BRDCST is AB’s outstanding indoor spring festival spotlighting musical boundlessness. The name is a direct reference to the retro futuristic electronica-pop of English band Broadcast that released inspiring albums like ‘Haha Sound’ and ‘Noise Made By The People’ over the past decade. Artists who feel strongly about musical innovation form the focal point for BRDCST. Our musical gut-feeling does the rest.
Probably without even realising it, you – diehard BRDCST fans – gave us an exceptionally fine gift during the last edition. Due to your overwhelming numbers we felt the infinite confidence to further expand BRDCST in going against the flow. We take that mandate to heart by deliberately opting for the most enriching, most contrary, most exciting and most unique sounds in the field of music.
BRDCST BANS MUSICAL BOUNDARIES
A sinister 80's ‘synth-soundtrack’ to one of the most talked about Netflix series of recent years? A unique 20-member Bulgarian female choir that gets sampled by Drake? An electronica producer who is inspired by Maroccan gnawa & Pharoah Sanders, and in turn is admired by Thom Yorke? Musical protest that leaves little wiggle room and makes matchsticks of Brexit? Contemporary-masked classical? A nocturnal and original tribute to The Velvet Underground classic ‘White Light/White Heat’ that will be a half-century old in 2018? Welcome to BRDCST! A very warm one even!
THE FIRST NAMES
The superb, Emmy-nomination-loaded, eighties sci-fi series STRANGER THINGS must be just about the most popular series on Netflix in recent years. The intriguing ‘synth-soundtrack’ that sets the sinister tone is at least as defining as the storyline itself and was made by 2 members (KYLE DIXON and MICHAEL STEIN) of S U R V I V E, an experimental synth quartet from Austin. Pitchfork previously praised the soundtrack as ‘Best New Music’ (or: 8/10). Portishead core-member Geoff Barrow is also a fan and released the soundtrack in Europe on Invada Records, his own label. BRDCST is rather proud to be the first to get them over to Belgium.
Strange how an ensemble that was immensely popular a quarter of a century ago can suddenly turn up again everywhere. So it is that the angelic voices of LE MYSTÈRE DES VOIX BULGARES appear at the progressive Le Guess Who? festival (Utrecht) amongst acts like K Á R Y Y N, Zeal & Ardor and James Holden. Lady Gaga recently used their music in her documentary ‘Five Foot Two’ and Le Mystère also hangs out amongst Grimes and Kali Uchis on ‘kick-ass women’, a recent Gorillaz mixtape. Drake and Leftfield sampled their music and Lisa Gerrard (Dead Can Dance) is currently putting the putting the finishing touches on an album with this unique 20-member female choir. Ready for a transcendental (re)discovery?
We are also proud to have JAMES HOLDEN & THE ANIMAL SPIRITS , with whom BRDCST notches up a formidable electronica high-flyer-topper. This is also the Belgian live-première of Holden's brand new, self-titled album that – according to Holden – is bursting with ‘synth-led folk-trance standards’ that reflect his love of Maroccan gnawa. Thom Yorke has been an unconditional fan for years now.
With AN EVENING WITH/CURATED BY SLEAFORD MODS , BRDCST lights the fuse of a theme that will be focused upon in many cultural houses in Brussels in 2018: The Social Revolution of 1968, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Parisian student revolt that took place in May ’68 and spread throughout the rest of Europe. Sleaford Mods, ‘the angriest (and most political) band in Britain’, provides the ideal opener with their furious punk/rap/rant/dance. What's more, they receive carte blanche and take the reigns by curating an entire evening and inviting other bands as they radically see fit.
‘White Light/White Heat’ - the second superb album by influential band THE VELVET UNDERGROUND – will be exactly a half-century old in 2018. That really must be celebrated, with a midnight concert at which we ‘quasi entirely’ blast the vinyl album through a soundsystem. ‘Quasi entirely’? Yep, we'll be skipping last track and classic ‘Sister Ray’ and replacing it with a real explosive live version performed by the transcendental atmospheric black shoegaze math noise drone band BARST. Of all the The Velvet Underground's tracks, ‘Sister Ray’ is the longest (17min 29 seconds to be precise)... but BARST will be making a 40 minute (!) version of it.
Welcome to BRDCST!
Kurt Overbergh
Artistic Director AB
