Having heard good things about BMI airlines from a credit card fraudster and to fly to Brussels they offered a good price, so I thought I would try them out. Initial impressions were not good, with massive queues for check-in. But staff said this was unusual and they dealt with the difficulties well.

Thanks to good fortune I always get to set next to the plane wing! This is the best possible place!

The aircraft was a crappy 737 which looked, from the 1970s interior at least, as if it had seen same action. The flight was also pretty full and the air stewards looked harrassed.

The 737 interior looked as if it had seen a more glamourous time

The clouds, which I stared at my whole journey were different from anything I had seen before. In the past clouds have looked like cotton wool or a trippy computer demo. Today they looked at times like a polar landscape, and at others like creased up bed sheets. The sunlight made everything so wonderful and happy, in contrast to the deary London winter.

Cloudz rule

The flight touched down only 20 minutes late, if we had not taxied for 30 minutes at Heathrow we would have arrived early. Heathrow is the UK's biggest airport, but its too big, and its over crowded. To be honest I actually prefer Stanstead.

I was actually able to see my guitar being unloaded at Brussels airport from my plane seat!

On the way I encoutered a demonstration. There was a band, and they asked me if I would like to join in with them on my guitar. I had to refuse, but the protesters were friendly and the police presence was unnecessary.

Huge crowds of protesters line the streets in a peaceful demonstration - so why all the old bill?

The venue was not a long walk, I passed over a canal which reminded me of London, so I decided to take a picture

Unbelieveable that this canal is actually more polluted than Regent's Canal, London

Next I went to check out the main-room. Of course it was several hours to go to the party, but the place was in a state of disarray, with tool boxes and no electricty. Power was to be supplied by a generator, but there were some problems. Luckily electricity arrived in plenty of time for the rave!

Just some of the tool boxes that littered the floor of the venue

The worst quality gameboy camera picture ever? This beast of a generator powered the brussels_hq rave.

Carl and Wanga showed me the box containing their latest project - 'Microbuilder' - a way of making your own online web community based on the micromusic code. It was well presented and looked impressive. The box contained many CDs, a book and a swiss army knife. It made me feel proud to be part of the project even in a small way - it must be even better for Carl, Wanga and SuperB.

Firestarter showed me his SIDsyn, a selfmade sound module based on the famous Commodore 64 sound chip. The unit was well constructed on a double sided PCB with an elegant design philosophy. Firestarter told me the hardware is now bug free (even possible to use a C64 joystick for control) and the next stage is to write an operating system for the device. But even with basic software the rumour around town is that SIDsyn makes an awesome sound. Unlike SIDstation Firestarter has thoughtfully added a noise gate to remove the hiss which makes the SID chip so unfriendly. Hopefully it will be possible for people to make their own SID synthesiser, I can say that if the software is as good as the hardware this will be a worthwhile task.

firesARTer's SID synthesiser, inside and out

But it was not possible to g33k out with the micromusic regulars for long. I had to setup my equipment for the show. A distortion box and minidiscman have served me well in the past, being reliable enough. Like in Barcelona I had a few small problems with my guitar after the journey, but hopefully I can fix those over the holiday.

The sound guy was pretty friendly - here is the equipment he used - a small rack of fx and a medium sized mixer

After sound check brussels_hq had organised a nice meal for us all. This included a variety of delicious dishes. The only thing which sucked was insufficient dessert. It was a very communial atmosphere and I had nice converstions with Wanga and Manou amongst others. But time passed quickly and I soon realised the party had already started and we were still eating dinner. I quickly finished and made my way to the main room, hoping I hadn't missed too much.

Brussels_hq made some nice touches to the rave, including this huge Christmas tree.

The first act I saw was Covox, I think he was easily the best show there (for my taste anyway). His music has been described as pop in the past... I would not say that - his music was very dancable and highly catchy, nice beats too. The live vocoding was something pretty special.

Manou's act was nicely prepared, but the response was strangely muted to what it has been in her past shows. Since the Barcelona show she changed her apperance slightly, and played an improved set. The two main highlights of the show were a ballad which really touched the audience and a special 2 track ending with a guest apperance from Santa QFS himself. Gifts of sparklers united the audience.

This is the monitor speaker Manou used in her set.

Lo-Bat made a pretty crazy set of instrumental gameboy music. The crowd were certainally into him, being familiar with his music *and* chanting his name. I was preparing for my set, and so only caught the last half, but no doubt he went to sleep pleased with his performance.

Next it was my turn to perform. My introduction really helped to inpire the crowd. Things went well, I started with 'Frank Sinatra', which I made a few mistakes in because I couldn't really hear what I was playing. Later Carl told me no one noticed because the sound was pretty distorted for that song. Anyhow, the crowd response was enthusiatic, and I lauched into my exaggerated coldwar metal tune 'Radiation Hazard'. I think this was the song of my set - people liked the riff, which I was very happy about. Things carried on going at least OK, for instance with a special cover version of 'Sunshine After The Rain' which I wrote especially for the gig.

