The Story of New Beat
From the DJ History archives: The rise and fall of Belgium’s infamous 1980s dancefloor movement, as told by those who helped to shape the sound
In the late 1980s, electronic music was going through a period of unprecedented change, from the burgeoning creativity of the Chicago and Detroit scenes, to their transatlantic love children of acid house and breakbeat hardcore.
Despite the pivotal role it played, one country, however, is frequently written out of these pages of club culture’s history. Across a tight-knit network of clubs in cities such as Ghent, Brussels and Antwerp, the small and unassuming nation of Belgium moved to a rhythm all of its own.
Known as new beat, this genre fused electro-pop, industrial music, EBM and the nascent gurgles of acid in surprising ways, drastically slowing down records and seamlessly blending styles into detached and crepuscular dancefloor magic. What’s more, new beat’s legacy is still clearly audible in contemporary European house and techno.
In these archival interviews from 2005, Bill Brewster talks to the people who were there: DJs Eric “Eric B” Beysens and Geert “Dr. Vinyl” Sermon; Frie Verhelst and Koenie van Immerseel from USA Import, the movement’s record store of choice; and Mo Becha and David Fouquaert of the Glimmers – artists who continued to be inspired by new beat long after its heyday.
Eric Beysens & Geert Sermon
BILL BREWSTER
When did you start getting into music?
ERIC BEYSENS
Very early – when I was about 13. I started DJing by accident. I played with a few punk groups and somebody said to me, “Hey, you play the records.” That was in 1979.
BILL BREWSTER
So around the time of Gang of Four and A Certain Ratio?
ERIC BEYSENS
Yes, A Certain Ratio was my favorite group. Then I started listening to James White & The Blacks, digging into the funky accent of the music and discovering James Brown. I liked to mix the punk with the funky music in my sets. Then I discovered electronic music.
BILL BREWSTER
Which groups?
ERIC BEYSENS
Parade Ground, 23 Skidoo, Cabaret Voltaire.
GEERT SERMON
A lot of things on Factory.
ERIC BEYSENS
Many things on Factory. We had a pub here in Brussels called Interferences… It was a pub of one of the bosses of Factory [Benelux]. Also, one of my best friends at this time was Stephen Brown from Tuxedomoon. Steve helped me discover many groups, like Crash Course In Science, Throbbing Gristle. Then I began to play in clubs – first in pubs in Brussels, [then in places] like Théâtre de la Gaîté, which was one of the first clubs mixing music. At that time, everything in the clubs was funky and disco. We played a mix of punk, funk and electronic music. Then I went to Knokke, on the coast, where there is a small club called Blitz.
BILL BREWSTER
Isn’t Knokke where Marvin Gaye lived?
GEERT SERMON
Yes. It’s more or less [that everything is] linked. You’ve got that guy that Marvin Gaye lived with… In Belgium [there is] a style of music called popcorn, which is a little like northern soul. A lot of the people who were involved in the first discotheques got involved in the later music.
ERIC BEYSENS
I know the guy who brought Marvin Gaye [to Belgium]. He [was the owner of] a small hotel. He came to where I played and brought Marvin all the time.
BILL BREWSTER
Before new beat started happening, what was being played in clubs? We had a huge soul thing in the UK, so what was happening here?
GEERT SERMON
You had the commercial side of things and on the other side you had popcorn. It was more or less the same things as Keb Darge [plays] and then weird electronic things like “Telstar,” speedy music. They danced in a weird way, very local to here. We took whatever, put it into a shaker and it came out Belgian.
ERIC BEYSENS
Melting pop!
GEERT SERMON
Yes, it was literally that, because in the ’80s we had a whole lot of groups who were based on things from the UK and US. But they sounded not like something from the UK, not like the US, not like Germany.
ERIC BEYSENS
There was a club called Klacyk. They organised all the first concert of the groups who were getting big over here, like Fad Gadget. The mix of groups was very strange. For example, they’d take a group like Heaven 17 and on the same night you have Fad Gadget. Or Grace Jones and Athletico Spizz 80. In England, it’s very difficult to do a concert with two kinds of music, but in Belgium it’s really much more in style.
GEERT SERMON
In the ’70s and ’80s a whole lot of labels were a testing ground.
GEERT SERMON
“We got some weird shit... Send it over. If it works over there, that means it will work somewhere else.”
I know people who worked for big record labels at the time and they were like, “OK, let’s shift it over there.” That’s why Factory Benelux released all the difficult–
ERIC BEYSENS
You know that guy Phil Perry? He was working for AM/PM. He came all the time to the Boccaccio [club, near Ghent]. He wanted to see the reaction on the dancefloor, because Belgium is really good tester. I played a dub from Sounds of Blackness in my set–
GEERT SERMON
That changed the atmosphere of it all, because that Sounds of Blackness [tune] was basically aimed at the soulie clubs in the UK. Eric put it in his sets here and it sounded major!
BILL BREWSTER
How did you come to work at Boccaccio?
ERIC BEYSENS
There was a guy I knew who worked there, called Olivier Pieters. He played more of the Belgian new beat sound.
BILL BREWSTER
Front 242-type stuff?
GEERT SERMON
No, it’s already into the Antler-Subway stuff.
ERIC BEYSENS
He played many things, like the Pool’s “Jamaica Running.” The boss and his wife came one time to the 55 [in Ghent], which was a really dark club, but really good, and I played there on a Thursday. It was a really strange club. I mixed house music with some Prince, Nitzer Ebb. He said, “Wow, it’s really fun here. Come to the Boccaccio on Sunday night.” Boccaccio was the biggest club in Belgium. He told me I was playing at 4 AM. I played totally different music, but people liked it.
