Category Archives: BUZZ
Buzz – Buzz Blitz Klub Vol.1: Dancefloor De La Mort
BUZZ is a solo project resuscitated by the original founder, Jean-Christophe Van Thienen from Lille (France), a French cold wave mecca, in 2006, 21 years after their debut.
“BUZZ Blitz Klub Vol. 1: dancefloor de la mort” is the fourth BUZZ album to come out since June 2006 and the fifth since 1985. 100% DIY and produced without any label. It contains no less than 12 remixes produced by notorious artists as Neolymb (Belgium), Dirk da Davo (Neon Judgement – Belgium), People Theater (France), Void Kampf (France), Jonathan Cast (France), Darkman (Belgium), Mach Fox (USA), Millimetric (France), HIV+ (France) and Signal Aout 42 (Belgium).
Masterized by Len Lemeire at Implant Plant (Belgium), “BUZZ Blitz Klub” briefly contains more powerful versions, without being over remixed, of BUZZ’s hits intended to hit the dance floors. In my opinion, it sure succeeded as a danceable album and as a mature production, musically and textually speaking.
BUZZ lyrics are politically engaged and this album is no exception. The usual BUZZ cynic attitude is still widely present. “Dansez Dans Les Radiations” talks about nuclear, “Contrôle” about telesurveillance, “Belles Comme Des Bouddhas” about 9-11, “A L’Est Rien De Nouveau” about war conflicts media exploitation, “Des Cités En Ruines” about the Balkans, “Parce Que Je N’Ai Pas D’Ame” about animal rights, “Berlin” about the European construction on top of the after war ashes and “Daniel D. Décolle” is a tribute to Dabiel Darc from Taxi Girl. All BUZZ songs are still in French.
Altogether, I really enjoy every song on this album. A second release “BUZZ Blitz Klub Vol. 2: Daddy was a Sex Pistol” is also suppose to follow up!
BUZZ Interview
XWave – Could you give a quick history of the band and line up changes since day one?
J-C – I’m afraid there have been too many to mention over the years, that was then but this is now, and no one really cares anymore now ; plus, it’s all on nordwaves.info anyway… Most of all, BUZZ was originally, and still is, a solo-project operating with various collaborators. All the lyrics and compositions are mine. Needless to say, singing in French wasn’t well accepted then around 1985-89 and using a rudimentary drum-machine even less so; so we did!
A good drum-machine sure is better than a bad drummer but the sight of a half-naked person sweating and grunting at the back of a stage does comfort a couple of perverts and voyeurs so we had an efficient drummer for a while around 1986 who was more into drumming than into BUZZ, adding silly jazz-breaks behind your back now and then, so that was it and he’s still out there searching for the blue note and conceiving beats that will keep you off dancing for the rest of your life. Most important of all BUZZ was a very flexible structure that could welcome any kind of line-up from an additional bass player to a guitarist, backing vocalists, dancers, strip-teasers (as in Madrid in 1988), and slides.
BUZZ supported Anne Clark twice, in Belgium and in Paris. The biggest shock was when we were introduced to her backstage and she opened up her suitcase and joyfully showed us the “See You Sioux” BUZZ demo-tape I’d sent her record company a couple of weeks earlier and that she was now listening to on end. Her asking about the project every time we’ve met
ever since was one of the reasons I re-launched it confidently last year… We also had a great time supporting Taxi-Girl, the Neon Judgement, Minimal Compact, label-mates The Grief, or Kiem and The Essence… BUZZ ended its mischiefs in mid-1989 : it was then a steady nucleus of three but guitar-player Vincent suddenly packed it in, mostly because he was anxious to get a “proper” job. Bass player Sylvestre was rather disheartened and did likewise… by then the record company — Dancetaria — had almost dropped me, was using the money from our sales to produce other bands, wouldn’t re-press our 12″, wouldn’t fork out the money to finish the album (we’d paid for most of it but couldn’t afford to pay for the guitar-takes and the vocals), and wasn’t supporting us anymore because they thought we were too “commercial”. So I decided to er… pack it in ? … and start new projects. Teaming up the former Excés Nocturne guitar player, opting for a rockier approach under the name Sister Friction… lotsa gigs and festivals, lotsa projects — with the guys from La Muerte among others —lotsa line-up changes… until 1996… a nasty accident , 10 days in a coma, and off music for a while for the obvious reason. I then got hold of softwares, worked on quieter numbers for a start, mostly dub, couldn’t find anyone serious to work with, couldn’t be bothered in fact, and finally decided to ressuscitate BUZZ. The feedback and responses have never been so enthusiastic and I insist on playing exclusively new versions of already-existing songs or totally brand new numbers, unwilling as I am to cash in on the past Sex Pistols-wise!!! This is BUZZ mk2.
