CHRIS, aka Jess, aka Jobo, aka Dj Ohm...

MY CHiLDHOOD FRiEND!

A loyal partner and friend in the technological adventure that linked us since the 1980s when we were still just kids, Chris and I shared the same passion for computers and electronic sounds.

As teenagers in search of emancipation, we were somewhat ahead of our time. The Internet did not yet exist, but it is nevertheless via the connection between computer terminals that our paths may have crossed. Do you still remember where we first met? A clue: it was a subway station!

It was the time of the first personal computers accessible to the general public, the first modems, the first software sequencers, the New Beat, the Boccaccio and the emergence of a typically "Belgian" sound! Our personal affinities probably partly explaining why we naturally turned to the acquisition of ad hoc material to express our musical preferences. So began our musical adventure!

Fans of whirling sounds as powerful as they were crazy, we improvised amateur DJs by integrating an alternative and associative radio in full development: RADiO PANiK for those who know...

Then everything went on! A weekly radio programme (every Tuesday evening after 10pm): MiND RESEARCH, co-hosted with Mr Tim Ayris, the famous voice of a successful programme. Broadcasting freely on the airwaves our "underground" musical sympathies, which was still relatively marginal for the time, with only word of mouth in the middle as a business card, the record companies opened their doors to us for interviews, the artists solicited us to play in the brand new studio voluntarily built, with others, from donations and different elements of recovery. A more professional working environment, a more powerful antenna, a better location, a large space, the studio, the chill-out room to welcome our guests... Everything was there! A unique place and atmosphere, especially on Tuesday nights... We managed to federate, unite and share without falling into the trap of a star system disguising human relations... The fun was there! The adventure was beautiful!

📡 MiND RESEARCH Tuesdays became a popular event for a growing number of loyal fans. The proposed sound had no equivalent on the Brussels radio scene. The DJs in sight at the moment were in a hurry. Guests were well received and skillfully interviewed by a pro in Shakespeare's language in order not to offend any community. And it was working! It must be said that, for the time, passing on a loop and without complex artists like Joey Beltram, Jeff Mills, Richie Hawtin, Robert Hood, Robert Armani, Mike Dred, Woody Mac Bride, Luke Slater, The Advent, Aphex Twin, Bandulu, Miss DJax or Random XS, it allowed to rally a certain community in the making... What's more, it was clearly not "main stream"! At the beginning of the 90s, highlighting labels such as R&S, Transmat, Metroplex, Underground Resistance, Axis, M-Plant, Planet-E, Rephlex, PeaceFrog or Djax Up Beats or Cheap Records for example was not really in fashion!

Number of shows later, after having served as a relay in the broadcasting of the "10 Days Of Techno", having organized and participated in parties, raves and other notable events, the "chill-out" room that we had decorated, maintained and for which we had taken the greatest care went up in smoke... One evening, by negligence, while other teams had the use of it, the fire broke out there and spread to the recording studio... The project was attractive, it was a free, alternative, associative, multicultural, inter-ethnic radio... In short, "beauty, goodness, good"! But, the fault for bad luck, the fault for negligence, a cigarette badly extinguished and it was the blaze! So we had to rebuild everything! This was undoubtedly the trigger for our disassociation from the project...

The majority reached, little by little other choices presented themselves to us! The food autonomy in focus, the socio-economic reality has therefore pushed us to gradually disinvest and turn to studies and job search. As everything became too difficult to reconcile, we gradually separated.

In the end, no resentment or bitterness. Just a little nostalgia perhaps... Not that our youth years are so far behind, but because we had in our hands the keys to a project that, if completed, would certainly have a foothold today... The commercial radios that closed their doors to us now broadcast the striking, twilight, dark and gloomy sounds that made us shudder and shake us while we were just teenagers looking for sensations. The underground has certainly abandoned its values there, the music industry having gone through it. Entrepreneurship has been replaced by the profitability of a lucrative business: ELECTRO MUSiC! The one that makes crowds move and spend crazy amounts of money for a few moments of ephemeral pleasures...

Anyway, more than 30 years later, what are you becoming my old friend? Manifest yourself if you read this message & want to! You'll recognize yourself!

nms303