At that time, I had a friend, Jean-Claude Maury. Jean-Claude was the original of this type of music. He was really incredible: He played Kowalski in the club, he played stuff like Ministry and Grace Jones. Ronny Harmsen [AKA DJ Fat Ronny from the Ancienne Belgique club in Antwerp] picked up many things from him. Jean-Claude, for me, was the first guy who played that kind of stuff.
BILL BREWSTER
Is he still around?
ERIC BEYSENS
No, he’s dead. He smoked very much, like me.
GEERT SERMON
Lung cancer.
BILL BREWSTER
Where did he play?
ERIC BEYSENS
Mirano. He came from the south of France, but moved when he was 20. He was part of the punk movement and played in a small club, mixing between punk, funk and really eccentric fashionable music. The Mirano [where he ended up playing] was one of the first big clubs in Belgium.
BILL BREWSTER
Where was it?
ERIC BEYSENS
Brussels.
The first time I went to Boccaccio was like, “Holy shit, I’m in Close Encounters of the Third Kind!” Life was never the same afterwards.
GEERT SERMON
It still exists. It’s having a second life now, but in the ’70s and ’80s, it was the place to be.
ERIC BEYSENS
Serge Gainsbourg hung out there, Grace Jones hung out there.
GEERT SERMON
It was the Studio 54 of Brussels: very hi-tech, fashionable and up-market.
ERIC BEYSENS
Jean-Claude played music that nobody played in other clubs. Everybody tried to copy him. There was only one inconvenience about him – he couldn’t mix. He was a maniac about the sound. He wouldn’t use Technics because he said it sounded really horrible. He used Revox [equipment] and he was the first person to change pitch, too. He was the person who pitched down “Flesh” by A Split Second from 45 to 33-plus-eight.
BILL BREWSTER
Everyone says it was Marc Grouls who did that.
GEERT SERMON
No, Marc was later. It was already being played that way in Brussels.
BILL BREWSTER
Was Fat Ronny from Brussels or Antwerp?
ERIC BEYSENS
Antwerp. When Jean-Claude played, the DJ was not important. When Ronny played, they were more important. If Jean-Claude played now, he would be very big.
BILL BREWSTER
So, you played with Olivier [Pieters] at Boccaccio. Describe it to me.
ERIC BEYSENS
I think it’s the first time that a club in Belgium had the dancefloor so central. It was constructed like a stadium, with people around it.
BILL BREWSTER
And where was the DJ?
ERIC BEYSENS
The DJ was on the side, you had people in front of the DJ and all around, and you had a second floor with a balcony.
GEERT SERMON
You went in at ground level, but the DJ was situated like a Roman stadium – like an amphitheater. I’ve lived in the UK, and in the early ’90s I’d never actually seen a club there that had that impact. The first time I went to Boccaccio was like, “Holy shit, I’m in Close Encounters of the Third Kind!” You had lasers everywhere… you were in the light and in the sound. Life was never the same afterwards. I’m now 31 years old. I’ve seen the world since and I’ve never had that impression again. Perhaps it was because I was only 14-and-a-half then.
BILL BREWSTER
How did you manage to get in?
GEERT SERMON
I had friends!
ERIC BEYSENS
Cisco Ferreira [from the Advent] went there and he said he’d never seen anything like it. When you played anything there it sounded bigger. It was really incredible because it had Klipschorn speakers
BILL BREWSTER
What was the clientele like? It was quite well dressed, wasn’t it?
ERIC BEYSENS
No. At the beginning, it was a really horrible clientele, but the people changed with the music. There was no selection at the door, the selection was done with the music, so in six months it was totally different.
BILL BREWSTER
When was this?
ERIC BEYSENS
Late ’87. The opening was in June ’87, I think. The club before was a popcorn place, but it was small.
GEERT SERMON
It was one of the first mega-clubs in mainland Europe. It was specifically built for a weird kind of music and weird people. It was on a Sunday and every independent store is closed on Monday, so they wanted to go out. You had mechanics, hairdressers… They wanted to leave all their worries behind, and they did it with this kind of music. After six months, it was so big that you had people from all over.
ERIC BEYSENS
There were people who came clothed especially for Boccaccio. They invented fashions – they took the VW sign from cars and put it on their vests; crosses on their hats.
BILL BREWSTER
You said the crowd changed. What did it go from and to?
GEERT SERMON
Those people [who came to the club at the beginning, the hairdressers and mechanics] stayed and were changed by the whole thing… It was a natural selection. They loved being there. Between ’88 and ’91, Belgium more or less invented the heavy side of dance music. People were waiting for the next weird or hard thing. They tested a lot of things on DAT there. R&S had a studio nearby and there was also Music Man.
We’ve always been into darker, moodier stuff than the UK. Over here, people liked new wave and heavy shit.
ERIC BEYSENS
What we did with Renaat [Vandepapeliere, co-founder of R&S], he bought a DAT machine specially to put in the Boccaccio. He’d come directly from the studio at four o’clock and test things. If it sounded not so good, back to the studio. Then he’d come back three or four hours later and test it again! CJ Bolland did that all the time.
GEERT SERMON
The thing is, if a record worked there, it worked everywhere. I don’t know if you know the history of R&S, but they had a side branch in the UK called Outer Rhythm. The first 20 records they released all went Top 50. They sold by the shitload and it was because they tested them in there. They were so self-confident that if people liked it in Boccaccio, then it was good.
BILL BREWSTER
What kind of records were you playing there when you first started?
