl release. The show rocked really goddamn hard, as we've come to expect from the Stuntteam. The crowd could have been a bit more enthusiastic if you ask me, but hey -- their loss. Everyone's loss, however, was the absence of Captain Catastrophe! It's just not the same without a crazy mofo that lights himself on fire. Fire or no fire, though, the band was still shit hot. My pictures can be found here.

Why does the sun shine? Because the sun is a mass of incandescent gas!

They Might Be Giants rank right up there as one of my all-time favorite bands, and since the UK seems to be as close as they ever make it to Belgium, I decided I had no choice but to go see them there. They played at The Forum in London last Thursday night, so I packed up my camera and a fresh pair of undies and got on the plane.

The gig took close to two hours and comprised over thirty songs, with a good mixture of both new and old material. The free noise intro to opener "Istanbul", conducted by John Linnell, made it immediately obvious that this wasn't your average pop band we were looking at. Not that there weren't great pop songs aplenty, of course, but there were also plenty of quirkier tunes such as "Absolutely Bill's Mood" and of course the epic "Fingertips". They also played a few tunes from their two children's records. Another highlight was when Jonathan Ross joined the band on stage as the narrator for a selection of "Venue Songs", which included most of my personal favourites such as "Dallas" and "Anaheim".

I could rave about TMBG and this gig all night long, but I'll just exercise some restraint and direct you towards my pictures now.

Today is SoundsBrown's first birthday! It's been exactly one year since the first news post was made to this site. You can re-read the whole year's worth of brownness here. I'd like to thank all visitors for, err, visiting, and of course I also want to thank all the bands that I've taken pictures of, for sounding brown in the first place!

While in a sentimental mood, I rummaged through my archives and dug out a bunch of pictures that weren't on the site yet for various reasons, but which I still thought were worthwhile. I've compiled them on an "outtakes" page, which you can find by clicking on the little critter in the bottom right corner. I'll probably be adding more random crap to that page in the future, so check it out every once in a while.

Friday night at Undercurrent, one Belgian and three Dutch bands held a competition to see who could put on the brownest show. The first contestant was Ottoboy, Holland's finest one-man trash band. One of the highlights of Ottoboy's set was a song with improvized lyrics about traffic jams between Antwerp and Groningen, or the lack thereof.

Up next were E.T. Explore Me, and the brownness was immediately kicked up a notch! The singer alternated between playing guitar and a really cool vintage-looking organ ("Ace Tone"). When he was on guitar, him and the bass player got out into the crowd for some up close and personal rock and roll! The crowd loved it, although that might have just been because E.T. Explore Me brought their entire fan club over from Holland, which meant that the Dutch in the audience outnumbered the Belgians by about 10 to 1 :-)

It was up to De Bossen to defend Belgium's honour. They did this by putting on a show that was brown in the smelliest possible way. Feedback, microphone problems, drumkits falling apart, guitars going out of tune, it was all there. Instead of trying to roll with it, the band persistently attempted to solve every technical problem that came along. This lead to long delays between songs, and you can imagine what that did to the loads of drunk Dutch people in the audience. It was a major screwup, but it was a damn entertaining one!

The last band on were Malle Pietje & De Bimbos. With their catchy punk rock singalongs, the Bimbos turned the whole room into a big mosh pit in no time! The set was pretty short, but it went down so well that people kept screaming and begging for more even after all the Bimbos' gear had been packed up. Brown, goddammit!

The next day, we went to Muziekodroom to see DAAU and Franco Saint De Bakker. Both of them played in the small club upstairs, while the ignorant masses watched the likes of Hof Van Commerce and Arsenal play in the main hall. DAAU and FSDB decided to do some cross-breeding: Buni Lenski appeared as a guest on the violin for a few FSDB songs, and Fré Madou substituted for Thomas Sainderichin on bass. Also absent was Sigrid Van Rosendaal, who was too pregnant to play -- unfortunately I didn't catch the name of her substitute.

Last night, DAAU played at the STUK. The opening act was Kammerflimmer Kollektief, who played some moody, droning free jazz pieces. It sounded quite good, but they failed to get the audience's full attention, so there was quite a lot of distracting chatter. Shame... I have a few pictures here. DAAU's swinging klezmer-folklore-jazz-thingamajig left a lot less room for distraction, and got much better audience response. Pictures of their set can be found right here.

Last Thursday, Donkey Diesel played at Libertad in Leuven. The (admittedly small) café was jam-packed, so people could hardly move during the gig. As on previous occasions, I mostly enjoyed the first half of the set. Accordions rule! Check out the pictures here.

The night after, we went to Roma for an event at which bands performed live music! What a great idea! The first band on was Tom Wolf and, err, Band. They played very straightforward, poppy singer/songwriter stuff. Not offensively bad, but quite a test for my five-minute attention span. I killed the time by taking some pictures.