But things then went wrong in a big way. I played a rap version of 'tune 4 my broken atari' which went down very well in London, but in Brussels the crowd totally switched off. I should not have played 2 rave songs in a row, but something a little more relaxed, like 'shoot out the lights'. But anyway, the damage was done... I tried to win the crowd back with a couple of cover versions ('Paranoid' and 'Boys Boys Boys' which worked so well at the Golden Pudel) on the whole these tracks just made things worse. There was some response in this time, but basically I sucked. Knowing when to stop I made Sabrina my last song. So far all my shows had gone well, but the day had to come where I had a bad gig - a shame it was at such an important show. The start of my set was excellent, but on the whole I sucked big time.

At least I know exactly what went wrong, the next show really will be the best yet!

Next was Rolemodel with a totally revamped set. He certainally made some new fans after this show! I was pretty depressed after my own performance, of course, Wanga and Manou helped to cheer me up saying the start of my set had been good.... but I would rather the end had been good ;-> Anyhow, I was soon raving to Rolemodel's Gameboy bleeps and gritty Amiga tracker files. He even got an encore: 'I will play one more song - IF - you buy Bleep Street records'.......... cheeky boy ;-> But of course I will buy Bleep Street records!

Just as important as the live acts were the DJs and VJs who filled in between the sets and projected micro style visuals. We have Hyperkut, firesARTer, Poke and Easygroove to thank for efficient and reliable service through out the night.

This is the DJ box where Hypercut, firestARTer and the C-Men hung their things. All I got on the image was a phatt lens flare from the C-Men's projector.

Overall the people at the party loved bleeps, and prefered dancy instrumental music to vocal stuff. The girls and boys were a little strange, but as friendly as any ravers I have ever met.

The stage looked like this after the show.

Sunday was a weird day. I left my room late, at about 330 and went to a VJing workshop held by my friends the C-Men. Their visuals are good, as is well known, but what I was more interested to see was how they worked to achieve their effects. I was impressed by their creative process and learnt how to use the Panasonic MX50 video mixer, it was a nice tutorial.

After that there was a pretty lazy time, Firestarter had presents for people, in the shape of some CD-Rs, mine was a recording of the Golden Pudel show. I listened to it and its gonna be very useful, so thanks again firestARTer! We pissed around with the C-Men and a ghettoblaster which had all kinds of built in effects including a drum machine, built in rhythms and atmospheres.

Lektrogirl made a pretty decent soup which I enjoyed with lots and lots of cheese, but I was still a bit hungry and wanted see some of Brussels. Manou felt the same way so we went into town, arranging with the possee to meet later for intense chocolate tasting.

Belgium has a range of strong and unusual tasting beers. Also a nice touch is that they are served with a bowl of free crisps. I didn't want to get rinsed, so I just had one beer at each of the 2 bars we visited. There was also a version of a Weinnachtmarkt, and we tried some Belgian chocolate, but it was not up to expectations, being totally sweet and not actually that nice. It was starting to rain heavily so we called Hyperkut who met us and drove us to his home.

What happened there is exactingly recorded on the website of lektrogirl. However I wish to disrespect the rest of the chocolate judging panel, who were to easily won over by fancy packaging and artificial flavours. I want chocolate to taste of chocolate and not chemicalz. But big up Covox for introducing me to a nice Swedish brand.

An old fashioned sign made a great noise as it updates information. Not so great was the revelation that my flight home was cancelled.

So what was I to do? I had a lesuirely look around the airport shops, which took about 20 minutes as Brussels airport is pretty small. Then I decided to use the toilet. I thought the disabled toilet would be a good choice, having a large area for all my luggage. The toilet was 'automatic' but it didn't seem to work properly. At first the flush did not work at all, so I tried to fool the light sensors. I managed to exract the most pathetic flush ever, and it didn't do much to empty the bowl. Further attempts to get a flush failed, so I decided to escape as quickly as possible from the area.... Hopefully no one saw me leave!

Automatic toilets would be cool if they worked properly, otherwise they suck hugely. Probably best to stick with manual for now.

So what next? I still had 3.5 hours to kill. I could actually do quite alot as I had my organiser and mobile phone with me. Someone had left me a message, wanting to buy my TR606 drum machine so I arranged a time to meet him. In these kind of situations time always travels slowly, just 5 minutes had passed over the phone call so I started to write this Gameboy diary. After about an hour and a half I ran out of inspiration, not having any images to give me ideas. It was about time use my meal voucher.

Pizza Hut was high in fat, and low in taste, however there were lots of little exhibitions around to g33k out at, as you can see here.

an early radio using valves, and a very old_skool turntable - able to play 78rpm records and with 14" capability also.

Overall a good party and phantastique to see my micromusic friends again. A shame about my show, but next time things are gonna be back to normal.

(c)gwem 2002
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