ERIC BEYSENS
You know “Suicide Commando” by No More? German new wave, but [something] that sold maybe 500 copies.
BILL BREWSTER
Played at the right speed?
GEERT SERMON
Yes.
ERIC BEYSENS
A Split Second’s “Flesh,” Nitzer Ebb’s “The Alarm,” but that one at the wrong speed.
GEERT SERMON
It’s weird because there was some sort of rhythmic feeling that this created. It’s like a certain drum pattern... a kick on the first and then a snare and again a kick: boom-tchka-boom-tchka.
BILL BREWSTER
Why did they like this slow music, what drugs were they doing?
ERIC BEYSENS
It was ecstasy.
BILL BREWSTER
When did that arrive in Belgium?
GEERT SERMON
Quite early. It was already there in ’87 in Boccaccio.
BILL BREWSTER
There were Belgian DJs in Ibiza, weren’t there?
GEERT SERMON
Yes, but the link does not come from there. It comes from clubs like the Mirano. They had big stars who were doing this stuff and they brought it over. It came from the States.
ERIC BEYSENS
Mirano was druggy. It was cocaine and then ecstasy.
GEERT SERMON
It was very decadent.
BILL BREWSTER
If they liked ecstasy, why was the music different to the UK, do you think?
GEERT SERMON
You’ve got the continental Europe thing here. We’ve always been into darker, moodier and heavier stuff than the UK. Acid house took the things with acid in them and immediately put some voices on them. They made it immediately more marketable. Over here, it was always underground, and they liked new wave and heavy shit. Belgium isn’t a nice place to live. It’s grey, it’s drizzly, so we like it eeeeughhh! We are not looking for some girl singing on top of [our music]. We don’t give a shit about that.
ERIC BEYSENS
When I go in England I hear all the [dub mixes] that I play, only with voices on them.
GEERT SERMON
Even now, people play the dubs here, never the full-on vocal stuff. [If] English is your mother tongue, an English girl singing sounds good; a girl singing in English here does not sound good.
BILL BREWSTER
How influential was early house to Boccaccio?
GEERT SERMON
It was played, but people considered it as new beat.
ERIC BEYSENS
Yeah. The moment I started at Boccaccio was also [when I] discovered Larry Heard. That was ’86. I put that in my set, but for other people this was new beat. New beat changed little by little to house. In England, it changed overnight. Here we played house, the Cramps, James Brown...
BILL BREWSTER
How long did you continue mixing it like that until it became only house?
ERIC BEYSENS
Until about 1990.
GEERT SERMON
Until the moment you can more or less mark Belgian rave. The “Dominator”-type stuff. Also, the Belgian-New York connection with Joey Beltram and R&S.
BILL BREWSTER
The most interesting period of any musical style in dance music is often the period immediately before the first record is actually made.
GEERT SERMON
This also happened here. It happened with the Ancienne Belgique style of things. That was not new beat. It was a precursor.
ERIC BEYSENS
The style of Fat Ronny.
BILL BREWSTER
What’s the difference between what Fat Ronny played and what you played at Boccaccio?
ERIC BEYSENS
He played things like Sly Fox.
BILL BREWSTER
“Let’s Go All The Way”?
ERIC BEYSENS
Yes. I played more industrial. He played more poppy stuff like Steve Miller Band’s “Fly Like An Eagle.” Me and Jean-Claude played more industrial. He mixed in more funk and I played more electronic and more dubby stuff – I think new beat is more the dubby stuff.
GEERT SERMON
If you hear tapes, it goes through an evening and a whole lot of the first 45 minutes you can consider pop music. But at the time, it was cutting-edge pop music, and he played the 12" versions. After a while, he started deviating and this became the AB style. I never went to the AB, though, so I can only guess.
ERIC BEYSENS
I played there three times.
BILL BREWSTER
What was the difference between them?
ERIC BEYSENS
The people were not the same. Antwerp is more jetset, the liberal professions.
GEERT SERMON
Very yuppie.
BILL BREWSTER
So is Ghent more industrial?
ERIC BEYSENS
No, it’s student-y.
GEERT SERMON
You also have to remember that Belgium isn’t big. You get in the car from Brussels and you’re in Ghent in 25 minutes – the same with Antwerp, so you don’t have to be in Ghent to influence anything. But R&S was in Ghent and Music Man was in Ghent, so they started to build around that.
ERIC BEYSENS
I think Ghent is the city where things melt together more. If you see a festival in Ghent, it’s incredible.
BILL BREWSTER
What would you consider the new beat classics? Stuff like “Jamaica Running” is not new beat, but it was played, right?
ERIC BEYSENS
That comes from AB.
GEERT SERMON
It’s like all scenes, you take influences from other scenes, then you make them your own. And that’s what we did with a whole lot of things that in the UK are not necessarily considered new beat. Like, “Jamaica Running” is an electro-poppy tune, but for us new beat is… Well, you’ve got the Antler-Subway catalogue but… Snowy Red…
ERIC BEYSENS
Snowy Red’s “Euroshima” is the anthem of the new beat!
BILL BREWSTER
Was there another “Hiroshima” by Nex Nemo?
GEERT SERMON
Yes, but that charted.
BILL BREWSTER
It was by the Technotronic guy wasn’t it?
GEERT SERMON
Yes. That was already the commercial downfall, though.
BILL BREWSTER
To you, is the essence of new beat found in the records that were played before those kinds of tunes arrived?
GEERT SERMON
Not necessarily. You’ve got some really nice things that were made for the dancefloor then. Here in Belgium, after the UK, we were probably the first to make chart [dance] hits in our own country.