Disaster struck when the stage lights gave up near the end of Wolf's set. They were apparently beyond repair, which meant that Maxon Blewitt, the next band on, had to play in the dark. Because of this, my pictures came out all shitty like, but here they are anyway. Dark or not, the band put on a good show as always!

The headlining band for the evening was Camden. Run for the hills!!!

On Saturday night, the travelling rock circus known as Millionaire pitched its tents at Petrol. We came, we saw, we bought the T-shirt. Opening act was Starfighter, who played some straightforward but pretty effective guitar rock. Millionaire themselves laid the shit down hard as usual. The crowd turnout was great, and all asses were kicked in equal amounts.

On Sunday night, CC Luchtbal was where the brownness transpired. There was a double bill, with The Necks opening for the Otomo Yoshihide Septet. The Necks played a single lengthy piece, with a lineup of bass, piano and drums. They started off with some very minimalistic sounds, but gradually intensified their playing towards a more eclectic finale.

The Otomo Yoshihide Septet played a more varied set. Some songs were loud and chaotic, and saw Yoshihide coax some pretty unsettling noises out of his guitar. Other times, they played quiet, intricate soundscapes, often with airy vocals from a guest singer whose name I unfortunately didn't catch. Not that I caught anyone's name, actually... The lineup further consisted of drums, vibraphone, saxophones, contrabass and electronics. I have some pictures here.

Last night, Vandal X and Todd played at Den Hemel in Zichem. The first band on, however, was teenage punk sensation Blind Effect (local boys, I presume). They brought a bunch of their teenage friends, some of whom brought their parents as well. One of the highlights of the show was a song about "Fat Mike", who took some pills and lost 200 pounds, but then realized he was happier when he was still fat. Very profound, but it didn't do much for me except make me feel very old.

Vandal X, by comparison, cut straight to the bone. Announced by a sample from "Full Metal Jacket" on the backing track, Bart and Günthor stomped all over the crowd with their ultra-violent noise rock. Frightened and confused, the teenagers packed it up and went home. It was a school night, after all, and it was already half past ten!

This left Todd with a crowd of about twenty people to entertain. Thankfully, the people that stayed really got into it. And holy shit, was our persistence rewarded! Monolithic guitar riffs reminiscent of the Melvins were poured over with some particularly filthy noise, resulting in one of the better ass whoopings I've had in a long time. Impressive!

I have some pictures of Vandal X and Todd. Note the guest appearance of Lucky the horse!

I have a big update for you today, and it starts on Thursday night, when I went to get a portion of heavy metal in Leuven. The bands that delivered the goods were Officer Jones and his patrol car problems and Amen Ra. The location was a squat that goes by the name of Villa Skwattus Dei -- a perfect place for some serious brownness. Amen Ra laid the shit down particularly hard. Slow and droning sludge metal, just the way I like it!

Sludge metal one day, bluegrass the next! Isn't music great? Friday night, the Seatsniffers celebrated their tenth anniversary at Petrol, and they invited the Blue Grass Boogiemen to open for them. The Boogiemen's weapons of choice are banjo, mandolin, stand-up bass and guitar, with the occasional bit of fiddling thrown in. You wouldn't normally associate Petrol with bluegrass, but there you are -- it was great, and the crowd loved it. Pictures right here.

The Seatsniffers put on a classic rock and roll show, and since it was their anniversary, they brought along a bunch of special guests. Ruben Block, Bjorn Eriksson, Nathalie Delcroix and others all joined the band on stage for a couple of songs. Check out my pictures here.

On Saturday, we went to Muziekodroom for the "D.I.Y. Or Die?" festival. The line-up for that night was:

• Great Lake Swimmers
• The Album Leaf
• Hank Pine and Lily Fawn
• South San Gabriel

As you may notice, SoundsBrown has been given a serious face-lift! The new site design was done by the multi-talented Pascal Deweze, who is also world famous as a singer/songwriter and as a line dancer. Thank you for the brownness, Pascal!

In other news, Admiral Freebee played at Hof Ter Lo last night. The Brownmobile got stuck in a traffic jam of biblical proportions on the way over there, so we had to miss most of the opening act, To The Bone. We got there just in time to hear an epic drum solo, though, so all was not lost.

The Admiral was once again on a roll! Harmonizing guitar solos, Mick Jagger style dancing, Sideshow Bill's saxophone improvization -- it was all there. Bill now also helped out with backing vocals during "Sad Rebel", which suggests that he may be working his way up from the sideshow to being a full-time band member. I have some pictures right here.

Tonight, Admiral Freebee played at the Oude Stadsfeestzaal in Mechelen. Armed with a new band and a bunch of new songs, the Admiral was clearly in the mood. The brownest moment of the gig had to be Sideshow Bill's free improv saxophone solo during "Hope Alone". A fun show indeed, and I have some pictures right here!

