90-04-22 Memento Mori – Oerboere – Chaotic Contrast

Gig-review in Pyrobolum #3 (by Dieter Roelstraete)

‘Chaotic Contrast’ (Torhout/Brugge area, Belgium) were originally a ‘project’ of Kris ‘Kid’ Verhelst (guitar & vocals) and a changing group of people. They recorded the ‘You’ve got a Brain so Use It’ demo (May ‘89). In June ‘89 Joeri Vleurick joined on bass and they recorded a tape -’It’s the individual that Makes the Change’ – that contained 158 (!) ‘songs’. Then they met up with Elke (vocals & guitar) and Steve ‘Sling’ Slingeneyer (drums; also ‘Chronic Disease’ & ‘Rise Above’) – don’t know if these were on the ‘The Little Shop of Horrors’ demo but they played the V.V. ‘Kid’ was quite creative and always full of plans… He also organised gigs (in Eernegem’s B52) and tried to set up a tape-label/-exchange…

‘Memento Mori’ were a German metal-influenced hardcore-punk band from Neuhofen (near Ludwigshafen, Germany). At the time they had just recorded an LP (The Cultural Value Of Fear, Distrust & Hypochondria) that was released on my friend Frank Babel’s label Blasting Youth recs. At that time ‘M.M.’ were: Thomas (bass), Mich(a)el Volkmer (drums), Sacha (guitar) and Jochen ‘Delle’ Dell (vocals; ex ‘Die Perversen Weihnachtsmänner’).

‘Oerboere’ were squatters from the W.N.C. (Wolters Noordhof Complex) in Groningen (North of the NL). “Import Groningers!”, Maynard Schut informs me: “They’ve never been in any other bands but one of them is now playing in a klezmer band from Amsterdam. At every gig they did, there were riots with the police… Rather militant squatters-band it was.”. They had a changing line-up: Cor ‘Roc’ Weiss, Mauro, Dirk, Roland Hurrelbrinck, … They had a track on the Als Je Haar Maar Goed Zat ‎compilation-LP (WRF recs, ’92), entitled Juppies.

Brob

At the time I was singing for ‘Oerboere’ (89 & 90), we never played in Ieper. This one must’ve been after I quit. The band was: Janfie van Strien (drums), Mauro (guitar) & Cor (vocals).

Roland Hurrelbrinck

‘Oerboere’ started at the W.N.C., where we lived from 1986 until 1990. The poet Bart Droog had joined us that weekend. He’s extremely interessted in World War 1 & 2, and wanted tot take the opportunity to visit the war-cemeteries…

Janfie van Strien

Personally, I have hardly any recollections of this gig. Believe it was only the 3^rd as ‘Chaotic Contrast’. [Brob: they played probably their last on 90-11-02 with ‘Crowd Of Isolated’ & ‘Scum’ in Gent] Crazy times, chaotic indeed. No idea why anyone thought of us as a band from Roeselare. More like an Eernegem, Torhout, Stalhille, Gent experimental collective. ‘Chaotic Contrast’ was mainly a project that Joeri and me tinkered on: trying things out, some of it sounded rather bizarre. And from time to time we tried to bring things live, with 1 or 2 persond extra. One of them was Elke Robaerts (who also studied law when I got to know her). She joined in on some of our sound-/song-experiments, and this one concert. I believe we only played live 4 times with ‘Chaotic Contrast’. It was indeed mostly chaotic because we had no live experience. We did 2 tapes, I think; the 2^nd got pretty positively reviewed in MRR (comparisons with ‘Crass’ and ‘The Ex’ if I remember correctly. After that we did ‘Daydream’ for a while – a bit more melodic – with ‘Sling’ on drums. But that also just lasted a year or so (2 gigs, I believe, and 1 tape with 7 songs). Didn’t get of the ground because of other things to do (studying, women, etc.).

Kris ‘Kid’ Verhelst

Some pics (courtesy of Janfie van Strien):

‘Oerboere’ L => R: Mauro Farigu (‘Mao’), Janfie van Strien, Cor Weiss.

Johan Dewancker (V.V. ‘shitworker’ at the time), enjoying a beer and the band

‘Memento Mori’ (Dieter Roelstraete sporting his ‘Doom’ T-shirt)

additions wellcome!…

98-08-14&15&16 HardCore – The Next Generation festival

Paul Van den Berg wrote me (around that time) that ‘Seein’Red’ had discussed the fact whether they would play this fest or not (also with people like Bernd ‘Stack’, ‘Beertje’ & Marcel of Coalition recs, Theun Koelemij and some others) because there had been a lot of communication from various people (and myself) that this fest was not truly D.I.Y. They’d taken a collective decision to confront the audience and not compromise… “By staying away, you’re not gonna change things!”. I might’ve gone there for an afternoon (allthough I have no recollctions, it might’ve been the year before) to try and explain some people but I definitely didn’t pay entrance or saw any of the bands, because I considered this whole thing nothing more than a ‘year-market’/fair(ground) intended as promotion for the record-labels GoodLife and Genet… The latter also relased a CD of the Fest.