We had a hit with Erotic Dissidents’ “Move Your Ass And Feel The Beat.” It was #1 for eight weeks. They would say on the radio, “Now it’s the Erotic Dissidents with ‘Move Your Ass And Feel The Beat,’ but we’re not gonna play it!” They refused to play it, but it was #1! It sold 60,000 copies in a week. So, we made some more of these and after a while we crowded the whole chart with it in 1989, 1990 and 1991. 2 Unlimited recorded their stuff here.
BILL BREWSTER
When they started making tunes specifically for the scene, how did that change things?
GEERT SERMON
It attracted more people into the more obvious side of things.
ERIC BEYSENS
In Belgium, we like big, cold sounds, like Beltram and Frankie Bones.
GEERT SERMON
Frankie Bones is a die-hard fan of the Belgian sound and you’ve got all those kinds of people that started the Storm Raves in New York – it was all based on that Belgian sound. They added a breakbeat to those sounds, then the UK took those two elements and made some genius from it.
ERIC BEYSENS
New beat was all about cliché: clichéd sounds, clichéd samples.
GEERT SERMON
And there was Frank De Wulf with his B-Sides series, which was big in New York.
BILL BREWSTER
What was it like to DJ at Boccaccio?
ERIC BEYSENS
It was the first time I had played in such a big club. I arrived with two flight cases and it was like, “Whoa!” I came from an underground club with really underground people, but I’d never seen such a big place, with such a big sound. And there was no monitor. The first record I played, I thought, “Shit, I can’t mix here, I have to do it in my headphones.” It was August 15th... I’ll remember this all my life. I came back from London, where I’d bought a few records.
There were over 5,000 people there. There was a queue of cars from the club to the motorway. The cars parked on the motorway and people jumped over the motorway barriers and came to the club. It was 1988. It was really mad. There were so many people that the windows in the entrance smashed. I put on D-Mob and there were 3,500 people with their arms in the air. Renaat was there with Cisco and they were like, “What the fuck is going on?”
GEERT SERMON
The difference from the UK is that it was immediately indoors.
BILL BREWSTER
What about the radio show Liaisons Dangereuses?
GEERT SERMON
Yes, very good. They later formed Liaisons D. They did quite some damage.
BILL BREWSTER
What about guys like Maurice Engelen [AKA Praga Khan]?
ERIC BEYSENS
Yes... We’ve forgotten Olivier Abbeloos, who made the biggest new beat hits [as part of] T-99. He also did Quadrophonia [with Lucien Foort].
GEERT SERMON
You probably remember Neon’s “Don’t Mess With This Beat” because 2 Bad Mice and Psychotropic [who both sampled it]. So that [famous rave riff] comes from a Belgian new beat record. The first time I heard it, I thought, “Oh no, this is the end of the world.”
BILL BREWSTER
Where were you buying records from, before new beat?
ERIC BEYSENS
USA Import in Brussels. There was also a store in Brussels that sold disco, new wave and movie music. We played John Carpenter’s The End, Carlos Perón’s Die Schwarze Spinne. He was the original guy from Yello. There was an exchange with Germany because we had the same influences – they were busy with EBM.
BILL BREWSTER
What was EBM, was it Front 242, Nitzer Ebb?
GEERT SERMON
Yeah.
BILL BREWSTER
So, is it what we’d call industrial?
GEERT SERMON
It’s the danceable side of that. Industrial for us is more immediately linked to a wall of sound. Not everything by Front 242 or Nitzer Ebb we would consider EBM.
BILL BREWSTER
Is it the stuff that you’d play in a club, then?
ERIC BEYSENS
SPK…
GEERT SERMON
Stuff like the Clinic – you should listen to them.
ERIC BEYSENS
Psyche.
BILL BREWSTER
Who?
GEERT SERMON
A Canadian electronic outfit from the early ’80s.
ERIC BEYSENS
Peter Godwin.
BILL BREWSTER
“Emotional Disguise”?
ERIC BEYSENS
Yeah, but we play the French version [“French Emotions”].
GEERT SERMON
It’s more profound in French than in English.
BILL BREWSTER
What English records did you play?
ERIC BEYSENS
Savage Progress’s Heart Begins To Beat,” many things on Ten, many good dubs. C Cat Trance’s “Shake The Mind.”
BILL BREWSTER
Did you play these at 45?
ERIC BEYSENS
At the right speed. Fad Gadget! Fad Gadget was really big, bigger than in England.
GEERT SERMON
It’s like the [René Magritte] painting Ceci n’est pas une pipe… This is the Belgian twisted mind. You have to go beyond the canvas. It’s typical of over here, in literature, in music, in everything. No one likes the Belgians. The French don’t like the French-speakers; the Dutch don’t like the Flemish. Once you get used to it, it’s a nice place to live, but it’s an acquired taste, like Cherry Coke.
The Glimmers
BILL BREWSTER
Where do you fit into the new beat story? I know you played at 55. When did you start DJing?
MO BECHA
We really started DJing together. We met before we started DJing. We’re both music freaks and bought our music together. We started to buying records and playing them together, so we had one big collection.
DAVID FOUQUAERT
That was in 1985 or 1984. Really, we started in 1986, in a bar, but we couldn’t mix that well. We got a job in the bar next to our school, where we DJed between 7:30 and 8:30 in the morning and then during our lunch break.
BILL BREWSTER
Who would be there at 7:30?
DAVID FOUQUAERT
Our classmates. Before they went to school, being there, chasing girls, that sort of stuff. We had to learn our skills while we were DJing.
BILL BREWSTER
Had you ever seen other DJs playing?