Last Thursday, a benefit took place for and at the Herman Teirlinck institute. There were too acts to name, most of which were short musical performances of about three songs. I didn't get pictures of everybody, but the ones I have are:

• Tine Reymer and Tom Pintens
• Queen Fabiola (who presented the event)
• Helder
• Ludo Mariman
• Pascal Deweze, Mauro Pawlowski and Sidekick Dave
• Maxon Blewitt
• Tom Lanoye
• Pieter Embrechts
• Warre Borgmans and Jokke Schreurs

The undisputed highlight of the evening was Pascal, Mauro and Dave's set. Pascal played bass, moog and assorted toy instruments, Mauro played guitar, and Dave played the drums. Short but intense, the set consisted of three covers -- songs by Lydia Lunch, the Stooges and the Butthole Surfers. The gig rocked damn hard, and was painted a deeper shade of brown when Mauro started going completely berserk. He jumped up on the grand piano that was at the back of the stage, crashing into it on his back. He danced around on it for a while, then came back to the front of the stage for some up-close-and-personal madness. By the end of the set, the piano took another beating as Mauro slammed his guitar into it, head first into the strings. A few screams later, he violently threw his mic to the floor and that was it. Brown!

Friday night, Buttonhead played at Scheld'apen. It was the first time we went to Scheld'apen after their six months or so of being closed, and we were positively shocked! Where the walls were once covered with pictures of talking penises and other assorted brownness, there was now this! Gasp! And not only was the place completely cleaned up, the gig also started on time! Which means we missed it!

The band themselves would have happily played a second set, but The Man wouldn't let them. Not to be outdone, however, the guys packed their gear in the car and headed to the parking lot of Petrol, just down the road from Scheld'apen. There, they played an acoustic set in front of about a dozen people and a handful of confused passers-by, most of whom were just looking for the entrance. Now there's rock and roll for you! Check out the clandestine adventures of Buttonhead here!

The next day, we went to Brussels for the Dictapop festival. Buttonhead kicked off the festivities, with twisted pop tunes and some of the funniest lyrics south of the north pole. I Love Sarah were up next, and Jeroen got his best French out to address the masses. The drumkit practically fell apart during the show, but that didn't stop the brownness from transpiring! Next, after an excessively lengthy intermission from DJ Elephant something something, it was Fonda 500's turn. They put on a deranged electro rock show the likes of which had not been seen since... Well, since their last show, presumably. Rock with a generous helping of silliness -- good stuff!

My week-long Millionaire extravaganza ended Thursday night at Muziekodroom, and just like the previous times, the band rocked really goddamn hard. Hence, before the encores, Tim kneeled down before his amplifier and thanked the Lord for bestowing so much brownness upon the band. I lost count of how many guitar strings were savagely broken throughout the set, but there were lots of them. When Tim broke another one during the encores, he decided to do the last song without his guitar. This prompted the return of the now infamous red and blue party socks (see below). Hooray! Check out my pictures!

Another day, another Millionaire gig. The band returned to Domino last night for another round of ass-whooping. Opening act were the Love Substitutes. We got to hear a short but very angry version of "Lower the masterfader" -- Rudy sang it like he meant it! Another highlight was a new song, for which none other than Craig took on the drumming duties, handing over his guitar to Mauro. The only thing sadly missing from the set was "Meet the Love Substitutes" with Dave Schroyen on drums! Check out my pictures here.

Millionaire's second Domino gig, which sold out even faster than the first one, didn't degenerate into chaos like it did the night before. However, they made up for this by sounding even tighter and more focused. There's not much more I can say -- these gentlemen know how to put on a rock show, period! My pictures can be found here. I have to run now, or I'll be late for my next Millionaire gig! :)

So I go to the first two Millionaire gigs last weekend, and practically compare them to the second coming of Christ in my review (see below), and what do these guys do? They play another gig that's at least 15% browner than the first two! Sonsabitches!

The gig in question was at Domino, in a sold out AB Club. Opening act for the night was Sickboy. A cool set as usual, although 9 PM is really a tad early to be doing a breakcore gig. The crowd obviously wasn't in much of a party mood yet, but hey. Something we hadn't heard before was a remix of one of the new Millionaire songs, which Sickboy premiered tonight. Check out my pictures here.

Millionaire, then. Like I said, things proceeded in an even browner fashion than on previous occasions. The sound was awesome, the shit was tight, and the band was obviously in the mood. Tim was so very much in the mood, in fact, that things started getting slightly out of hand towards the end of the set. Tim poured water all over himself, the stage, and the gear. Not sure if it was cause and effect or not, but his amp broke down during "Champagne", forcing the band to play the encore with only Aldo on guitar. This only made Tim go even more insane. He showed off a pair of stylish red and blue party socks and started jumping about on the stage like a raving lunatic. The bets are on: will they be able to sound even browner than they did tonight? We'll find out very soon! Meanwhile, here's some pictures.

