Elefantasi

People used to joke that you couldn't name five famous Belgians* as if that somehow marked the country down. Fame is overrated anyway isn't it? Belgium has a rich musical history from New Beat to the present day and is especially influential in dance and electronic music. I've written quite a few times before about Rheinzand, a three piece from Ghent who make fantastic dance pop spliced with Balearica and disco. Multi- instrumentalist/ producer Reinhard Vanbergen, singer Charlotte Caluwaerts and producer/ DJ Mo Disko cook up a shimmering, unapologetic dance floor oriented storm. The single We'll Be Alright was one of my favourites from last year. Their 2020 self titled debut album was a wall to wall treat, from the cover of Talking Heads Slippery People to the nagging electronic bliss of Fourteen Again. They also roped in all and sundry to remix it, a slew of outstanding remixes from the likes of Red Axes, Scorpio Twins, Chris Coco, Pete Herbert, Skylab, Superpitcher and so on. This one, Obey (Hardway Bros Stereo Odyssey), as remixed by Sean Johnston's Hardway Bros is utterly sublime and seductive leftfield dance music.

Part of the recent cross blog pollination between this blog and Dr Rob's Ban Ban Ton Ton led to me reviewing the forthcoming Rheinzand album. You can read that here. The single Elefantasi has been recorded and released digitally in five different languages- English, French, Dutch, Italian and Spanish- and at Bandcamp you can download a Make Your Own version (that's Belgian for instrumental). Elefantasi is sumptuous, trippy Nu Disco with an imaginary Peter Hook on bass. 

* Obviously it's not even that difficult- Eddy Merckx, Herge, various footballers (Enzo Scifo from the 80s and several current modern ones such as Romelu Lukaku, Eden Hazard and Kevin de Bruyne), Adolphe Sax, Magritte- and that's without resorting to Google. All men I've just noticed however.