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John Ghost (Ghent, Belgium) is the sextet led by guitarist/composer Jo De Geest. As a group, they draw influences from jazz, rock, and contemporary classical music. Minimalism, electronics, and an overall cinematic quality characterize their instrumental sound. The ensemble's sound can be described as a symbiosis of Hidden Orchestra, Portico Quartet, and James Holden.
After the critically acclaimed “Airships Are Organisms” (4-star reviews in The Guardian and Financial Times, as well as airplay on BBC 6 and Worldwide FM) John Ghost is back with “Thin Air . Mirror Land”, to be released on October 6 via Sdban Ultra, the label of ECHT!, Black Flower, Glass Museum, STUFF. and more.
For this album, they continued their fruitful collaboration with legendary producer Jørgen Træen, known for his work with Jaga Jazzist, Electric Eye, Kaizers Orchestra, and numerous projects on the Hubro Record Label. The result is an album with a slightly more somber tone, focussing on a broader range of instruments and an emphasis on percussive elements."Thin Air . Mirror Land" unfolds as an aesthetic refuge in stormy times. It is a musical urge for introspection in a chaotic reality, and a longing to reconnect with a natural environment.
During the creative process, Jo drew inspiration from the music of artists such as Hans Zimmer, György Ligeti, Magma, The Residents, Disasterpeace, James Holden & The Animal Spirits, Do Make Say Think, William Basinski, and Jóhann Jóhannsson. The album title "Thin Air . Mirror Land" and the song titles are driven by a fascination with the artwork of Edvard Munch. Jo found inspiration in Munch's painting "The Storm" (1893) as a catalyst for the writing process, exploring a dystopian backdrop and the intriguing interplay between comfort and unrest. Heavily inspired by the music, Jaak De Digitale created the gloomy artwork for the album.
Members of the band are Jo De Geest (Endlingr), Rob Banken (Rapidman, HAST), Wim Segers (Compro Oro, PAARD.), Karel Ceulenaere (Black Flower), Lieven Van Pée (Echoes of Zoo, De Beren Gieren) and Elias Devoldere (Nordmann, Elias) who went through a thoughtful studio process, with the result being a conceptual and slightly dystopian atmosphere.
Unit Nine is a The Hague-based musical collective weaving together soulful melancholy, minimalist composition and soft grooves. Their debut album, Disaster Jester, will be released digitally and on 12’’ vinyl on The Hague imprint PIP Records on November 14th, 2025, celebrated with a release show at Paard, Den Haag. The album was recorded under guidance of renowned producer Tijmen van Wageningen, at The Womb Studio.
Disaster Jester revolves around the archetype of the jester, the trickster who embodies both chaos and wisdom, humour and tragedy. Across the album, music video and cover artwork, he appears as a clown in a shadowy crime narrative and as a weary detective who eventually dons the fool’s hat himself. The image becomes a mirror for the artist: observing, stumbling, laughing & fooling. The track ‘Afgesproken Plek’ features rap artists KC and MC Lost, who provided an imaginary crime skit playing on the detective persona central in the story telling of the album.
While their universal and timeless sound could travel anywhere, there’s something distinctly The Hague about Unit Nine; a mix of irony, unpolished charm, and understated design sensibility. Their city’s blend of rough edges and refined aesthetics runs through their work and places the debut album within a historical tapestry of not-so-mainstream culture and art that the sea town is known to embody.
A unique, dreamy Dutch-language indie-folk record reminiscent of Jessica Pratt and Joni Mitchell.
Catbug is the project of singer-songwriter Paulien Rondou who grew up in Duisburg, a Belgian village near Tervuren. After completing her 'Cabaret' studies at the Antwerp Conservatory, Paulien moved to her mother and stepfather's little farm in Westmalle. Although she left without any specific goal in mind, it didn't take long for the first wonderful songs to originate in this environment.
