Q. Please tell us about the environment in which you grew up. How did you become interested in music?

I live in Belgium, grew up in some boring farmer village in West Flanders. There wasn’t much to do apart from playing on the street and later on watching local bands and DJ’s in a youth house.

My dad had the biggest influence on my interest in music, he had loads of vinyls, tapes and CD’s. He would take me to big festivals and small gigs from a young age , blast music everywhere.

Later on, i had the luxury to grew up in a battle between skaters and gabbers. We were forced to choose sides, or you would get beat up. That kinda shows the environment I grew up in.

I became a punk loving , hiphop producing skaterboy, listening Thunderdome CD’s on my discman , and usin Kazaa and Limewire to download al sorts of electronic stuff.

Q. Please tell us about your Belgian musical and artistic influences.

I’ve always had a very wide range in my taste of music, a lot of flemish music influenced me starting writing lyrics in my dialect, and trying to make beats by sampling there old tracks I got to know through my dad. And I had the luck of living in an era where MTV still had music, without the reality shitseries. Belgium has always had some very decent local small and big festivals with a wide range of artists. I did as much of these as I could when growing up.

There were a lot of punk, metal, ska bands , and even more DNB and techno dj’s in my teen years. I quickly became a weekly visitor of random party’s , while telling my parents i stayed over to sleep somewhere. I have been influenced by so much different styles and artists. It’s just not right to note them down, as I would make an endless list.

Q. When did you first learn about Breakcore? What was your impression when you first heard about it? How did you get information about Breakcore back then?

Kazaa, soulseek, and Limewire did a lot for me. Also Torrents and forums !! Downloading music in the beginning of the internet was kinda safe.

The occasional Trojan Horse couldn’t stop my hunger for downloading music for free, that i’ve never heard of. Also , there wasn’t as much shit on it as there is now I believe. So that was way easier too choose.

After doing some typical Belgian kid labour at the local tomato farm, some dude working there introduced me with Hellfish and Deathchant records.

So i started downloading everything similar i could find, and ended up with a library of the weirdest electronic music. Got bored of DNB and (hard)techno instantly, and I only wanted hardcore,breakcore,terror at party’s.

We left every weekend to go search for decent party’s in Belgium. Hoping we get a flyer for the next party, as there wasn’t much to find online yet.

Alcahel party’s were the best of my life, those were the squat party’s of BGMW.

I think i entered one of these around my 16th. I’ve always considered that to be my first real breakcore party. So we would keep going and asking and searching for flyers to the next party.

Later, there was a great forum CELL , where you could find about everything about the electronic scenes and party’s.

Al these artists really inspired me because it felt like there were no boundaries , and they all had their own sound and style.

I loved hearing something totally different every hour. And not having to wait until 5am in the morning , for the last act to finally play some breaks, hardcore or terror.

Q. Belgium has a great Rave music/culture history. When did you first become interested in them?

Around the age of 14 I started going to party’s with a friend that played DNB weekly, like that i got to know a lot of other genres, and i just spiraled downwards from there.

From Hip hop and DNB, to yearly attending ‘I love techno’ , and doing loads of shit local party’s, were everybody would fight around 1 AM, because of drinks, boredom, and shit music.

Also because half of them weren’t there to enjoy any music. Me neither, we just didn’t have that many options, and to be fair, the music always sucked. Nobody needs to play ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ at 2 am , in front of a bunch of drunken

This got me searching even harder for a group with the same mindset, and love for music, quickly I ended up in Gent, doing squat party’s like the piramids, or just outside under a bridge.

Loads of tekno, and acid that i didn’t love at the time, but here and there some nice gabber,rave,jungle, breakcore dj’s where i would beg for tracklists ! Again we were very lucky to have a lot of options throughout Belgium. You could almost attend any party in a range of max. 2hour driving or train.

2022.08

MDC Interview#53 " Deathbysheep Records "

MDC Interview#52 " Audiotist "