Features Soundtrack: Benjamin Schoos

‘Welcome to the delicious chocolate sound of famous Belgium pop music!’ Benjamin Schoos tells us. So we asked him to pop us together a list of his favourite pieces and tell us why he’s chosen each and every one of them. Lovely.

Telex - Moscow Discow
The Belgian cult synth-pop group TELEX was formed in 1978 by Marc Moulin, Dan Lacksman and Michel Moers, as a kind of elaborate joke. Like a Belgian Kraftwerk (the band are good friend of the german band) ), TELEX built their music entirely from electronic instruments and favoured an irreverent form of humour. ‘Discow Moscow’ is one of their hightlights! Also Telex did a lot of jingles for National Belgium radio, using a Vocoder.

Wallace Collection - Daydream
The UK had the beatles, Belgium had Wallace Collection.

Taken from ‘The Laughing Cavelier LP’ (1969), this intense track is a little bit famous in UK due to the Beta Band sample.

I love this band, mixing pop influences, as well as Jazz and classical. In February 1969, EMI chose a track called ‘Daydream’ to launch the career of the group, because this tune contained a fade-out similar to the one of ‘Hey Jude’ by The Beatles, who had had a smash hit with this the year before

Lio - Banana Split
The first LP of Lio is a French electro pop masterpiece! At the tender age of sixteen Lio conquered all European charts with ‘Banana Split’ (written by my mate and cult lyricist Jacques Duvall), a million seller in 1980. The joyful Spector-goes-electro track hit number one in Belgium, France and Italy. An English version penned by Ron and Russell Mael (Sparks) did well in Britain too. Since then Lio has enjoyed numerous other successes in both music and cinema, and TV shows (Pop Idol, The Voice).

Lio is based on the character from a sixties comic stop by artist Jean Claude Forest, author of the famous comic Barbarella. Lio is a lolita-esque teenager that Barbarella must save from the bad guys.



Plastic Bertrand - Tout Petit La Planète
Plastic Bertrand aka Roger Allen François Jouret did in ‘77 a Billboard No.1 hit single with ‘Ça Plane Pour Moi’, one of the most famous Belgian punk songs. One year later, (surprise, gosh!) he turned to synth pop music with this underground intergalactic words and synth vocoder sound. Avant garde!



Millenium - Igor Mortis
Jo Bogaert (the man behind Technotronic ‘Pump Up The Jam’) is also a great indie producer. In 1995, He produced ‘A Civilised Word’ under the name of Millenium featuring his mates Robert Wyatt and Michael Brook on guitar. This weird album mixed leftfield pop, ambiant and avant garde electro-pop to conceptual ecologic theme.

And also for freaks music lovers :

Andrew Brasseur - Mad Train
Brasseur has released many albums and singles, but internationally is best known for his double A sided single ‘The Kid’/’Holiday’, which was released on the CBS label in the UK. It never reached the UK charts (that’s a shame). According to Wikipedia. ‘The Kid’ became popular in the famous Northern Soul venue The Twisted Wheel, based in Manchester, and DJ Noel Edmonds used ‘Holiday’ as the theme tune to his Radio 1 programme in the 1970s. Hum hum hum…



The Chocolats - Brasilia Carnaval
Belgium producers and record store owners Marcel De Keukelaire and Jean Van Loo recorded a lot of hit singles in Mouscron (Belgian countryside), selling millions records of their B-music and cheap disco tracks: Patrick Hernandez’s ‘I Love America’; Chocolat’s ‘Brasilian Carnaval’; Jean Jacques Lionnet’s ‘The Duck Dance’; Amadeo’s ‘Moving Like A Superstar’.

Benjamin Schoos’ new single ‘Je Ne Vois Que’ will be released on 4th June.