Catbug released her debut album Universe back in 2018. A record that immediately put her on the map within the Belgian music landscape. "Since the release of King Fisher, Catbug's first song, we have been sitting here on the edge of our seats", Radio 1 wrote about it at the time. Despite the fact that her musical career had clearly taken a direction, Paulien did not feel comfortable living the big city life. That said, it didn't take long before she left Antwerp behind to run the organic farm De Paardebloemhoeve in Malle. As it turned out, that farm was the ideal habitat for Paulien to work on her first Dutch-language album slapen onder een hunebed peacefully and quietly. This album was also well received in Belgium and was even picked up by Japanese label Think!Records. In one way or another, Catbug's music reached the Japanese label and, upon their request, several hundred vinyls were immediately sent out to Japan. In no time, all vinyls were sold out. Despite the fact that Catbug's lyrics are sung in Dutch, the people in Japan love her music.
Now, three years later, there's the brand new album Musjemeesje. The album has become an ode to all the birdson and around the farm, which again served as the breeding ground for all the new songs. One winter day in 2021, Paulien was given a pair of binoculars as a gift and decided to learn as much as she could about the birds on and around the farm. Soon she learnt to recognize the distinctive sounds and ways of flying of many different species, and a separate story began to form with each bird. There was something in them that Paulien identified with, and she wanted to try to map it out. This is where the idea was born of writing an album of songs about birds. "Birds always manage to uplift and inspire me with their crazy habits and their twittering. They reach out to the child in myself", Paulien added herself. For this album, Paulien worked with producer Aiko Devriendt again, who also did the mix. They recorded the album in pianist Guy Van Nuyten's studio and just like they did the last time, a conscious choice was made to keep it sober. Less is more. This resulted in a unique, dreamy Dutch-language indie-folk record reminiscent of Jessica Pratt and Joni Mitchell.
DOODSESKADER (Dutch for “Death Squad”) is a merging of the minds of Tim De Gieter (Amenra, Much Luv Studio) and Sigfried Burroughs (Kapitan Korsakov, Paard).
Throughout their three years of existence, DOODSESKADER has been relentlessly pushing the envelope of what it means to be a “heavy” band. From the grunge-infused sludge on their EP “MMXX : Year Zero” to the punishing blend of hiphop and hardcore of their debut album “Year One” and the sonic onslaught of relentless rapping on standalone singles such as “FLF” and “Still Haven’t Killed Myself”, they’re breaking free of any form of categorization.
The duo has been compared to genre-defying trailblazers such as Ghostemane, Show Me The Body, and Ho99o9, however, they clearly bring their own sonic palette to the table.
The red thread in all of this has been their brutally honest and introspective lyrics. Far from your run-of-the mill type of band, DOODSESKADER uses their instrumentation as a sonic backdrop for the emotion and message they try to convey; their music serves as a mirror for life itself. Sometimes brutal, sometimes fragile, sometimes energizing, but always unexpected.
Now, on March 8th, with the arrival of their sophomore album “Year Two”, DOODSESKADER takes things up another couple of notches. From silky-soft “Pastel Prison” to the absolute carnage of “The Sheer Horror Of The Human Condition”, this record is a testament to both their creativity and their will to leave their mark on this world. It’s a trip in every sense of the word, tapping into even more genres such as R&B, techno, hardcore punk, and moody ballads reminiscent of the 90s, all blended seamlessly in their musical vocabulary and making for a sonic journey unlike anything you’ve heard before.
Where their last record “Year One” saw the duo struggling with their inner demons both past and present, “Year Two” is an undeniable display of progress; not only introspectively, but also musically. De Gieter and Burroughs sound outright bloodthirsty, ready to take on anyone in their way. Tracks like “Bone Pipe” or “I Ask With My Mouth, I’ll Take With My Fist” paint a vivid picture of the band’s will to plot their own their path through this world, while at the same time slowly coming to terms with their pasts on tracks like “Peine” or “People Have Poisoned My Mind To A Point Where I Can No Longer Function”. “Year Two” undeniably sees DOODSESKADER’s promise fulfilled: it’s both a complete teardown of genres and boundaries, a sonic wrecking ball wielded by two people trying to get better.
