NIEUWSARCHIEF

Periode : 7-14 januari 2001
In dit deel : Riguelle & Hautekiet, Zita Swoon, De Nachten, Opium, Collectif Jaune Orange.

January 14, 2001

RIGUELLE & HAUTEKIET in RED HARMONY
The honour of being the first Belgian cd-release of the third millennium has gone to Riguelle & Hautekiet, as they have put their new product "Red Harmony" in the shops as of Saturday.
With the aid of Werner Lauscher at the bass and Joost Van den Broeck on the drums, Patrick Riguelle & Jan Hautekiet have collected 13 new songs they deemed worthy of a new interpretation : they clearly haven't gone for the straightforward or obvious choice, but have indeed dug up some pearls. Pete Townhend's "Secondhand love", "London Conversation" of John Martyn, "Everywhere is Somewhere" by Tim Easton, Two Girls by Van Zandt, "Taking Your Life In Your Hands" by John Cale, "How do you Sleep" by John Lennon, "Cockpit" by dirk Blanchart, "Red Shoes by the Drugstoree by Tome Waits, "High on a Hilltop" by Nick Lowe, "Over Here" by Marianne Faithfull, "Shoot out the lights" by Richard Thompson, "Rainy Day in June" by Ray Davies and "Words" by Neil Young all ring a bell ?
The quartet will now set off on a tour of Flanders, and have opened a little website where you can gather the dates of that.
Buy Riguelle & Hautekiet "Red Harmony", out on LCMusic at

ZITA SWOON news creeping up
Stef Kamil Carlens crept up the stage at De Nachten last Friday, joining his former dEUS colleague Tom Barman for a few songs at his acoustic gig, but that's just one bit of Zita Swoon news popping up these days.
Warner, the record co, has revealed some of the plans, and these include a single "Hot, Hotter, Hottest", which will be in the shops as of February 16.
The release date of the album, which will be called "Life = A Sexy Sanctuary", has been set for March 16. They have recorded it mostly at home with their faitfull technician Karel de Backer, while a few tracks have been mixed later by David Bascombe.
There are also a few dates for concerts known already : on Febuary 28th, they will be at De Vooruit in Ghent, while on April 5, there will be a big concert in the Halles de Schaerbeek (tickets: Go For Music). As the album will be released in Belgium, Holland and France simultaneously, the band will also do a show in Paris, on March 26 at the Mariquinerie in Paris.

January 10, 2001

DE NACHTEN
Only 2 more nights sleep, and the first major musical/cultural event of the year will be happening: "De Nachten" once again has programmed a great bunch of people from the Belgian music and literature scene, and will be confronting them with each other and a few guests from abroad next Friday and Saturday in De Singel in Antwerp.
The most interesting acts at this venue - from the perspective of Belgian rock of course - will be :
- Mauro, who is one of the "house-artists" of De nachten, will be presenting some of the material that's gonna be on solo debut album (no title yet) with his Inferno's (Herman Houbrechts, Anton Janssens & Jan Zwijgers) as the backing band. The album has been truly recorded and is finished now, the producer was Dave Sardy again (also produced the last Evil Superstars CD).
- Mintzkov Luna, the winners of last year's Rock Rally, will be presenting themselves again, after a perios of relative silence. The band has not been sitting on their behinds though, as they recently opened a few times for Das Pop, and have recorded some songs which are going to be released on a self-produced single in the near future.
- Laïs, the three folky females who constantly keep on being labeled as "angelic" and released the CD Dorothea at the end of last year, will be doing a little experiment at de Nachten: they team up with Styrofoam (beat & soundcreator, in real life named Arne Van Petegem) and will also do a number of songs in an a-capella way.
- Zon & Zero is the name of a new project that combines the forces of Guy Van Nueten (of The Sands, and later with Daan in various projects) and Jef Mercelis (yes he's still alive).
- D.A.A.U. have been recording (apparently with more electronics in the background of the whirlwind they create with their classical instruments), doing some tryouts in Spain, and are now gearing up to the release of their third album.
- Venus in Flames won't be synonymous to Jan de Campenaere anymore, as that very Jan (third at the Rock Rally) now has assembled a band. The outfit will present themselves for the first time to the audience on
The full lowndown on De Nachten can be found at the colourful official site, or at the informational site that main sponsor De Standaard has set up for the event.
- Tom Barman (of dEUS) will again be doing a solo-gig as he did at the Dranouter folk festival last summer. but has promised not to invite the entire Antwerp scene on the stage with him this time: he'll be presenting some new songs he wrote during his sabbatical year, but will also be doing some covers of songs by Nick Drake.
- Daan Stuyven (of Dead Man Ray etc)will not be performing, but de Nachten does offer a chance to see the film that he recently wrote the soundtrack for : Alex Stockman's "Verboden te zuchten".
- There are also a few artists who will go in open confrontation with writers, such as Pieter-Jan De Smet & his faithfull guitar-lieutenant Geoffrey Burton who'll be confronted with Dimitri Verhulst. Tom Kestens of Das Pop will be battling it out with Christophe Vekeman.
- the local Hiphop scene will be represented by Killa Tactics, Freestyle Fabrik and P50 (a crew from Jette with Dj's Obsek and Psone, mc's Rush and Kure and guests Badi, Abdel en Houmam).
- Gore Slut, one fo the many bands of Rudy Trouvé, will be presenting new material from another CD that will be released in one of the next months.
But all this is just a snapshot from the many things that will be happening on four different stages (and below the stairs) on these two days. More complete info can be found the site of De Nachten.

January 7, 2001

NO MORE OPIUM
Another blow to / boost for (strike off what doesn't apply) the morale of Belgian pop: Opium has announced they call it a day.
In the beginning they were 3 local "babes" (Inge Moerenhout, Katia Alens & Joyce De Troch) & manager Serge Gobin, who decided to have a go at the hitparades. "Doe Me Goed" became thé summer hit of the year 1998, and later also "Een vrouw" became a Flemish hit. In March 1999 however, Joyce de Troch left the band and a replacement was found in the persion of Saritha Sadloe. This change in line-up somehow took the steam from behind the band, as none of the songs they made after the first few did anything in the charts. Inge - now also known as a TMF-VJ - explained that "We have always looked at it as a joke, something that was really fun to do. But at a certain point it stops being fun and ends up as a routine, going from one brewery to the next shop-opening."
The band doesn't want to call it a "split", as they claim merely to "stop". To prove that, they will continue to perform all their contractual obligations, which will mean that the last gig (most likely another playback, of course) will be held in March.

COLLECTIF JAUNE-ORANGE
To promote the local scene in Liège, a number of bands from the "fiery" city have joined forces last year to do some joint promotions and other activities under the name "collectif jaune orange".
They unite indie-rock band such as My Cheap Little Dictaphone, Zythum, Discochoc, Tom Sweetlove, H.L.M. and Airport City Express, and want to promote their music by a joint label and a fanzine, which is distributed for free in Liège and Brussels. Together, they now have recorded a compilation album (2 songs of each band, which is sold for the very modest price of 300 Bef.
A number of MP3's of the bands that Jaune Orange unites can found on the MP3.com website. All other info concerning this nice initiative is maintained at the website www.collectifjauneorange.net.

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