Brob

The HC-fest was a mix of fun and some irritation. We travelled down with a whole gang and that was cosy of course. Also met nice people in Ieper; old friends and contacts. A minus was ‘Arkangel’ and the monotonous program. ‘Seein’ Red’ was great. A real party and they also had sensible things to say. Also ‘Eyeball’, ‘Reiziger’, ‘Stack’ and ‘Highscore’ were good.

Jeroen ‘ Beertje’ Vrijhoef, ‘Mainstrike’ guitarist; personal communication Sep ‘98

I was at the Ieper SxE festival this summer and it sucked. I didn’t pay entrance and only managed to get in when ‘Seein’Red’ played. But besides the dumb consumerist kids, I met some nice friends from Germany so being on the train for 15 hours was worth it.

Philipp Smeh (Austria), personal communication Nov ‘98

That was my first Ieper fest ever, great memories! First time to I saw ‘Seein’Red’ and ‘Stack’ as well. Great! I remember there was some fuss during the ‘Stack’ set when a girl was asking the band to say something about some people dancing violently in the back during their set.

Stig Koppen

[Brob: “propaganda-flyer ‘Stack’ frontman Bernd wrote a few years later…]

This was the first time I went to this Fest!

I remember going with Arnaud Benoist (drummer of ‘2138’ & ‘Hippies Of Today’ – now ‘Llamame La Muerte’) and Romain Trocherie (who ran Revolution recs). I have some recollections of the ‘Facedown’ & Reiziger’ shows (awesome songs but ‘Kosjer D was better). There were a lot of French people (the Boislève bros, guys from Strasbourg, perhaps Christophe Mora from Stonehenge recs, …)

Vincent Troplain, Rouen (nowadays Emergence recs & photo-zine)

Two friends of mine wanted to go to the unholy Vort’n Vis to meet / see & hear ‘Seein’Red’, ‘Highscore’, ‘Stack’, ‘Grade’ [???], … I didn’t give it much thought and drove to Ieper, and was very surprised to see so many stupid, trendy HC kids. It was terrible …

Christian Dreker, ‘Asmodinas Leichenhaus’ (Germany); personal communication Nov ‘98

column by Sophie, singer of the French band ‘Aside’, in Empowerment #9

additions wellcome!…

(full posts with photos of some bands playing follow…)

98-08-14: One X More (Bel), One Fine Day (Ita), Driven (Nl), Building (Bel), Contrition (Ger), Stack (Ger), Timebomb (Ita), Liar (Bel), Culture (USA)

98-08-15: Sad Origin (Bel), Highscore (Ger), Opposite Force (Ita), Pray Silent (Swi), Clouded (Bel), Seein’Red (Nl), Spineless (Bel), Thumbs Down (Bel), Facedown (Bel), Earthmover (USA)

98-08-16: Reply (Bel), D.S.A. (Bel), Lifecycle (Bel), Inflexible (Pol), Ashlar (Bel), Caliban (Ger), Firestone (Bel), Arkangel (Bel), Reiziger (Bel), Eyeball (Ger), Congress (Bel)

crowd-shots by Patrick Federli

British HardCore women – Camilla Bradshaw Burke / Louise Brown / Nicola Waterson (photo Nick Royles)

98-02-21 Divide & Conquer – Robotnicka – Mad Punk Disease

A gig that Michael Maes kindly arranged when I proposed him to organised this for ‘Divide & Conquer’ and ‘Robotnička’. I also booked them a gig at he Boma Squat in Gent the day before and the day after they played in Leuven (@ Clockwork)…

‘Divide & Conquer’ came from Greensboro, North-Carolina but they contacted me via Murray ‘Christmas’ Briggs (drummer of ‘Oi Polloi’) in Edinburgh… The latter played on their Amputate 7” an toured with them here. Orginal drummer ‘Stanimal’ (Stan ‘Dup’ Gibson) couldn’t make it over… The others were Brian ‘Tumor’ Tipa (guitar/vocals ; ex ‘Blownapart Bastards’, also in ‘Robotnicka’ & ‘Oi Polloi’) and Tony Wackett (bass). Percussionist Matt(hew) Miller a.k.a. ‘Matt Zohball’ (also guitarist of ‘Catharsis’) and bassist Nathan/Nate ‘Thor’ Tarr didn’t tour Europe with ‘D. & C.’. [Xavier ‘Robotnicka’: ‘D+C’ did tour Europe once before with a minimal US line-up – Brian on guitar, Matt on bass & Stan on drums.]. They played melodic and poppy HC/punkrock with political lyrics. Sanjam recs (Yann Dubois from Rennes) had released a 4-way split CD (with ‘Lee Majors’, ‘Eterna Inocencia’ & ‘Juggling Jugulars’ in 1997. Later they put out the Cop Corpse Bonfire and the The Need To Amputate 7”s on Brian Tipa’s Ginger Liberation recs (he ran this from Dijon in France and wrote me to help with distribute their 1^st EP; Nate Tarr did the label in Greensboro). Maloka (also from Dijon) released the ‘Robotnicka’ / ‘Divide & Conquer’ split-LP in the noughties.