My collaborator these days is Jean Sailly on keyboards, kaos-pad and ambient noises and I also work with Jim from the Traumabikini video-collective for the visual side as well as Philippe Delhaies; our sound–engineer being Mike Black, from the Unkle Fabrik team…
XWave – What happened with the other original members, what have they become?
J-C – Most of them are still alive — but not necessarily kicking — and have dropped music ages ago, around 1989 or 1993 mostly, to follow professional careers and become serious blokes with a family et al… We’ve don’t see much of each others anyway to be perfectly honest with you… but we seem to have buried the hatchet, which is good… and had good laughs the last time we met remembering the “aulde daies of yore”… Sylvestre came to the Aliénord festival with Neon Electronics, Implant, T21 and BUZZ on October 7th at the Aéronef and thoroughly enjoyed our set.
XWave – Who worked with you on the 84-89 compilation?
J-C – Owing all the original studio tapes I collected, selected and planified the track-order. The live material we got from our former sound-engineer Bernard of Son DB. Then all this had to be remastered which was the job of Bruno Delemarle, a long-standing friend who didn’t feel like playing full-time in BUZZ but agreed to help remaster the original vinyl tracks and the so-far unreleased live and studio demos together with his mate Laurent Bergman, who remixed Visage’s “Fade to Grey” a couple of years ago…. Nordwaves webmaster Emmanuel helped me computerize my sleeve-designing. I had most of the ideas in my head but can do fuck all with a computer so he was very helpful…
When I met him again in March 2006 Daniel Darc, formerly of Taxi-Girl, agreed to let me release part of a bootleg from a 1986 gig in which, at the closure of our set and two encores he walks on stage to dedicate an improvised song to BUZZ… that features on the compilation CD as un-numbered bonus-track 18… needless to say I was really pleased…
XWave – How did you made up your mind to ressurect the BUZZ project 15 years later?
J-C – I guess I still had things to say, it was either that or shoot a couple of people… And our former sound-engineer once brought me a tape I’d never heard from a 1989 concert, recorded from the mixing-desk and I thought it wasn’t that bad and started pondering… then fellow musicians listened to it and thought it was “fucking good”… so I started reworking on some original tracks, 8 in all, the others I’ve dropped for the moment, but also wrote about 35 new ones in less than a year which I like even better. The funny thing is that there is no rupture between the two batches of songs… they come from the same brain-cells after all (or what’s left of them anyway !!!)
XWave – How come the song La Ville didn’t appear on the last compilation?
J-C – Well, simply because it’s a brand new track, boyo, so it had nothing to do there. I composed it in late 2005… The version you own is a final mix by Jeff dsg and DJ UGLI. It features on the forthcoming “MOVEMENT ONE” compilation issued these days by Str8line, next to Charles de Goal, No Tears, Family of Pagans and many other French indie bands in the same vein, no hip-hop acts, no thanx…
My own version of the song will appear on the “Vaudou électrique” CD while the song has also been remixed by Bertrand Siffert, from the Young Gods, and it will be included to “Bougre de Sons !” which will exclusively contain remixes of BUZZ tracks by various musicians I’ve always respected immensely…
XWave – I heard lots remixes of your songs. Can you mention the latest ones that came out during last year?
J-C – The remixes were all made in 2006 incidentally, starting in February, and some still have to come in, like LUC VAN ACKER’s or DANNY BRIOTTET’s, of RENEGADE SOUNDWAVE fame, whereas I have now received those of DAVID HARROW (aka JAMES HARDWAY) who also once worked with ANNE CLARK, as well as ALEC EMPIRE or LEE SCRATCH PERRY, GARY CLAIL or JAH WOBBLE, to name but a few… I’ve also got one from the aforementioned LAURENT BERGMAN, another by BERTRAND SIFFERT of the YOUNG GODS and LEN LEMEIRE from Belgian electro-hardcore band IMPLANT, and yet another by SEVERIN 24, formerly of GARLIC FROG DIET. BRUNO DELEMARLE should be bringing me one in the near future, and so will JEAN SAILLY… and DJ UNKNOWN from New York’s EAST VILLAGE RADIO… That concerns lots of different songs, both vintage and new, and BUZZ also has two vocal collaborations via the Net with VERONICA VASICKA from 2VM and KIKA from Columbian band ATOMIC BRAINS…
XWave – It seems like you follow that DIY way of doing things religiously. Would you sign up a major label if you ever get an offer?
