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Radio Soulwax presents THIS IS BELGIUM PART ONE: NEW BEAT

There was a brief period between 1987 and 1989 where Belgium, of all places, was pushing the envelope in electronic music. It preceded England's 'second summer of love' and was probably our equivalent of it, in that a whole generation's lives quite rapidly became based around taking ecstasy, dressing up, going clubbing and dancing to an odd, slowed down hypnotic mix of New Wave, Acid, EBM and everything else that sounded good. 

New Beat became a real craze that would attract thousands of ravers from all over Europe to Belgium's newly thriving club scene every weekend and inspired hundreds of releases that stormed the Belgian charts, regardless of it being completely ignored by the media and radio because it was not seen as "real" music. It was counterculture of the cheapest kind and due to its massive success, it quickly became very cheesy and novelty based, but there was an amazing side to New Beat that was dark and messed up and our mix is based on those releases, with a few hits thrown in for good measure.

Concept : Soulwax and Fergadelic
Co directors: Laurie Hill & Glyn Peppiatt
Animators: Laurie Hill, Nuno Costa, Lewis Kyle White
Edited by Glyn Peppiatt

Special thanks to: Richard 'Noise' Norris, Wim Swinnen, Renaat Van De Papeliere, Frank De Wulf, Kenny Gates, Biens, Ronny Rolex, Leo Kozz, Ben Van Alboom, Geert Sermon, Jozef Devillé, The Prelinger Archives, Archive.org, The NME, I-D Magazine, Time Out and Radio New Beat.

Very Special Thanks to Steven 'Keimi' Keymeulen for the visual assets!