DAVID FOUQUAERT
We had a friend who is quite big, but he was more into hip-hop. We were starting in hip-hop, but soon we discovered all the classics, like Barry White.
MO BECHA
And the new wave stuff, the pre-new-beat stuff.
BILL BREWSTER
When I was talking to Eric [Beysens], he talked about new beat as though he meant records that weren’t exactly new beat at all, if you know what I mean. When did you start at 55?
DAVID FOUQUAERT
November 1987. We played Emerson, Lake & Palmer, going into Fad Gadget, going into the Rolling Stones – really a mixture of rock and pop stuff, Simple Minds, stuff like that. There wasn’t that much electronic stuff there yet, we still had to discover that.
MO BECHA
You had Front 242 because they were Belgian and they were quite big over here. If it was electronic, it was more the EBM stuff.
BILL BREWSTER
Was that generally big here in Belgium?
DAVID FOUQUAERT
In Ghent it was, because we had Boccaccio just a 20 minute ride from here. Before Boccaccio, we had Carrera, which was just next to Boccaccio.
MO BECHA
On Sunday night, my sister took us both [to Carrera]. We were suddenly in a strange atmosphere and that music had a big effect on what we still do now. The guy was playing everything from ’60s psych-rock to Sven Vath [as OFF and 16 Bit]. That was the pre-new-beat stuff, really, but already you had that slow character… People used to dress up in quite a strange way. Extreme characters, very gay – not the normal club you would walk into, and especially for me as I was just 16. We’d been to some other, more commercial clubs, but this was something else.
BILL BREWSTER
Who was the DJ?
MO BECHA
TC.
BILL BREWSTER
As in the initials?
MO BECHA
Yes. He made records. Olivier Pieters [from Boccaccio] got a lot from TC. TC was the groundbreaking guy, who had a really stunning selection of music. We were inspired by him. Every week, when we went to Carrera, we saw Boccaccio being built until finally it opened and then Carrera stopped immediately.
DAVID FOUQUAERT
We played every week in 55, but we went every Sunday to Boccaccio… “Yeah, we know that, we know that, oh… what’s this one?” Then we’d go to the DJ booth and there was a sticker [on the record] and you asked the DJ and he’d say, “I don’t know.” We’d always discover it later on, of course. They played Nitzer Ebb on 33, Severed Heads on 33, all those records.
BILL BREWSTER
Did both Olivier and Eric cover up their records?
DAVID FOUQUAERT
No, it was Olivier. We played in 55 on Saturdays, but we played on Thursdays as well because Eric was going to the army, so he had to go at 5 AM in the morning to take to cab to Brussels to get to the [barracks]. Then we filled in until 8 AM. Eric brought all the first Chicago tracks in there. First time I heard Steve Poindexter’s “Computer Madness” or Master C&J. Olivier was playing [at Boccaccio] every week and it was getting a bit stale.
It was a big scene on the industrial side. A few on the more dance side got inspired by this stuff. Front 242 was very militant – they didn’t care about clubs.
MO BECHA
He was stuck.
BILL BREWSTER
How old was he when house arrived?
MO BECHA
He was 23 – not old. But he got a lot of these new beat producers in there every Sunday pushing to play their crappy records. And the club was always full, so nobody minded really. But all the house–
DAVID FOUQUAERT
And Balearic–
MO BECHA
They didn’t absorb any of it. At this time, in 55, we had a bigger freedom.
DAVID FOUQUAERT
It’s the difference between a club for 200 people and a club for 2,000 people!
BILL BREWSTER
Was Olivier playing stuff on 33?
DAVID FOUQUAERT
Yes.
BILL BREWSTER
Eric told me he got that from a French DJ in Brussels called Jean-Claude Maury.
MO BECHA
A lot of people will tell you different things. In Antwerp, they will tell you it came from the AB. They called it AB Music. People were experimenting with music.
BILL BREWSTER
Before new beat existed, what music was being played in clubs here? You don’t have the same black music traditions that we do in the UK, do you?
MO BECHA
Not at all.
DAVID FOUQUAERT
It was always dark, electronic and strange.
MO BECHA
At that time, it wasn’t difficult to have a dark feeling. It was a big scene on the industrial side. A few on the more dance side got inspired by this stuff and started to make more discotheque-y music. Front 242 was very militant – they didn’t care about clubs.
DAVID FOUQUAERT
Also, in Belgium, we had new-wave producers like Snowy Red, who made “Euroshima” in ’85 or ’86, which was a very big anthem; then you had Front 242’s “New Judgement” as well. So everything was very ravey, but then when the acid house came here, it all mixed up nicely, and before you knew where you were, you were four years further into the house scene. It all went so easily and so smoothly with the other records that you didn’t notice. They played Adonis’s “Acid Poke” between new beat records. It was 120 BPM, but they pitched it down.
BILL BREWSTER
Did you go and watch Eric play?
DAVID FOUQUAERT
When we went to Boccaccio, it was always Olivier Pieters playing all night long. Boccaccio was Sunday, not Saturday. There were new influences – house and even things like Soul II Soul and De La Soul – but Olivier didn’t play [any of that]. People were pushing the promoters saying, “Hey, there’s more music being played at 55.” So, then they attracted Eric. He was supposed to start at five or six in the morning [and] finish the night off, [but he started later and kept going until] noon or 1 PM.
BILL BREWSTER
Was the club allowed to stay open okay?
MO BECHA
Yes. At a certain point people started to arrive at 5 AM. It was full at 1 AM, but it was not the regulars. The regulars arrived at 5 or 6 AM.
BILL BREWSTER
Where were they coming from?