How much brownness can a man take ere he die? Apparently lots of it, because I'm still here to write this news post. Friday night, after being away for far too long, Millionaire kicked off their new tour at Cahier De Brouillon in Hoogstraten. Needless to say, the place was packed! Opening act were none other than the madmen from Mechelen, I Love Sarah, whose zany pop tunes got the crowd warmed up in no time. Another step closer to the international breakthrough! Witness Jeroen's uncanny display of equilibrium here.

Millionaire made quite a dramatic entrance, so the crowd was psyched right from the start. The rock show that followed far exceeded even my wildest expectations. The setlist was almost all new material, with only two songs off "Outside the Simian Flock". No amount of superlatives can describe how goddamn hard these new songs rocked! Despite being completely unknown, all of them instantly felt 100% right, which made the gig feel very much like coming home. As we say in Dutch: "vette shit, nondedju!". Pictures can't fully convey the brownness, but I tried my best.

As you can imagine, we didn't need much convincing to go back for seconds. Saturday night, the band struck again at Lintfabriek in Kontich. Slightly different setlist, equal amounts of rock! If my ass gets rocked this hard a few more times, it might suffer permanent injury! More pictures here.

Not that I wouldn't happily live with a prosthetic ass if that allowed me to get it rocked some more, of course. It is in this mindset that we went to the AB on Sunday night to see Franco Saint De Bakker at the Domino festival. FSDB was the first band on, before The Shining and Jaga Jazzist, so they only got to play a fairly short set. On top of that, Elko was plagued by serious technical problems, causing his guitar sound to drop out every now and then. His gear mostly behaved itself after the first one or two songs, though, so overall the set still turned out really well. The band introduced a really cool new song, and treated us to what was probably the brownest version of "Air Raid" yet! By the end of it, Elko's gear started misbehaving again, so during the noisy finale, he was frantically stomping on his effects pedals in the hopes of keeping things going just long enough to finish the song. It didn't work out that way, but it was fun to watch :) Pictures!

Tuesday night, the Love Substitutes, the Thermals and the Wedding Present played at Hof Ter Lo. I don't get tired of seeing the Love Substitutes, although it does get harder and harder to write an inspired review for each gig. Maybe I can just leave that to Craig Ward from now on...

Let us not mention the Thermals, who bored me to tears, but let us rather move straight on to the Wedding Present. I had actually never heard of these guys before, although word has it they've been around for quite some time. Their fast yet moody guitar pop was a welcome change after the Thermals, and although they won't have me running to the nearest record store to buy their albums, I could certainly imagine worse ways to spend an evening.

Speaking of guitar pop, I take it everyone's bought the new Fantômas album by now? The brownest album to ever be pressed on a pink disc!

Saturday, GOC Racing in Gavere organized a little festival by the name of "Hoop 2005". The first band to take the stage was Radio Infinity, featuring Ben Wijers and Bart Vandebroek (of Millionaire and Evil Superstars fame, respectively) and Yves Staeren on drums. The sound was sometimes funky, sometimes hard rockin', but always brown! Ben and Bart's backgrounds were never far away, but the band always sounded fresh and original enough to stand its own. Keep an eye out for these guys!

The second band on the bill was Stash. Yes, I saw Stash. Oh, the gayness! Woe is me, woe is me! Their guitar player boasted a Gibson SG with a furry shoulder strap. A good starting point for a hair metal band, but hardly the kind of gear you'd want to use to play emo ballads. "Highlight" of the show was when the bass player (who, by the way, liked to hop around on stage like a 10 year old girl playing a skipping game) called a roadie on stage to tie his shoe laces. Another crucial mistake was a cover of "Jolene" in the middle of one of their own songs. Been done better before! Needless to say, I'm not going to further jeopardize my credibility by posting pictures of these guys. Next!

The main act for the evening was Girls In Hawaii. They put on a good show as always, but it was somewhat disappointing to hear almost the exact same setlist as four months ago. They claimed back then that they were going to take a break from touring to write and record new material, and I had hoped to hear at least one or two new songs by now. Ah well, they'll get around to it eventually, I hope.

The night before, we went to the Wonderbar to catch Pox, a new band fronted by Mark Meyers. Pox played fairly straightforward guitar rock which, although not bad, was a little too straightforward for my 15 second attention span. Or maybe it was just the Dillinger Escape Plan from the night before that hadn't completely worn of yet. Who will say?

Last Thursday, the Dillinger Escape Plan took the Muziekodroom by force. It was a ferocious sonic assault that I'm still trying to recover from! D.E.P.'s ultra-violent noise metal sounds impressive on CD, but the live show really adds an extra dimension to it. Singer Greg spent most of the time leaning forward over the edge of the stage, convulsing wildly and screaming his lungs out, all the while being supported by the people in the front rows. The other band members went equally berserk, but still managed to play with deadly precision amongst all this chaos. Pictures can't do this gig justice, especially not if they're crappy ones that I tried to take while being pushed and shoved around in the mosh pit, but here they are anyway.