J-C – … depends… I don’t wanna lose control for a fistful of dollars!!!
I’m not making any money with BUZZ but at least there isn’t any swine or synthpop-svengali feeding off my back! Once bitten twice shy… I’ve learnt the lessons from the Dancetaria experience. They helped us greatly in the early stages but totally ripped us off and slagged us off in the later ones.
XWave – Who is your hottest female artist ever?
J-C – I’m not certain about that and it depends what you mean by “hottest” but you the runners-up include ANNE CLARK, LESLIE WINER, SIOUXSIE SIOUX, Dutch singer MATHILDE SANTIG, Fado singer AMALIA RODRIGUES, as well as Bossa-Nova star ASTRUD GILBERTO; book-wise I’d say ZADIE SMITH and FLANNERY O’CONNOR (not Sinead !)… There was a time when I was really into PATTI SMITH and then I saw her live around 2000 in Brussels and God did I get bored, from Punk godmother she’d turned to old hippie hag and apart from the “Piss Factory” intro I didn’t get what I was looking for… plenty of boy-scoutish campfire songs of the greatest interest and we almost ended up all chanting “‘Stop the War”, if not “Peace in Viet Nam”… that was embarrassing to be perfectly honest with you…
XWave – Who are your heroes/heroines?
J-C – General Moshe Daian, Chet Baker, WilliamBlake, Anne Frank, the Italian Futurists, Renegade Soundwave, my parents and grandparents, Thomas Coraghessan Boyle (met him in 1996), Adam and the Ants circa 1979 (I saw them then and never recovered), and Pedro el perrito feliz…
XWave – What would be your desert island number one record?
J-C – Tough one this one, Jérôme; it could well either be something by ADRIAN BORLAND or THE SOUND, The YOUNG GOD’s TV SKY, RENEGADE SOUNDWAVE’s Soundclash, CABARET VOLTAIRE or RICHARD H. KIRK’s solo work, some cool CHET BAKER stuff (“Let’s get lost” and the likes) or AMALIA RODRIGUES’s “Segredo”, makes me wanna cry every time I play it… or MAX’s (Kevin Mooney’s band with Matthew Ashman) LP or… now that I come to think of it anything from Italian composer FRANCO BATTIATO… or yet again “La nau dels argonauts” by Pep Llopis, a Spanish composer from Valencia…
XWave - What is your best movie of all time?
J-C – It must be BRAZIL or that Russian film by Serguei Bundartchuk called — in Russian — “When storks fly by” — or something approaching; I also greatly enjoyed De La Iglesia’s ‘ACTION MUTANTE” (produced by Pedro Almodovar as far as I can remember) in a very different register though… and “THE DRAUGHTSMAN’s CONTRACT” by Peter GREENAWAY… To me, “MAGNOLIA” is brilliant stuff as well. And… since you ask… Wim Wenders, Ingmar Bergman, Doillon and Rohmer are pseudo-intellectual tossers, just like their Guru Roland Barthes. To me, their productions are a bloody waste of time and money and they should have been confiscated their cameras and prevented from filming long ago so that they should get back to grips with what real life is… and, yesss, I do believe Depardieu is a much over-rated feeble and hardly credible actor… and the French film industry is in a sorry state. I went for a lot of Ken Loach until he became some second-hand Michael Moore, another helpless twat.
Give me the Monthy Python any time !!!
XWave – Been living in France for now about 6 months, I had time to realize about the political issues going on right now. What are your future hopes for this beautiful country?
J-C – France is in its last throes, it’s a terminal case. We’re heading straight for civil war — say, before ten years — and then we’ll call Uncle Sam for help as we always do… it will take longuer to start than in The Lebanon or the former Yugoslavia but we’ll get it all the same, and just as bad…
France is a nation of loud-mouthed infa(r)tuated cowards… they know fuck all about the outside world but — hey, look! — we’ve brought the world that Jean-Jacques Rousseau loony and le Camembert !!! and the country has been going to the dogs for the last 20 years or so, well 25 actually since Mitterrand and his gang got elected way back in 1981… I know, since I voted for him… God was I gullible !!!
