From Brussels With Love

Early 1981 various interests merged together: the first issue of the Dutch magazine Vinyl, including a flexi disc by Mekanik Kommando, the 'guide to Ultra music' in Muziekkrant Oor and Willem de Ridder's 'Radiola Improvisatie Salon'. In all three the release of music on cassettes were propagated. I went to my local music store and bought the cassette on which Vinyl wrote that it wasn't very good, but it featuring some Factory Records artists, I decided I should have it anyway: From Brussels With Love. I was thrilled. A 7" cover, but with a tape that lasted in my opinion an hour. If one side a, Brian Eno would say: "the problem with doing interviews...", you could turn the tape over and fall right into Richard Jobson's poem "Armoury Show", thus effectively skipping both Eno and Jeanne Moreau (although I think I heard them both once). From Brussels With Love featured all my favorite Factory Records artists, such as Durutti Column, A Certain Ratio, The Names, but it also brought me new names such Harold Budd, Micheal Nyman, Gavin Bryars or those I just read about, Der Plan and Gilbert/Lewis. Several things made this into a great compilation: the diversity of the music: the post-punk doom of The Names, Repetition, A Certain Ratio versus the experimentalists such Martin Hannett, Der Plan, Gilbert/Lewis, the modern classical approach of Bryars, Nyman and Budd and the mixture with spoken word. Neither the subsequent and partly re-release on 2LP and CD worked in a similar for me, but I am so glad that the original cassette is now available on CD, less the A Certain Ratio (which is already re-released on another CD by Les Temps Modernes). With the original booklet and new liner notes and interesting recording information (learning that Rob Gretton produced Repetition). Les Disques Du Crepuscule set a mark with this, their first release, and went on to release many more interesting compilations later on, such as a Christmas record and 'Fruits Of The Original Sin', but never reached this peak again - although still being on of my favorite labels from the past and hopefully some sort of inspiration of what I am doing. No doubt: the best re-issue of 2007.

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