Belgian New Beat.

Belgian New Beat is not the sort of thing I would spend hundreds of pound on, however, it fascinates me, it was a fledgling moment between 1988 and 89 where kids were looking to Chicago, Detroit and the UK and seeing Techno and House explode on popular culture, a decade later the UK charts were absolutely choc full of Belgian artists releasing europap like Whigfield's 'saturday night' and Snap's '(I got tha) Power', but at its inception New Beat was something new and something that belonged to the kids of Belgium... and lets face it, what is Belgium known for apart from being next to Holland, and being invaded by the Germans, and Beer, and chocolate, and child sex rings? They deserved to have their own thing to be dancing to at the weekends... the Dutch were dancing to Acid Techno and the UK were blissing out to Acid House. "Legend has it that the Belgian New Beat genre was invented in the nightclub Boccaccio in Destelbergen near Ghent when DJ Marc Grouls played a 45rpm EBM record at 33rpm, with the pitch control set to +8. The track in question was Flesh by A Split-Second." (wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Beat )



Original.




The same track at 33rpm

There is a history of DJ's playing music at wrong speeds to create new genres, Jungle was apparently the result of DJ's speeding up breakbeat records and Happy Hardcore *shudder* was similarly created as a result of pitching up acid techno records, but it is always good to know that the RPM switch on a vinyl deck can create a scene and give young groups of bored people something they feel they can belong to. And that track probably does sound a little better at the slower pace.




Groul's (right) inadequecy with the equipment he used led to Belgian domination of Europe for over a decade.
There is an argument that the amount of music on the internet has cheapened the listening experience, that people don't appreciate it anymore because they dont have to pay for it. I don't really subscribe to that view. I used to spend an awful lot of time listening to music on the pods in record shops, and I was always subject to the taste of the buyers in that record shop... now I have total freedom to explore, getting inside tracks and following trails to find out where they came from, the quality is not really as good but then again, you can buy a 5th generation pressing of a track on ZYX records on vinyl and the net result is the same, unwanted popping and hissing. Another advantaged is that you get to see the odd video, which is very much the thing that gives Belgian New Beat its charm. We will examine the New Beat video phenomenon later, but first we will have a look at some of the more famous tracks of the sub genre.



Don't know too much about this group but the track was released in 1989 and has been subject to a single repress in 1992, which means it will probably be difficult to get on vinyl seeing as it never had distribution outside Belgium. Its producer Patrick De Meyer, would go on to take New Beat to the masses as producer of Technotronic and 2Unlimited, acts that it might be argued, killed the genre entirely. This, track veers just about on the right side of what might get played in a club today, with a bit of editing. This is a good track to gage a new beat record, spoken vocals in German or French, roughly 110bpm and much moodier sounding than the luv'd up sound of Italo-Disco, the noise coming from closer to the mediteranian roughly at the same time. The Belgians didn't get as much sunshine as Italy, which is probably a good gage of wht the Flemmish are into moodier sinister sounding tracks.




The video to this one is simply hideous, it reinforces every stereotype that prejudiced people have about European dance music... mullets, leather jackets, headbands, shitty dance routines...just click on it fully if you want to see it. What is really noticable about this track is the similarity the main synthline shares with 'what Time is Love?' by KLF. Who stole from who?  Everyone was stealing from each other, S-express and M*A*R*S* famously scored number one hits with 'the theme from S'Express' and 'Pump Up the Volume' respectively, selling millions, but having to give all their royalties to the people they sampled without permission, something that the likes of Grand Master Flash and Afrika Bambaataa had to deal with some 5 years earlier, when they sampled the krautrock folk. But sample stealing is another subject for another time. Onto the next track.





This is exactly the kind of track that was being pitched up to plus 8 in holland, with the roland 909 synth stabs, the deliberately pitched down vocals would sound normal at 45rpm, there was a kind of symbiosis between the dutch techno movement and the belgian new Beat shizzle, and they were driving distance from each other so there was no reason why the club kids of Holland and Belgium in the late 80s couldn't enjoy both.





This one has a bit more of a breaky feel whilst still keeping to the same speed, it retains the moody feel, and after 4 tracks you are probably starting to get a feel of what New Beat actually is...



This one is the track probably best known from the new beat spectrum, one that tends to pop up on the ministry of sound type 'old skool' albums, it is much faster than the 110bpm tracks, It is heavy as fuck and probably the one that I like least out of all of the examples I've given, however, there is a DJ Hell remix that has blown up several of my speakers.






A band that certainly took New Beat as an inspiration are Belgiums own Soulwax, although it is difficult to tell whether they are being ironic or not. This one appeared on their Radio Soulwax part 2 album, remixed and cut to shreds, but it shows that there is life beyond Anita and Ray, for New Beat, it was the European equivalent of the British Acid House explosion of 88 and 89, but unlike Acid House, which eventually moved on to the rave scene, jungle scene, happy hardcore scene, trip hop, etc et al which all sprouted from Acid culture, it appears that new Beat producers would eventually end up pumping our charts full of fodder.



This is sadly the legacy of New Beat, the stuff that the producers will be most remembered for.

For a pretty convincing top 50 of New Beat tracks click here

If you fancy getting a few online mixes down your ears, have a click on this with a much less detached and more fond take on the sub genre.