Ivan Smagghe Interview: From Belgium with love

Image: Ivan Smagghe

Ivan Smagghe is a man of great range. Just look at the different line ups he appears on for starters. And as a producer he’s done his fair share of different projects, gaining notoriety as a founding member of Black Strobe, It’s A Fine Line and Kill The DJ, and more recently under his own name. 

But to just concentrate on his music would be a waste of the man. His interests are far and wide, and having studied cultural history for six years, we thought we’d collar him on the subject matter from his youth, especially because it involved a nightclub that used to stay open for four days. 

Although Ivan hails from Paris - a place that is not exactly short of its own cultural history, and one you can watch him delivering one of his eclectic sets above - he has a great affection for matters over the French border. Rather like the M25 is seen as pivotal in the evolution of rave culture in this country, the motorway network linking France and Belgium opened up a whole frontier of partying.

But while we were raving in fields and abandoning our cars on hard shoulders in the nineties, it would appear the Belgians had it sussed long before then, especially when taken into consideration the documentary The Sound Of Belgium, something Ivan was keen to discuss with us.

For those who haven’t watched it, it documents the history of the popcorn scene and eventually what became the nu-beat sound. The evolution of DJ and club culture in Belgium certainly bears a similarity to the story in the UK. 

Popcorn originally evolved from imports of R&B, soul and pop music from the US, and like northern soul, had an emphasis on the obscure and the collectible. By the seventies, what was once a disused farmhouse outside Antwerp was hosting up to 3,000 people every Sunday for all-day partying, and the culture spread into some other cities and venues across the country, but broadly remained an underground subculture.

Then, by the mid-to-late eighties, at a similar time as the UK was beginning to cotton on to the next DJ revolution, Belgium spawned nu-beat: a bastardisation of EBM and post punk that gradually became influenced by the sounds of early house and electro. 

The story goes that the DJ Dikke Ronny slowed down a 45rpm EBM record to 33rpm and then put the pitch up to +8, and in doing so, spawned an entire genre. While many clubs in the UK were beginning to head in a more soulful and sometimes euphoric direction, many in Belgium were on the slower and darker road of nu-beat.

While his gig for Cowbell at Islington Mill on Friday won’t be able to top the longevity of four days of partying, the venue stands for the same kind of creative carnage that so inspired a young Ivan. He’ll be right at home there.

So why do you want to talk about Belgium?

I don't really like talking about music, especially the music I play at night. It's a rather tedious subject. It is functional music. I do like it although not always. I do like playing it, but...

I'll repeat myself and say one of my favourite interview cliches. There are two types of DJs: people who love records and people who love parties. And then there are the ones who love Belgium. I am of the first and the third. For many reasons.  

It's not very well documented and explored, but for years Belgium was a small country producing an immense amount of music and an immense amount of clubbing. 

But you’re from Paris though, right?

I was raised in the Paris burbs. I was going out in Paris but Le Boccaccio (in Ghent) was only three hours away. And it was open from Friday to Tuesday morning non-stop, two DJs on rotation. I did a couple of trips on Sunday mornings. 

Not enough and a bit late maybe to be fully exposed to what became the base of my 'dance culture', if there is such a thing. Let's call it nu-beat for now, which is basically a frozen Balearic mix of new wave, early house, strange rock classics, oriental weirdness. 

I love those little 'mini-genres'. I am only talking here about the essence of it, the genres that do not fit in boxes, like Amnesia 84, The Spook Factory in Valencia in the eighties. If you check out Fran Lenaers, he still plays all that stuff and also the European extreme Chicago stuff etc.

What year did you start going out to these legendary Belgian venues?

I only went to the Boccaccio a couple of times in the early nineties. The others were too commercial. I played a lot for FOOD around the end of the century though.

So at Le Boccaccio, there were two DJs on rotation from Friday to Tuesday... wow! Who were these guys? Did they become famous outside of this club?

Two or three yes. Mainly Eric B. and Oliver Peters. They are known in Belgium but not really no.

Was there a backlash from the nation and the authorities when people realised that there were venues staying open for days? In the UK there was a mega panic about it once we got to the 90s. All manner of laws were brought in to try and stop it, so did the same happen in Belgium?

In short Le Boccaccio was shut by the council because of a massive parents petition, because kids in the area would not go to school on the Monday.

Do you think that the reporting of the history of dance music and club culture is a bit biased towards the US and the UK? Not much is often said about Belgium.

It used to be, but not so much anymore. The documentary ’The Sound Of Belgium’ has exposed it quite well. By the way, its CD version was number one in the Belgian charts for weeks.

So back to your fascination with Belgium…

Ok, Belgium, right... Well my name is Flemish though I am not (some say it is the mixture of Flemish and French influence that helped the above scenes take hold).

Brussels would be the best city in the world if it was not so small. I like 'The Northness' of it. Ghent is also beautiful. The country is politically rotten to the core by its divisions. It's bilingual and basically in two, but I won't dwell on it. 

And then there are a few things that made me who I am today; some parties, like Le Food in Brussels, a lot of friends like Geoffrey, Regis, Mo and the sadly departed Tom who passed on so much music to me. 

A few dishes, i.e. Les croquettes which are the best fries in the world - soft and undercooked. Then there was the overload of me taking far too many drugs and staying up way too late on the now dishevelled route des boîtes - a road near the French border of non-stop partying and drug taking. 

And then of course, there are the second-hand record shops. Yes, Belgium is one of the last real bastions of crate digging. There is no limit to what you can find there or can’t. I have this memory stuck in my mind of the dampest seller from Harlequin Records in Brussels, who sold me so many unknown gems but was after a 12" of a phased acapella of Grace Jones' 'La Vie en Rose' that I doubt ever existed. 

Yes, really no limit. I always go and see Borat, Lorin and Ziggy at Music Mania in Ghent, and my old friend Koenie from Wally's Groove World in Antwerp. I am telling you, it is endless. Nothing ever ends there anyway. As they used to say, "Shit, it's Friday - tomorrow is Tuesday then”.

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