Last Friday (apologies for the delayed posting), the Love Substitutes played at De Kreun. There was a surprisingly small crowd -- quite possibly the smallest the band has had thusfar. That said, the show itself was a damn good one. Rudy sang into his guitar pickups (is there a trend emerging here?). The masterfader was effectively lowered during "Lower the Masterfader". Mauro drank orange juice from a plastic cup in between screaming the words to "Meet the Love Substitutes". They played a brand new song which was apparently written during the soundcheck. A better time was not to be had for miles around! Check out my pictures here.

Continuing the Vadermoord goodness, Rudy Trouvé took on the oeuvre of Iron Maiden last Thursday, accompanied by Elko Blijweert. Much to everyone's surprise, the guys did not bring any guitars to their Iron Maiden tribute! Instead, Elko and Rudy both played keyboards, leading to what Rudy described as "Iron Maiden meets Kraftwerk". Those who witnessed it will never hear Iron Maiden the same way again! Some pictures right here.

Tonight, Bjorn Eriksson played at Vadermoord. For the uninitiated, Vadermoord is a yearly concert series organized by STUK, in which artists are asked to butcher the songs of their biggest musical heroes. Bjorn chose to do Hank Williams, and brought along Len Dauphin to accompany him on bass. They apologized beforehand for suffering from bad jetlag, but apparently even being awake for 36 hours couldn't stop these boys from putting on a good show! They kicked it off with "Long Gone Lonesome Blues", which you may know from Maxon Blewitt gigs. We were also treated to a mean bit of bluegrass, and they managed to sneak "Ring Of Fire" by Johnny Cash in there as well. Good times! Check out some pictures here.

Saturday night, The Rhythm Junks and Durango played at Petrol. The crowd was less apathetic than the night before (see below), but they still kept to a safe distance of about ten feet from the stage throughout the Rhythm Junks' set. When Durango came on, however, Fred politely but urgently requested the people to step closer, and the gig got turned into a bilateral experience after all. Thank god!

Last Thursday, I went to "SLA-dag", a little festival organized by Sint Lucas Antwerpen. It took place in some marginal crackhouse-looking dump just off the Noorderlaan. In other words: the perfect location for some noise!

First off, I Love Sarah played what may have been their brownest gig yet. Highlights included Jeroen running circles around the "stage" (forward and backwards!) and an intense vocal performance by Rutger. Up next was Schizoide, who looked even angrier than usual thanks to the line of stitches on his forehead. That guitar sure took one hell of a beating! The last act I caught was Sickboy, who had the kids convulsing in the aisles in no time!

Because Sickboy sounded so damn brown, I went back the next day to see him at Petrol. Droon was the opening act. Armed with a PC keyboard glued to a cardboard guitar, and sporting a big beard under his pilot's helmet, Droon looked totally daft -- just the way we like it. His particular blend of breakcore wasn't quite as chaotic as Sickboy's, but it was great fun nonetheless. Sickboy laid it down hard as usual, but quite unlike the night before, the crowd was pretty apathetic to it. Their loss, dammit!

I was taken out by a flu last week. Rather than being smart and staying home to recuperate, however, I happily resumed doing gigs as soon as I was able to stand. Thursday, we caught the Parallels and the Love Substitutes at the Ithaka festival in Leuven. On Saturday, we went to the (K-RAA-K)³ Festival. A combination of crowdedness and darkness means that I only have good pictures of Six Organs of Admittance. Finally, on Sunday, we saw Teun Verbruggen, Jozef Dumoulin and Mauro Pawlowski improvise at L'Archiduc in Brussels.

Friday and Saturday, the "Femmes" festival took place at Zaal België, with a lineup full of female noise artists. Here's my pictures from day one, in which you will see:

• Danielle Lemaire
• Islaja
• Lotta Melin, Hild Sofie Tjaford and Esther Venrooy
• Ikue Mori and Zeena Parkins, a.k.a. Phantom Orchard

My pictures of day two are here and feature the following artists:

• Danielle Lemaire, Jan Van Den Dobbelsteen and Brientje
• Islaja, Samara Lubelski, Heather Leigh and Tara Burke
• Onashita and Maskesmachine
• Ikue Mori, Zeena Parkins and Lotta Melin
• Esther Venrooy
• AGF and Zavoloka, with VJ Solu

"Art Toi?" is a crappy name for a rock band -- I have spoken. Having said that, the aforementioned rock band is actually pretty good. I caught them at the AB Club tonight, as evidenced by these pictures.

The main act for the evening was Satellite City. They played some new songs, accompanied by James Brown's horn section (don't look at me, I'm only passing on what Allan Muller said). Lots of goofing about on stage, catchy pop tunes, and the occasional introspective moment were all that was needed for a good time! Pictures right here.

