Why The Honeymoon Killers Released Their Album 30 Years After It Was Recorded

Founded in 1980 by Marc Hollander of Belgian avant-rock band Aksak Maboul, Crammed Discs is an independent, Brussels-based label with a wildly eclectic catalog that currently spans hundreds of releases. While many Crammed artists are based in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Balkans and other far-flung corners of the globe, the imprint has always shied away from the world music tag, stating that it simply enjoys working with acts from around the world, some of whom happen to sing in languages other than English.

In the early days, Hollander kept things organized by creating a series of sub-labels, with each one focusing on a different corner of the musical spectrum, but they were eventually discarded as the internet era led to audiences’ listening habits becoming less dependent on genre. In this excerpt from his RBMA Radio Fireside Chat with Hanna Bächer, Hollander talks about how this broadening of tastes among music audiences led to the eventual release of an album by the Honeymoon Killers – a group featuring Hollander and Véronique Vincent – nearly three decades after it was recorded.

We were trying to do kind of an electro-pop record, but with loads of Aksak Maboul elements. The more we worked on it, the more we felt that people didn’t understand what we were trying to do. We thought genuinely that we were doing a pop record that could be listened to by a large number of people, but also we wanted it to be super interesting and all that. In the end we dropped the project because we just didn’t know how to go forward with it.

Véronique and me got married, we had kids, I put out 320 other records, she became a painter and different things and suddenly years later, actually 30 years later… The songs were written between 1980 and 1983, written and recorded but not finished. Two years ago I suddenly [started] thinking, reconfiguring my vision of these songs. I suddenly thought this doesn’t need to be produced again. It’s there. These demos, the way they are, have a charm of their own. There is an audience now that can understand that.

We dropped all these sub-labels after a while because we felt that now people can understand the concept of a label that plays with different artists from all over the place. We don’t need to be just one style. Same thing with this record. I felt that it was more intelligible now, or understandable, and we proceeded to finish it. Which meant mixing it correctly. Some songs we actually went back one step. We forgot about the studio recording and went back to the demos. Four of the songs are actually 8-track demos, which were not meant to come out like that. We added some parts that were erased by accident and we added just one series of spoken vocals in one place, and we put it out.

The reception was amazing, really excellent. People thought, “What? This was really done at the time? It sounds like what some young bands are trying to do now except this is a bit wilder.” It’s electro-pop but it’s not just ’80s music. It has elements of other things. It was a lot of fun. It was quite a surprise to see it become successful like that.

People were telling us, “Are you going to play shows?” We were laughing, saying, “Come on, you must be joking. How can we play shows?” We never played these songs. We played some with the Honeymoon Killers at the time but my equipment is totally antiquated. I don’t have music software even. I have vintage keyboards, which are very much valued these days. Gradually the idea made its way into our minds and we said, “Okay, let’s do just a small release show. We’ll do just two songs with the backing instrumental.”

Gradually it evolved and we formed a proper band with two musicians from Amatorski, which is a great young Belgian band that we work with on Crammed, Véronique and my daughter Faustine, who is exactly the age of the absence of the album because she born after we stopped working on it. She is a great musician. She hasn’t managed to do her own album. I hope it doesn’t take her 30 years, but she will do at one point. She’s playing bass and guitar with us. Christophe and Sebastian from Amatorski, drums and synths, and I dug out my old keyboards and we started playing shows.

It went great. It gives a totally new dimension to that music. When you see the show it’s really not at all like, ’80s. People think in clichés always. This is from the ’80s so it should be ’80s music, but for me, when I hear a recording of one of our shows, I hear some ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s and now in it. It seems that the audience does, also.