Live, DOODSESKADER proves to be an absolute must see, translating into their sold out AB-release and a sleuth shows over Europe playing with acts such as Brutus and Amenra and on the stages of festivals such as Hellfest (FR), Mystic Fest (PL), Lokerse Feesten (BE), Fluff Fest (CZ) and much more.
- A1: Q - From Within (Body Mix)
- A2: Integrity Ii - Living In A Fantasy
- A3: Strange Ways - Strange Ways
- B1: Thee J Johanz - Stompin N Rising
- B2: Exposure - Love Quest
- B3: Tons Of Tones - Oh Ah Oh Ah Oh
- C1: Interface - Temazepam
- C2: It’s Thinking - Hyperion
- C3: Eric Nouhan - Technobility
- D1: Secret Cinema - Sundance
- D2: Hole In One - Spiritual Ideas For Virtual Reality
Vol.3[25,17 €]
Through 35 hedonistic highlights stretched across three volumes, Music For The Radical Xenomaniac delivers the first ever deep dive into The Netherlands’ colourful house sound of the 90s and the under-celebrated producers and record labels whose music soundtracked a countrywide cultural movement.
Plenty of books and documentaries have celebrated the riotous raves, legendary clubs, high profile DJs and promoters who shaped The Netherlands’ hedonistic house scene throughout the 90s. Music For The Radical Xenomaniac dares to challenge these narratives by shining a light, for the first time, on those who created the scene’s kaleidoscopic, game-changing and globally influential soundtrack.
Leading the charge were a disparate group of key creators who not only forged links with their counterparts in Detroit, Chicago, New York, Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom, but also became celebrated figures on the worldwide electronic underground (Eric Nouhan, Aad De Mooy, Orlando Voorn, Stefan Robbers and Steve Rachmad). Alongside key underground imprints (Stealth Records, Basic Energy, ESP, Prime and Outland Records included) and lesser-known producers, these pioneers gave flavour to a radical musical movement via open-mindedness, unheard-of creativity and a genuinely futuristic ethos. All of these artists and labels are represented throughout the series.
So, what defined this hedonistic house sound from The Netherlands? Stylistically, it was varied – as the series so emphatically proves – but was defined by a set of distinctive sonic characteristics: emotive musical motifs, high-frequency synth sounds, mellow basslines, pulsating rhythms and more than a touch of hallucinatory intent.
Volume 2 contains a wealth of notable tracks and slept-on gems. These include Q’s ‘From Within (Body Mix)’, a lesser-known cut from the trio better-known as Quazar (Gert van Veen, R.o.X.Y co-founder Eddy De Clercq and Eric Cycle), Eric Nouhan’s melodic masterpiece ‘Technobility’, which is appearing on vinyl for the first time since 1994, and a rare collaboration between regular production partners Maarten van der Vleuten and Mike Kivits (better known as Aardvarck), which was initially released on a special R&S Records’ offshoot set up by the label’s co-founder, Renaat Renaat Vandepapeliere (Integrity II’s ‘Living In Fantasy’).
Other highlights include Exposure’s ‘Love Quest’, a highly sought-after 1991 track by The Hague-based DJ/producer Maurits Paardekooper, and an ambient-infused Andrew Weatherall favourite originally released by Stealth Records in 1993, Hole In One’s ‘Spiritual Ideas For Virtual Reality’.
Packed full of forward-thinking 90s gems remastered for today’s dance floors by Alden Tyrell, Music For The Radical Xenomaniac Volume 1 is a life-affirming celebration of a distinctly Dutch musical movement, whose rich textures and melodies are still inspiring new generations of DJs and dancers today.
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