We caught Adam Green at the Botanique tonight. Green had no trouble getting the crowd on their feet and singing along to such classics as "No Legs", "Crackhouse Blues" or "Choke On A Cock". Jolly good entertainment for the whole family! I have a few pictures for you right here.

You wouldn't think it to be physically possible to fit eight people plus instruments on the tiny Wonderbar stage, but I just saw it happen with my own two eyes. The eight people in question were Prima Donkey, and tonight was their "first and probably one-but-last gig", as Buni Lenski announced it. Prima Donkey used a pretty outlandish range of instruments, with violin, clarinet and accordion happily playing along with electric guitar, banjo and theremin. Good stuff! I have some pictures of the show right here.

Last Thursday, Sukilove and Sickboy played at Kaaiman. Not together, unfortunately, but both of them still put on a damn good show. The contrast between the two couldn't be larger, but most people didn't seem to care. I sure as hell didn't. My pictures came out all crappy like, though, because it was too fecking dark in there. I only managed to salvage a handful that I took with the flash: Sukilove and Sickboy.

Yesterday, we caught Traktor and Durango at the Oude Badhuis in Antwerp, which was celebrating its tenth anniversary. Traktor mostly caught my ear because of Len Dauphin's shit hot bass licks. Hot damn, that man can play! Which is not to say that the rest of the package wasn't good, though. I wasn't too impressed by Traktor the previous time I saw them, but I was most pleasantly surprised last night! As for Durango, I guess I've praised them often enough by now that I don't need to repeat myself today. They rock. Check out my pictures: Traktor and Durango.

Saturday, The O'Haras played at Petrol to present their new album, "Bulls & Beans". Opening act was the Garbage Gang, who played some simple-but-effective-ish garage rock. You can check out some pictures of their set here.

The O'Haras were announced by everyone's favourite arrogant prick, Alex Agnew. The band put on a steaming hot surf rock show, blending covers of surf classics with their own songs. The set was concluded with a a cover of Tony Holiday's "Tanze Samba Mit Mir", which was unexpected, to say the least. Check out my pictures here.

Having been duly impressed by their previous passage at Muziekodroom, we went to see Giant Sand in CC Spinoy last Saturday. We had to withstand streaming rain and gale force winds to get there, but our persistence was rewarded.

Opening act Steven De Bruyn & The Rhythm Junks were just getting the party started as we arrived. The crappy weather obviously didn't affect the Rhythm Junks' good mood, and the crowd quickly warmed up to their swinging songs and energetic live show.

Giant Sand singer Howe Gelb had a somewhat harder time adjusting to our harsh Belgian climes, apparently, as he was struggling with a fever. It didn't seem to bother him too much, though, because it still turned out to be an excellent show. Howe's sense of humour was also unaffected, and he merrily bantered with the audience in between songs.

Pictures: The Rhythm Junks and Giant Sand.

The Love Substitutes played at Recyclart last Saturday. The cool backdrop you can see in my pictures was painted right there and then, and was finished just moments before the band started playing. While the painting was in progress, the DJ kicked out wholesome family-oriented tunes such as Lightning Bolt and Mclusky -- good fun!

The Love Substitutes themselves also delivered the goods! We got to see Craig use his sax thingy for the second time (by the way, if anyone can more accurately name that thing, call me). The band also treated us to what may have been the brownest version of "Summer Of Mars" yet -- with an honest-to-god mosh pit as the result! Finally, as required by tradition, "Meet The Love Substitutes" was played with a guest drummer whom Mauro recruited from the audience in his best French. You can gaze upon some pictures right here.

Donkey Diesel played at Jokot last Friday. Highlights included the appearance of an instrument called the scratch-o-caster and a cover of Ministry's "Jesus Built My Hotrod". Possibly one of the most unlikely songs ever to be covered by one man and his accordion! I have some pictures for your perusal right here.

Last night, Tom Hannes and Mauro Pawlowski performed at dedonderdagen, at De Singel. The audience was seated around a canvas with a small puddle of mud on it. During the first part of the performance, Tom walked around on the canvas barefoot, smearing the mud out in a circle. Throughout the entire performance, he recited monotonous, repetitive verses which he adapted from an old Buddhist text. Mauro, meanwhile, accompanied him on the guitar. He started off with some "Secret Guitar"-style sounds. Later on, he began to experiment with feedback, with noises that he created by pounding on the guitar's body or by scraping its head over the floor. The two droned on like this for about 45 minutes, bringing the audience into a state of Zen. I took a few pictures, which you can see here.

A mere three days after their performance at De Nachten, I crawled back to Franco Saint De Bakker and begged for more. The band played at the AB Club last night to present their new album, and I got what I craved! In addition to the material off the album, there were a couple of very cool new songs on the setlist. Tim Van der Poel joined in on guest "vocals" a few times for that extra touch of brown. Check out my pictures here.