DAVID FOUQUAERT
Home, private parties or whatever else was happening that day. La Rocka was just starting in Antwerp and Eric also played there – a more trance-y approach to that new beat, house-y stuff. Everybody gathered at Boccaccio at about 5 or 6 AM, then they stayed.
BILL BREWSTER
How did Eric and Olivier differ?
DAVID FOUQUAERT
[Eric was] more house-y and a bit more like “Big Fun” by Inner City, early Derrick May stuff.
BILL BREWSTER
What about the new beat sound?
MO BECHA
Not really – they brought him from 55 because he was playing that 55 music, so that’s what he did.
DAVID FOUQUAERT
At first it was a bit strange, because there was this competition, and Olivier didn’t like it at all.
MO BECHA
He couldn’t keep it out, though. I remember being there at 8 AM. People were still dancing and [Olivier] was already reading his paper while playing records. He was a very sober guy, a bit nerdish. Eric was full of power.
DAVID FOUQUAERT
He revitalized it.
BILL BREWSTER
Was there a lot of drugs around or alcohol?
MO BECHA
Both. It was drug-fueled.
BILL BREWSTER
When did E come in?
MO BECHA
Early, a bit before Boccaccio. When it started, it was there already. But before it was speed, LSD, cocaine.
BILL BREWSTER
What do you think of the actual new beat productions?
DAVID FOUQUAERT
[They came in around] ’87, ’88. But [they were] all rip-offs. “Move Your Ass And Feel The Beat” by Erotic Dissidents was a pure rip-off of “Bostich” by Yello. Even “French Kiss” got covered.
DAVID FOUQUAERT
They made a cover version of it [which went Top 10 in Belgium].
MO BECHA
They did it with a lot of tracks.
DAVID FOUQUAERT
“Rock To The Beat” by Reese, as well… 2manydjs put that version on their compilation.
BILL BREWSTER
But you know most of the house records were rip-offs, too!
MO BECHA
Yes, I know, but come on...
DAVID FOUQUAERT
We always played the original version.
MO BECHA
“Pump Up the Jam” [by Technotronic] – if you listen to the first notes on it, it’s a Farley “Jackmaster” Funk record that came out six months before... “The Acid Life,” on a mini-album called No Vocals Necessary.
BILL BREWSTER
What influence do you think the Belgian sound had? The Americans were influenced by Belgium. “Energy Flash” came out on a Belgian label.
DAVID FOUQUAERT
It was actually originally on an American label, though. It was licensed very early on.
MO BECHA
The R&S years were very important for England.
DAVID FOUQUAERT
CJ Bolland was fooling around with his synthesizers, creating that “Dominator” sound.
MO BECHA
Also, Frank De Wulf, he was from the Music Man axis, a generation older than us. They really made successful careers and put Belgium on the map, but it wasn’t new beat any more.
BILL BREWSTER
Where did new beat finish and house start?
MO BECHA
“Groove Is In The Heart” was a very big club track at Boccaccio. So, in-between all this heaviness they dropped this and everyone went mad.
DAVID FOUQUAERT
It was nicer to have it the way we had it here, more slowly, and it was very inspiring for us. The stranger the music, the better.
BILL BREWSTER
But then didn’t they refuse to play new beat records on the radio?
MO BECHA
Well, I have a tape from 1986 or ’87 where they are playing all the pre-new-beat classics one after the other… “Circus Of Death” by Human League.
BILL BREWSTER
What epitomizes the classic new beat records?
MO BECHA
Depeche Mode on 33 – “Never Let Me Down” on orange vinyl – Psyche’s “The Saint Became A Lush.” The rest of the [Psyche] album was very rocky, but that had a very steady 4/4 beat underneath.
DAVID FOUQUAERT
Yeah, the Stooges’ “Now I Wanna Be Your Dog.”
DAVID FOUQUAERT
That was a big track at 55.
BILL BREWSTER
What do you think the legacy of new beat has been on international music?
MO BECHA
It’s nice to see it has its own place within electronic music in Europe. This type of music did not happen anywhere else, it was unique. You read about things happening in Chicago or Detroit, so it’s nice to have a reference point for something here. Whether it’s good or bad, it created something new. The fusion was there. People were really looking for strange music then.
Koenie van Immerseel
BILL BREWSTER
How did you get into music?
KOENIE VAN IMMERSEEL
By accident, listening to radio programs on Dutch radio, where they were playing all these disco things. I started with a little cassette, taping things.
BILL BREWSTER
How did you discover dance music?
KOENIE VAN IMMERSEEL
I was working in a record shop, USA Imports, here in Antwerp. They specialized in US pressings... They specialized in disco. Then we had some clubs that specialized in playing disco or new wave, film music, and playing new wave on 33-plus-8 instead of 45 RPM.
BILL BREWSTER
What year did you start working at USA Import?
KOENIE VAN IMMERSEEL
I was 16 or 17 years old. It was 21 years ago.
BILL BREWSTER
When did you notice people playing records at the wrong speed?
Ancienne Belgique was a little bit stiff, but after 3 AM, the people went more and more crazy.
KOENIE VAN IMMERSEEL
There was a club called Scandals in Antwerp and this guy’s name was Ronny. And he was looking for special records, listening to film soundtracks, searching for things to play. I think it’s because of him that everything started.
BILL BREWSTER
Did you go to Scandals?
KOENIE VAN IMMERSEEL
No, I was too young. I had the period after, Ancienne Belgique. I learned everything at AB.
BILL BREWSTER
When did Ronny start at AB?