Mind you, I still feel very European as I did in 1985-89, singing in French but also in Italian, Russian and Spanish… I’d much rather move to Portugal, speaking a bit of the language helps, where the vibe is much more positive and the country is still preserved and authentic ; just like Italy and Spain were 20 and 10 years ago and now they’ve been kind of contaminated and are bound for the same fate and downfall…
France is an example of what shouldn’t be done education-wise, immigration-wise and culture-wise; it’s lost all sense of direction, hijacked as it is by various pressure-groups, active minorities, lobbies and a despicable politically correct attitude inhereted from the Socialist years.
The last anti-CPE strikes and university blockades — you must have heard of that being in Paris for a while now — last Spring in France were good proof that the so-called left-wing is a bunch of proto-Red Khmer fascists and would-be dictators. Two of my new songs deal with that : one is called “Nouvelle pensée unique”, implying that if they were given power they’d be no better than Bush and his clique and they’d all line us up against the wall if they could have their say . The other is “Le nazi en dreadlocks” vilipending altermondialist do-gooders ; they’re the new 21st century Jesuits wanting to convert the whole planet, their icons are Che Guevara, Manu Chao and Bob Marley, they think it’s become fashionable to hate the Jews and Israel while supporting Ezbollah and Palestine: it’s oh so trendy ; just like systematically opposing the Americans and advocating that Michael Moore is the new messiah while Tony Blair is “Bush’s poodle”… They rave about democracy but the only form of action they could come up with when on strike was oppressing their fellow-citizens from day one : by blocking trains and occupying universities and preventing other people from studying or working for 2 bleeding months instead of making efforts to gain their sympathies, and if you disagree in the slightest that means to them that you’re “against them” and must be eliminated, so much for credibility and democracy. There are some countries in which people would fight and die to have the right to education and the first thing these goatee-bearded brainless gits on government grants have managed to do is divide the country. To top it all they’ve also indirectly been feeding the interests of a now stronger extreme right-wing party. I’m shit-scared for the next presidential elections now that the shadow of Le Pen is looming large over the country… A beautiful country it sure was, once… but not anymore my lad. Just walk down our streets and you’ll enjoy the tension.
On a more international level, the general attitude in France is one of pure cowardice. It has now become a national sport and that’s the only the very reason why Al’ Quaida bombs haven’t started blowing up here as they have in Madrid and London… simply because we do not scare anyone anymore and are ripe for invasion and submission. We never confront reality but would much rather talk and talk and talk about it, negociate and compromise. And some of us do think that compromise will preserve us and it won’t, it will only make us weaker and more isolated… and I don’t want to be part of that. Oh no, sorry sireee, I’m not politically correct and I can think for myself.
XWave – Are there any local bands out there you’d like to point out?
J-C – Now that I’m a regular myspace addict I’d hotly recommend MACH FOX from Minneapolis, 2VM from New York, BANISTER and DEADBOY from Lisbon, GARY ASQUITH’s and KEVIN MOONEY’s new project THE LAVENDER PILL MOB, with some extra help from ANDREW GRAY of the WOLFGANG PRESS. BLUE SUN I discovered on myspace and greatly enjoyed… and, locally, fellow-Lille denizens BIRTHDAY PONEY — a crossover between MC5 and Oasis —, UNDOO, and the mythical GUERRE FROIDE who’re back as well with both vintage, revisited and brand new tracks… something well worth checking out…
XWave – Any european tour for BUZZ coming anytime soon?
J-C – Not that I know of yet… but there’ll be a couple of maverick raidings of various European towns planned in the future according to the contacts we’ve got there… but we’re gonna concentrate on the release of “Vaudou électrique” and “Bougres de sons !” right now… BUZZ’ll get back to Lisbon next Summer, there’s also Germany in the Spring, a couple of dates in Belgium and France now and again… and I’d love to do the Eastern Countries… VERONICA VASICKA might be able to get us something in the US sometime next year… I’m more into one-off gigs and concerts when you actually meet people and get the feeling of their city for a couple of days at least instead of rushing off to the next one… that’s what I did in Madrid in 1986, preparing the gig at the YA’STA with local artists for a whole week before playing there… and that’s what I did in Lisbon last September… and that was great.