The second night of De Nachten didn't have quite the appeal of the first one, in my opinion. Early in the evening, we mostly just hung around waiting for the Love Substitutes to come on. While hanging, we caught Solex. Solex played light-hearted pop songs using drums, moog and laptop. Although not entirely my cup of tea, it was a nice passtime while we waited for something a bit more substantial.

The Love Substitutes drew a big crowd to the Trappenpodium, but didn't seem to kick ass quite as hard as they did on previous occasions. Was it because there were too many asses to be kicked? Was it because the band had to stick to an ass-tight schedule? Or was it simply because Craig was wearing a pink shirt, and you obviously can't expect to kick ass in a pink shirt? Whatever the reason, the show just seemed somewhat lacking in the chaos department.

Thankfully, we had Franco Saint De Bakker to save the day. FSDB have been bloody great every time I've seen them, and Saturday night was no exception. The band mixed their whimsical interpretations of jazz standards with their own new material, and all of it was equally exhilerating. FSDB has a new live album out, which I can also highly recommend!

Another highlight of this year's De Nachten, but one I unfortunately haven't managed to get any decent pictures of, were the appearances of I Love Sarah and Steven Ribus in the drum boxes -- tiny isolated rehearsal rooms that can only hold a handful of people. The two took turns playing mini sets throughout the entire festival, for groups of three or four people at a time. A very cool concept, and we stopped by a couple of times to get a quick fix.

The tenth edition of De Nachten took place this weekend, with an excellent line-up as usual. I've just posted my pictures from the first night -- the rest will follow soonish.

Vandal X kicked off the festivities for us in the foyer. Their set consisted entirely of material from their latest album "Two Man Army", and the gruesome twosome laid the shit down like it's meant to be laid down: hard. With brutally savaged eardrums, but otherwise feeling pretty good, we headed off to see the next band...

... The next band being Durango, on the Trappenpodium. Fred's hat went airborne halfway through the set, which is always a sign that the show is going well! I threw it back hoping that it would go airborne a second time, but the set was a little too short for Fred to reach another climax. Still a damn good show, though.

Next, we caught some of Admiral Freebee's solo set. The Admiral played mostly new material, mixed with a handful of songs from his debut album. Even without the backup of a full band, the songs very much stood their ground. The new album should be one to look forward to.

Finally, we caught Boenox and Sukilove (just Pascal and Stokki), who got on stage together for the occasion. Which meant that there were two Stoffels on stage -- a unique event! The collaboration worked out wonderfully. Although the set consisted mostly of Sukilove songs, Boenox's input was not to be downplayed. Thumbs up in particular to cellist Katelijn, who filled up the songs with all sorts of interesting noises and textures.

That's about it for Friday night -- stay tuned for the rest of my pictures!

Last night "1212 Pop", a benefit for the tsunami victims in Asia, took place at the Vooruit. The line up consisted of about a dozen acts, each of which played two songs. I was there and took pictures. Allow me to walk you through them...

• We missed the first one or two acts, but got there in time for Durango, who (as usual) failed to disappoint.
• Up next was Sukilove, who played "1234" and a particularly noisy version of "Woe". Jolly nice!
• The bill said "Tom Pintens + surprise". It remains unclear whether the latter referred to Luc De Vos or to the surprisingly ugly guitar Pintens was playing.
• The first real surprise of the evening was the duet between Bjorn Eriksson (announced as Björk Eriksson) and Ruben Block. Accompanied by Len Dauphin on standup bass, they played good old-fashioned rock 'n roll! I would pay good money for a chance to see them do this for more than ten measly minutes!
• Up next was A Brand. Top quality entertainment for the entire family!
• Those Lais chicks sure can sing, but they need to spice up their act. If they could sing like that and juggle burning torches at the same time, for instance, that would go a long way.
• Mauro and Tim Vanhamel were announced as "the two most talented musicians of the evening". However, not two but four musicians took the stage. Numbers three and four were Miguel and Sickboy of the Parallels. The foursome made the crowd feel what it's like to be caught by a tsunami, by flooding the Vooruit with hellish noise and feedback. The contrast with what came earlier was immense. Sickboy abandoned his trusty laptop and started pummeling the drumkit that was set up on the stage. Miguel abused his moog, Tim raped his guitar, and Mauro played some sort of flute. Frightened and confused, people quickly started booing, which only encouraged the band to play even louder. As the booing got to its peak, Mauro dropped his flute, picked up a mic and started screeching loudly, all the while standing defiantly on the edge of the stage to confront the crowd. As Sickboy's drumming and Mauro's screaming reached their climax, it actually reminded me of Fantômas. It was immediately obvious that what we had just witnessed would be the absolute highlight of the evening, although the majority of the audience probably thought otherwise.
• Satellite City were the poor sods who were sent in to do damage control. A dirty job, but they did it well.
• Flip Kowlier was supposed to play with Gabriel Rios, but Gabriel had to cancel at the last minute, possibly because he got lost in the backstage. Hence, Flip had to improvise, which led to a medley of Rocco Granata's "Marina" and The Shorts' "Comment ça va".
• Axelle Red was accompanied by Tom Pintens on keyboards and Wigbert on guitar. The people cried out for "Ebbenhout Blues", but got no such pleasure.
• And finally, Tom Barman and Guy Van Nueten concluded the evening. There was an after party with the Fucking Dewaele Brothers, but we passed on that one.