KOENIE VAN IMMERSEEL
I went there at 16 and it was 22 years ago, something like that. There was another club called OK Club and they were also doing those things. There was another guy doing this, Patrick Geypen, Then there was another club Cinderella, where they played new wave, things like Fad Gadget.
BILL BREWSTER
There doesn’t seem to be a soul music tradition in Belgium like in the UK. Was that the case in Antwerp?
KOENIE VAN IMMERSEEL
There was one club playing disco – the Funk You – but it was more European. It was more new wave.
BILL BREWSTER
Was the popcorn scene quite big in Antwerp?
KOENIE VAN IMMERSEEL
I think so. There was a discotheque called De Molen… popcorn was very big there. And there was another shop here – The Collector – that guy had all those rare 7" singles.
BILL BREWSTER
Tell me about Ancienne Belgique. What was it like, what did it look like?
KOENIE VAN IMMERSEEL
You had the entrance, directly you had cloakroom and then inside there was a round dancefloor. It’s now a clothes shop. It had balconies, so you could watch from there. They always had one DJ who played from 11 PM to 7 or 8 AM.
You heard the same records all the time, of course, because it was not easy to find those things, but there were some … Max Berlin’s “Elle et Moi” – that was one of the big records of Belgium, I think. The people came specially to hear that one record because you could not find it anywhere.
Then you had Dave Pike’s “Mathar,” that was also one of the big records in AB. Section 25 “Looking From A Hilltop,” Arbaedt Adelt “Death Disco.”
BILL BREWSTER
What was it the atmosphere like the first time you went?
KOENIE VAN IMMERSEEL
It was for trendy people and it was very difficult to get in also.
BILL BREWSTER
It had a door policy?
KOENIE VAN IMMERSEEL
Yeah, very heavy. I got in because I was working in a record shop.
BILL BREWSTER
What was the atmosphere like?
KOENIE VAN IMMERSEEL
How I can describe it? A little bit stiff. And more as it got towards the end, it loosened, but at the beginning of the night, it was a place to be seen. After 3 AM, the people went more and more crazy.
BILL BREWSTER
So, did the crowd change during the night?
KOENIE VAN IMMERSEEL
Yes. Many of the people went first to Scandals and the OK Club. At the start, it was almost too full, so you could almost not get in. Almost 2,000 people, something like that.
Sven van Hees’ Liaisons Dangereuses radio program was really influential. Because of his program, we sold more and more of this music in USA Import.
BILL BREWSTER
What was Fat Ronny like as a DJ?
KOENIE VAN IMMERSEEL
I never heard him play. I saw John, who took over from him.
BILL BREWSTER
So, when did the first new beat stuff come in?
KOENIE VAN IMMERSEEL
Around the same time as the first Chicago records.
BILL BREWSTER
Who played those Chicago records here?
KOENIE VAN IMMERSEEL
Eric. He was playing in a club in Ghent called 55 and he played a lot of acid and Chicago house. Here in Antwerp, we were playing Chicago music with AB music still. “Acid Tracks,” Master C&J, Steve Hurley, Farley “Jackmaster” Funk.
BILL BREWSTER
Who played them?
KOENIE VAN IMMERSEEL
Sven van Hees.
BILL BREWSTER
He was also a club DJ?
KOENIE VAN IMMERSEEL
He started his program on the radio, Liaisons Dangereuses, for five years or so, and then he moved to Ibiza and played there.
BILL BREWSTER
When?
KOENIE VAN IMMERSEEL
At the beginning of house music. He played there every day for one year in the season, then he came back here and he played at AB. His program was really influential. Because of his program, we sold more and more of this music in USA Import. He was also inventing this 33 and 45 thing.
BILL BREWSTER
What sorts of records?
KOENIE VAN IMMERSEEL
Los Niños Del Parque, Jansen / Barbieri… Carlos Perón’s “Die Schwarze Spinne”…
BILL BREWSTER
What influence did that have on things? Did it influence people to come to the clubs?
KOENIE VAN IMMERSEEL
For sure. And buying more records – it was not only DJs who were buying these records. People wanted to have the music they heard, because you never heard it anywhere else.
Frie Verhelst
BILL BREWSTER
When did you start [USA Imports]?
FRIE VERHELST
We started the shop in December 1973.
BILL BREWSTER
What was the reason for starting it? It must have been quite unusual at the time.
FRIE VERHELST
It was quite unusual. I was teaching at a Flemish school, and my husband [José Pascual] is from the French-speaking part of Belgium. He wanted to come to Antwerp to live with me, so he was looking for something he could do over here and that came in mind. He knew someone in Liege who had a shop, who imported every week from the USA, especially soundtracks. He thought, “Why can’t I import dance music here in Antwerp?” So, we rented a shop and I continued teaching for maybe two years.
BILL BREWSTER
Was there much of a black music culture in Belgium at the time?
FRIE VERHELST
Well, we were really into that popcorn music, which was all sorts of [older] black music.
BILL BREWSTER
So when popcorn did begin? Was the Groove in Ostend the first place in the late ’60s?
FRIE VERHELST
The Groove, yes, that was the club for that kind of music. They played Marvin Gaye and that kind of stuff, and danced the slow bop. It was really beautiful to see those people dancing to this music. It was old music and there were a lot of instrumentals that they played [slowed down].
They had this slow, rock-bop dancing. That started in the Groove in Ostend with [the DJ] Freddy Cousaert.
BILL BREWSTER
Tell me about Jean-Claude Maury.
FRIE VERHELST
He was the DJ from the Mirano in Brussels. He was famous, as famous as Ronny in Antwerp. I’m not sure of the name of the other club now... I was there in 78, and he played the Human League’s “Being Boiled” and Bill Withers’ “You Got The Stuff.” He just pushed them and they weren’t getting played anywhere else. Everybody went to see him because he was such a good DJ and he played different music than anyone was used to hearing in the clubs.
