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̲I̲̲n̲̲t̲̲r̲̲d̲̲u̲̲c̲̲t̲̲i̲̲o̲̲n̲

All this happened a great while ago, when you still could use the word “breakcore” without explaining which kind of breakcore you definitly not mean, C8.com still was the hotspot for information, community, and mp3, while the edgy jokes that people in FB breakcore groups dump on each other till this very day, were already stale and humiliating, scaring away the more intelligent from the Soulseek bc-chat back then.

When this party came up in April 2004 in the c8.com-forum as “BREAKCORE GIVES ME WOOD8 @ ????” it was an ok looking party like a few others around this time. From were I lived it was still at least 3-4 hours by Car the Brussels and i had already the pleasure to search a party without having an adress in that city in 2002, which took me just an hour back then, but kept the enthusiasm for car travels to Belgium, Netherlands or France always low. The last 10 days before the party, the c8-forum gets more and more nervous because Boups, another belgium collective had a party on the same evening planned but lost there venue so they decided a week before that weekend to put the partys together, so that all people get enough fun without any beef or cancellation. BGMW moved theirs from Gent to Brussels and the line up was absurdly expanding everyday because at the end everyone was going and the thursday before was a party happening were a big car load full of berliners were supposed to play. Unfortunatly i did not keep the initial flyer with the original lineup as it was exchanged every day with additions till you had to scroll without rescaling. Illkidformat aka Sickboy wrote on c8.com:

“COMPETITION IS FOR CAPITALISTS”

that’s right! WOOD and BOUPS have joined forces!! this means the 2 party’s on the same night have become ONE BIG MASSIVE PARTY with the 2 line-ups together, all of this happening in the PLAN B venue, rue de Carserne, Brussels, located closeby Brussels-south railway station. so NO party in GENT but a big festival in BRUSSELS instead! i hope everybody will be as hyper-manic as we are!!!

first off all we would like to say that working together is the best solution for both party’s, simply because we are all in the same gang. the initial plan was to do the party together from the begining but due time and flyer bullshit it didn’t work out. BOUPS reconsidered the plan and contacted WOOD to join forces, brave and safe so no people will be dissapointed when they’ll see 2 rooms with this MASSIVE line up! now all you have to do is decide wich room you’ll be in, wich girl or boy you will be kissing or which records you wanna buy. all we need is alot of friends together to make this event something to never forget !!

This was 10 days before the party, the day before the party they added Electric Kettle and Patric Catani to the line up so it finally looked like this:

I guess nowadays i would shrug seeing that lineup and go on with life, but back then breakcore had another year till i felt the downfall that others already discussed long and wide.
My comrade and neighbour Amboss was always the opposite of me when it came to cars. I hate driving he loved it, so we took his car and i was ok with that. Skip forward a drive i can’t remember, till we reached the highway ring of Brussels. If i wasn’t an atheist i would have thought god abandoned us. That part of the travel i will never forget.
We were still good in time ,plenty of it, just had to get off the ring at exit number 21…. we reached 20 we reached 22 and this was what we did for the next 2 hours: crossing on the rings of brussels to find a way out and to the party that was already in full swing as we could just imagine, while being half desperate and half angry, making the same joke again and again everytime we saw the same damn sign with “ring” written on it again: “ring is ok, ring is at least something.”
Next we know that we heard a hard bump sound as we drove over some metal piece that was lying on the street. I certainly can’t remember if we had to stop and change a tire or not … By then it must’ve been around 1:30 and as you can see on the time table above, we would miss Rotator, a last time with his ragga-toasting MC Gilles from Rotator Kids. I got told later that it was so lala, but who knows what i might have liked back then. At that point we were extremly close to capitulate and head home without any party but a few futile hours on “the ring”.
I think we eventually left through another exist, to get off that torture tool. One reason why we didn’t do so before is, that if you get off the way you have written down on your printed out map instructions (yes it was still such time) you are fucking lost in that shithole of a city, and that was what we immediately did.
We were driving from one bus stop to another to have a look on the maps there and needed another full hour till our ordeal ended and we could park around the corner of the venue. few hundred meters away from a football stadium. The Area did not look obscure at all but even people who lived in that moloch said it was ultra hard to find.
As we walked through a side street lying half in the dark we got a litle extra spectacle in the distance, seeing 3 guys in the light of a street lamp casting schadows and deeply inhale through a hand towel followed by primal articulation and body movements of people returning into the wild. Yes it was like a Scene from “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas“, team ether. Passing them fast without looking too much we finally walk into the party quite pissed at 2:30, first thing happens is that a completly wasted guy falls out of the next room into our arms yelling “this is the best party i ever experienced!”. we just mumbled something like “it better is, otherwise it would’ve not been worth the stress”, payed the kindly asked 8 euro and entered the next room.

