On the road again AGAIN: Archive

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Nostalgia for a Baltic weekend: Riga trip report

OK, I’ll save you the Googling: Riga is the capital of Latvia, the middle one of the three so-called Baltic states. I was headed over there for a weekend to visit my friend Šarlote, her sister Anete and their psychotic cat, which I believe was called “Katki”. I had been in Riga before, rushing through while on a hitchhiking trip to Finland, leaving us less than 24 hours to spend...

Feb 24th

Feb 5th

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It seems that this winter ...

- there’s a new kind of oranges in the (small Arab grocery) shops, which I’d never seem before. They look really crappy but actually taste yummy. - a whole lot of people are burning wood fires. You can smell them everywhere. Has heating a house with electricity/fuel/gas really become too expensive? - there is an awful lot of broken glass on the streets. Or maybe I’m just more...

Jan 31st

Jan 24th

Watch

Last Thursday we played our second show with Jean-Mikili. Here’s a video of us performing “Les Comores”. I hope you will appreciate the Kinshasa-style sound and image quality of the clip. Also, from now on, I think I will always enquire about the colour of the backdrop beforehand, so I can wear a matching sweater and be invisible, except for my hands and face. Good times!

Jan 23rd

Jan 16th

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Jan 12th

Last week I posted a small video post about Sadhana Forest, the place where I spent last Christmas and New Year a year ago. Turns out that two days later, they got badly hit by a cyclone and most of their infrastructure was destroyed. (Find out more about it here.) Which is, needless to say, a pretty major bummer. I promise I will never call them hippies again, and wish them good luck with the...

Jan 3rd

Jan 1st

Dec 29th

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Dec 28th

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Dec 23rd

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Dec 21st

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Dec 16th

Dec 14th

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Dec 8th

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Nov 30th

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Nov 20th

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Watch

Many years ago, when postrock was still cool, I played in a postrock band called A December Lake (the coolest postrock band ever from Zaventem, Belgium!) Recently, our only “release” was “re-released” on Songs from the Vault. Should you want to, you can download it there for free. The video above shows our very last song from our very last show (April 2004 - GOD...

Nov 19th

RTW

Exactly one year ago (one day later than originally planned because of fog), I set off on a trip that would take me round the world, through Southern India, Southeast Asia, New Zealand, the West coast of the USA (and 3 days in Vancouver). Good times for sure. Almost six months now since I got back home again, slightly less exciting than being on the road, but still alright. Haven’t got any...

Nov 18th

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Nov 14th

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Watch

Show and tell: Stuff by friends (1) This a short dance video my friends Ana and Jorge made on a rare sunny day last August. It’s one of the most beautiful things I have seen recently. Or rather, when I first saw it, I wasn’t feeling all that great, and somehow the beauty of this video slapped me in the face and made me get my shit together again. A few years ago, I worked with them...

Nov 3rd

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Two different approaches to live pop music

As I told you before, I went to Off Festival in Poland last August and tremendously enjoyed it. On the second day of the three-day fest, I saw two shows that on paper looked quite identical, but the actual experience couldn’t have been more different. OK, one band was a duo and the other a trio, but other than that: a mixture of electronic beats and acoustic instruments, a pretty girl (one,...

Oct 24th

Oct 10th

Oct 6th

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Sep 14th

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Sep 13th

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Inclusion through language?

Very recently, a wise young lady told me: America is a true melting pot, whereas Belgium is rather like a mosaic: everybody is a little different but they are all on the same frame. I thought: that’s very interesting. Though the “melting pot” concept may be a cliché the size of Texas, I think it is undeniable that there’s a totally different approach to immigration in the...

Sep 11th

Sep 8th

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Aug 24th

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Aug 16th

Aug 5th

Jul 31st

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This is my "sorry for not posting" post.

It seems like everybody, at some point, has the need to post a message saying something like: “Oh, I’m so sorry, dear multitude of readers, avid followers of this supremely interesting blog, but I haven’t gotten round to writing anything even remotely interesting in the last couple of days/weeks because nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah.” So, what’s my excuse? Frankly, I...

Jul 28th

Jul 9th

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Jul 1st

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Jul 1st

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Jun 29th

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Jun 28th

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Jun 28th

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Jun 22nd

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Jun 21st

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Jun 21st

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Jun 20th

Jun 19th

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The secret war in Laos

During the Vietnam war, Laos was officially a neutral country. In practice this meant everybody could do whatever the fuck they wanted on Lao territory. The Vietcong used part of Eastern Laos for their Ho Chi Minh trail, traficking arms and other goods through the jungle. As a result, the US decided to bomb the hell out of them. Between 1964 and 1973, the US Air Force flew 580,944 sorties,...

Jun 17th

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Jun 14th

Jun 12th

Jun 9th