Durango played at a sold out AB Club last night, to present their upcoming album "Loi du Miel". If the new songs sound as brown on the album as they did on stage last night, we're in for a real treat! My pictures from the show can be found here.

Last Friday, Sickboy played at Undercurrent. Opening acts Kobus, Kitchen Tool Set and Dr Monster failed to impress, but they did succeed in making Sickboy's insane hardcore taste all the sweeter. It's hard to take pictures of fast-moving subjects like Sickboy, but I have a few right here.

On Saturday, Jokot in Niel was the place to be, with performances by Ow and the Love Substitutes. Ow wasn't bad, but my attention span turned out to be about 20 minutes shorter than their set. I have some pictures here. The Love Substitutes, on the other hand, had no trouble capturing the crowd's attention for an hour and a half. Each Love Substitutes gig is different from the last, as evidenced by the fact that Craig now finally used the sax he'd been bringing along to all the gigs. Other highlights included triangular and circular improvisations, and a hilarious "air drums" performance by Mauro. I have a big batch of pictures for you right here.

Ultracowboy and the Love Substitutes played at Zaal België yesterday. A malevolant prankster must have told the Zaal België staff that Ultracowboy is a schlager band or something like that, because when we arrived at the venue we were shocked to find that they had put tables and chairs right in front of the stage. What where they thinking?!? My crowdsurfing plans were thwarted, but nonetheless, both bands kicked ass regardless of whether you were sitting on yours or not. Check out my pictures: Ultracowboy and The Love Substitutes.

The very first pictures for 2005 are from New Year's Eve (after midnight, of course). We caught Creature With The Atombrain at the Happy3 festival/party/thingy. While the ignorant masses danced to mindless techno beats in the room next door, we got our asses rocked! I'm running out of superlatives to describe just how hard the Creature rocks ass, but suffice it to say that mine still hurts. The gig ended when Aldo dove head first off the stage, guitar and all, during "My Flag". And I don't mean that in a crowdsurfing kind of way, I mean that in a falling-three-feet-down-and-landing-on-the-concrete-floor kind of way. He got back up and played the guitar solo standing right there in the audience, then threw his guitar back on the stage and disappeared into the backstage area. A better time was not to be had for miles around!

These pictures are extra special, by the way: not only are these the first pics for 2005, but they are also the 100th set of pictures on SoundsBrown! Hurrah!

Another batch of holiday snaps, this time from the "Vlammende Vlamingen" festival at the Effenaar in Eindhoven. The line-up consisted of Styrofoam, The Go Find, Maxon Blewitt and Sukilove, in that order. All bands put on an excellent show, and the Dutch crowd was rightfully jealous of all the musical talent we have here in Belgium ;) It would have been nice if the bands (or at least the headlining act) had gotten some time to do encores, though. Is there a twelve o' clock curfew in Holland that I'm not aware of, or do the folks that run Effenaar simply need to get the stick out of their butt?

Here's a first batch of pictures that I took during the holidays. First off, we caught the Kerstvonk concert in Hasselt on Thursday the 23rd. The evening started with Marcel Vanthilt reading a story by Stijn Meuris, titled "De dag dat Neil Young in Hasselt speelde". Joost Zwegers joined Marcel on stage a few times to play some Neil Young tunes. Up next were Peter Van Den Eede and Patrick De Witte, who presented a most entertaining workshop on comedy. It's hard to explain, so I won't. The main act for the evening was a band featuring Tom Pintens, Stef-Kamil Carlens, Mauro Pawlowski and Patrick Riguelle. They played mostly covers, including The Band, Tom Waits and Roxy Music to name but a few.

Next, I have some pictures of Club Moral's Winter HomeConcert, which as the name suggests took place in a small and cozy setting at somebody's house. Mauro and AMVK laid down guitar riffs and beats while DDV "recited" from a stack of books that he brought along. This lead to such screeches as "drie sets van twaalf", "mijn vader was een timmerman" or the slightly more unsettling "shotgun unloaded into chest from three yards". The Christmas spirit was felt very strongly that night :)

It's that time of the year again where everyone goes crazy with all kinds of lists. Not to be outdone, I've compiled my own lists of the brownest albums and concerts of 2004:

Feel free to discuss and/or post your own lists, should you be so inclined.

I'll be taking some time off during the holidays, so even though I may still catch a gig or two, there's a good chance you won't see any updates on this site until 2005. Have yourselves a merry Christmas and a brown New Year!