That was the floor. Music was playing somewere, a lot of people everywhere, even outside it was crowded. It looked like a nice party so far, but kind of confusing, leaving us privily dssapointed. It somehow looked like a enormous backstage but nevertheless we were confused enough to say something like “wow its quite crowded,big party, that must be at least 400 people here.”
We walked around a bit and saw a door into a much darker room and we curiously entered to get a moderate shock, there was the main floor with another600- 800 people at least and Rotator just stopped playing. I never saw that size of a breakcore party again, with an estimated crowd of 1200-1500 people and no floor with soft music to drag people to the party, no two rooms with excessive noise. Rennes in brittany, were Peace Off and the Switch Record store were located, was known for having the biggest partys n that dimension for some time with even more compromiseless lineups, where you can ask yourself now if this size of parties was a mistake in the long view and “where are all these people now???”
Ok, we were entering the totally over-crowded room, Electric Kettle played his funky breakcore live, while we fought our way to the backstage waving hello to the one or other friend who stayed in the mosh pit and found the room looking like a backstage in berlin, not aware who came for the party earlier that week. The Society Suckers played in the little room again, but not playing but “hanging” were LFO Demon who got a spiked drink and felt strange, Something J, the Don of kool.POP, ok Din-ST was just there in spririt off to a date or something, the Sansculottes if i remember right and not sure who else. Also taking room were the people from the line up of the running party and a lot of BGMWs friends, so it was quite a summit meeting with a lot to palaver not really getting into the mood to be dancing in front of the stage. So we stayed on the side of the stage left from the DJ, overseeing the sea of people as Venetian Snares entered the stage with six plastic cups of beer, which he emptied promptly without losing too much time and started playing. You heard some idm kitsch synth pads , some typical stuff that raises no brow and in the next moment all hell broke loose when the crystal clear ultra brutal amen break rapidly shrapnelled around, the soundcontrolled stroboscopes got off at the same second ,it was day bright  and ~800 people jumped into the air and gone berzerk….that was something special to experience indeed. we watched the whole thing from upstage, snares finished as always with everything in the red, trying to fry the PA, followed by Candie Hank wo was performing on the table above the crowd and i think even stage dived if i remember right. At some point some cops entered the stages announcing something i didn’t understand but it did not end the party, or they where there at the end, thats in the fog…
A some point i had a look on the time table in the backstage wondering what they do after everybody played and asked Tim Terror from the Wood crew if it might be a possibility that i play a short set as i had still some demo-cds with me. He was not in the mood to play anyways at the end and was up to it if its not 4/4 sound. I could assure that my music is quite the opposite of that describing it as something like Snares meets Noize Punishment in the absence of a better description. Something J was astounded for a moment about my audacity to ask straight away. As i got ready a bit later i found out that Snares did not destroy the PA but at least managed to dismember the CD players in a way i still wonder how that is possible with just playing cdrs. I was not willed to let that chance to play to a still ~100 – 200 people big crowd around 6 in the morning when i saw Patric Catanis single Pioneer player standing on the table, quickly asked if i can lend that for a moment and started to player a 25-30 minute long set in a punk concert style with short pauses inbetween the tracks while loading the next track leaving room for cheering and screaming from the audience, while i heavyly abuse the jogwheel,doing lickwoods and gunshots like a berzerker through the set making it up for the missing second player, sharing the last minutes with Amboss while the lights were turned on. This moment was so surreal to me, a very special feeling that even some other people remembered afterwards. Keep in mind, that at this time i had played my music just ~10 times so far, and in way smaller venues. Thrilling.

Rioteer wrote at c8.com:

“Great Party!!!
It’s great to see so many people freaking out on this kind of music. Damn!!!
Thanx to the WOOD Crew and BOUPS for putting it together..
By the way who was the last one performing in the big room.
Mr Zombieflesheater was that you? That was awesome stuff!!!”

And Sickboy had a similar story from the small room to tell, just that the other DJ was a bit more known and my guru status was still in the making:

“what was great what a spontaneous effect the party had!! not only patric catani got to play, also electric kettle, and zombieflesheater and also, closing down in the 2nd room was Acid Kirk. that’s one of Belgium’s early guru’s of the experimental techno and breakscene.. legends say he even had a record on U.R. but that may all be just rumour.
the fact he spontaneously played is really cool and totally unexpected. i didn’t even know of his presence and it goes to show how a great atmosphere can lead to great results. thanx friends, i want to thank everyone who came… me personally i came more than once and and i hope it was in your bloody face! PARTY HARD CREW!”

Sick as always.

Also quite a funny memory is the stoned face of Patrick Catani / Candie Hank when i had a look sidewards to the bench were he was parked. A mix of fear for his CD-player mixed with confusion about the incomprehensible music i presented with my orange baseball cap, coming out of nowhere. I wonder what he remembers. Till we got thrown out finally and every remaining backstage inhabitant found his way home it was already 8:30 to 9 into a grey morning and we had to find our way aswell, skipping an after party “somehwere around the corner” and tried to get out of the city as fast as possible, still  4 hours of travel before us and already tired from “the ring”. I think we never managed to get out of this labyrinth in under 1 hour, because on the way out of the city is nothing written in german which is extremly irritating, especially when there is flamish on the road sign which was not there on the way in. So that extra ride time was save already.
The following week, Amboss got the info from his car repair shop, that he needs a new rim for that bumped wheel, which costed a few hundred euro for his tuned Bimmer. What a nasty setback to finalise this trip which turned out to be a memorable episode. ⠀

On a side note it is to mention that this was the only party so far, where i got offered sexual intercourse backstage. i looked confused not processing what “wanna fuck?” means, mainly because we were surrounded by people, then realised what she had asked and I immediately relocated my nervous self into another corner of the room after the convo ended with “äh…what?”-“what?”suggesting i didn’t hear so well. “Big city business”, I said to myself, “what else do i not know?” That was thrilling aswell.

E̲̲p̲̲i̲̲l̲̲o̲̲g̲

When I rediscovered that lenghty flyer this morning I instantly felt the urge to drop that chunk of memory like a horse drops its manure.