‘Robotnicka’ (who haven’t actually stopped to exist), from Dijon, describe themselves as an “electric / glam / jam band” (robotnicka.poivron.org). They’re are a “dancing” band of anarcho-geeks (2 from Dijon, 1 from Lyon in France and 1 North-Carolinian living elsewhere in Europe) “bent on having fun”. “Originally trapped in guitar-rock land, we robots are breaking out in search of synthesized thrash insanity. Love of revolutionary politics, hatred of the totally sick oppressive system and the international need to indulge in utter freakiness has forced us to tour all over and to rock out in a generally unconventional style.”. In the band on this 1^st mini-tour were Brian Tipa (drums), ‘Gravier A’ Xavier (bass) and ‘Zeseal’ Cécile (bass/vocals). ‘Titi’ (= Thierry Rambaud, drums; also in ‘Alcatraz’) and Vincent Bertholet (guitar) joined later. Besides the aforemnetioned split-LP, they did a CD (Spectre En Vue…) after the turn of the century.

‘Mad Punk Disease’ (Groningen) started around the end of 1996 with Steve (drums/vocals), Richard (guitar; ex ‘Oerboere’ & ‘E.N.E.’) and Piet/Pierre Erickson (bass; ex ‘E.N.E.’, ‘Fleas and Lice’). Robbie Tempel (‘Fleace and Lice’) did the UK tour (including this date here) as extra vocalist in 1998 but got kicked out… Gam joined in 1999 as vocalist. They played noisy crust-punk and only appeared on the compilation They Won’t Take Us Alive (on the German label Harmony recs). Not sure if ‘Mad Punk Disease’ came back 98-06-05 with ‘Slum Gang’…

Claire A. (Xavier’s sister) helped with the artwork for the the ‘Robotnicka’ / ‘Divide & Conquer’ split-LP. She hung out in Gent at some timepoint and visited our @ infoshop (Tabula Rasa) at the 3 Charels Squat there. Can’t remember if she was here…

Brob

All this is a long time ago and I don’t remember a lot; just that the concert was with ‘Mad Punk Disease’. It was one of our first gigs. Funny that night was that Pierre of ‘M.P.D.’ had plenty of ‘herbs’ that he was trying to sell to some people to get some money for gasoline but he didn’t have a pick to play and I borrowed him one.

At the time of this concert, ‘Robotnicka’ was Cécile, Brian and myself, a trio with 2 bassists and drums. We toured the US with ‘D+C’ 1998 with the addition of Nicolu (guitare) and Béa (vocals). These quit after that tour and we took on guitarist/bassist Vincent (who plays in ‘Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp’ and other projects nowadays) and ended up as guitar-bass-drums. Later (2000-2001) ‘Titi’ joined to play drums and Brian took on playing keyboards… We never officially stopped but since we live in different places (Berlin – Lyon – Saint-Etienne – Bordeaux) and some of us have families, things haven’t gotten any easier we’re on a permanent stand-by until the situation is appropiate. It doesn’t matter, we see each other reguliarly and we’re good mates!

I’m not playing in a lot of bands at the moment. We did play with ‘Baygon Vert’ and also ‘Robotnicka’ at the festival for the relocation of Les Tanneries [Brob: autonomous centre and venue in Dijon]. And I also did 6 days of recording with Brian when he was in Lyon with mates of ‘Défaite’ and ‘Coche Bomba’. I continued doing some posters but not too many for concerts. Here’s some stuff that might be interesting: http://art.squat.net/bik3sab/

Xavier, Robotnicka

Here are some photos of gig. We were dressed as pizza-boys for some reason??? Plus one of me in the Vort’n Vis toilet. This was one of the first places I played when I was in ‘Oi Polloi’, aged 18. I remember being totally humbled by all the names on the war-memorial in Ypres. The red-haired bassplayer is Piet from ‘Fleas & Lice’. His other band were playing that night. Piet has been a friend of mine for a long time now. I remember he sold me a bag of weed that night but don’t tell the kids!

Murray Briggs, ‘Divide & Conquer’

‘Divide & Conquer’

‘Robotnicka’

‘Mad Punk Disease’

Murray Briggs

excerpts from the V.V. guestbook:

Someone wasn’t happy… ;-)

additions wellcome!…