BILL BREWSTER
What was the Mirano like?
FRIE VERHELST
It was in an old theatre. Brussels has always been completely different to Antwerp. We also had a branch of USA Import in Brussels and we sold completely different records there to what we did in Antwerp. Brussels is French-speaking, so they weren’t that big on English-speaking records. I never really liked Mirano. The people in Brussels are different from Antwerp, they are more serious.
BILL BREWSTER
Wasn’t Mirano supposed to be a sort of Studio 54-type club?
FRIE VERHELST
I never saw it like that. It was very well known in the whole country, but to say it was like Studio 54… We had some clients who were really into Studio 54, who took the plane and went over for the weekend [to New York]. They didn’t go to Brussels. Maybe some people who went there saw it that way, but I don’t.
BILL BREWSTER
[It seems that] Jean-Claude is the accidental godfather of new beat, maybe, because he influenced Ronny, and then Ronny influenced the others.
FRIE VERHELST
But Ronny didn’t play new beat. They played records that nobody else played, but I don’t think Jean-Claude can be called the father of new beat. No, I think he would never have played new beat.
BILL BREWSTER
I guess what I’m talking about is that there are two scenes, the one that didn’t play new beat because it didn’t exist, but acted as the precursor and then the scene once new beat arrived.
FRIE VERHELST
Yeah, that’s like Ancienne Belgique, here in Antwerp. Well, I think that started at AB.
BILL BREWSTER
So did you see Fat Ronny at Scandals, and if so what was it like?
FRIE VERHELST
He had an original style. He played PiL’s “Death Disco” – that was one of his strongest records. He played a lot of African music like Manu Dibango… That was the beginning of new beat. He continued playing these records in AB and also in new beat clubs, like Prestige. Marc [Grouls] also played these records. He played Unknown Cases’ “Masimbabele.” Scandals was Human League, Manu Dibango, Sisters Of Mercy, PiL, Snowy Red, which he continued playing in AB.
BILL BREWSTER
What was the difference between Scandals and AB? Was it a different clientele?
FRIE VERHELST
No, no. Nice people, but drugs were already coming into it at Scandals… just smoking. AB was a converted theatre – a really nice place. The people who opened it spent a lot of money on installations, nice sound. So, the DJ was up and people were down in the pit downstairs and he was like a god upstairs. He was surrounded by all the other DJs, who came to hear him, like Olivier Pieters from Boccaccio. Ronny, when he wanted to go and smoke a bit, somebody would take over. It was an honor to play there, I think.
BILL BREWSTER
[I’ve heard about] a guy called John, who played after Ronny. What was he like?
FRIE VERHELST
He played the same style as Ronny, but Ronny was more original. When he came here [USA Imports] I could tell him, “John, you have to play that – I think it’s good,” and he would. He was a good DJ, but he didn’t go to other stores to listen to records. Ronny went everywhere looking for records – Paris and other places. He was more into it. He found original records that nobody else had.
BILL BREWSTER
When he started playing records, would you get people coming into the store and asking for them?
FRIE VERHELST
Yeah, yeah. Sometimes it was quite hard to find the records, but sometimes he played records that we had anyway. Max Berlin was one of the biggest, already at Scandals. Pierre Henry, the one with the bells [“Psyché Rock”], “Die Schwarze Spinne” by Carlos Perón.
BILL BREWSTER
For the Pierre Henry, didn’t you go [directly] to EMI?
FRIE VERHELST
When I found out it was on EMI, I contacted them and they found some stock in the basement and we sold them all. They then repressed it just for us to sell.
BILL BREWSTER
How many did you sell?
FRIE VERHELST
Hundreds! Five hundred, a thousand.
BILL BREWSTER
When was the first time you heard a record played at the wrong speed?
FRIE VERHELST
Popcorn music! We sold a lot of popcorn music that was played slowed down. The Lenco turntable, you could slow it down. So, it was happening [in the popcorn era]. When they started to do it in new beat, we said, “We did this already!’
BILL BREWSTER
Tell me about Liaisons Dangereuses.
FRIE VERHELST
It was a radio program on SIS on Antwerp. They started that program before new beat, because they played AB music. Sven searched for the music and he came in the shop, so we worked together. A lot of people listened to this show and they came here to buy the records, so that’s why we started to play our little game. Thursday night was the top three, which we gave for the three best records of each week. We started to give false titles, and then on Friday everybody would come in with pieces of paper and all the titles would be wrong. That’s how we knew how popular it was! It was a nice time.
BILL BREWSTER
What would you say is the first new beat record?
FRIE VERHELST
Maybe “Flesh” by A Split Second, then the Weathermen’s “Poison.”
BILL BREWSTER
What was the record that killed it all, because it was so successful?
FRIE VERHELST
Confetti’s “The Sound Of C. ” You don’t know this? It was played in Boccaccio. The DJ who made it, and his friend... It was the beginning of the home stuff, so you didn’t need to go into the professional studio anymore. He took the cassette to the Boccaccio to try it out and from the first time he played it, it was a big success. We sold 300,000 copies – it came out on the USA Import label.
BILL BREWSTER
But you think it killed the scene, because it was so successful?
FRIE VERHELST
Yeah, it was so successful that the record companies wanted an album and it was all the same, because the track was so simple. It was too commercial. The origins of new beat were killed by that. Then there were hundreds coming up, and it was just too much.
These interviews were conducted in March 2005 in Belgium. © DJ History
