From her top-floor apartment in the Forest neighborhood Altitude Cent, Céline Gillain lives a few meters above the rest of the city. Even the name of her street, Avenue Jupiter, confirms the unique quality of the area. Having accomplished an ascent this high, one can take a moment to meditate, to reflect on the current state of things. This is certainly what Gillain has done while making her recent album Mind Is Mud, a genre-bending and cutting-edge album reaching out to both the dance floor as to alternative spheres. “But there is no room for club music in an experimental venue”, she mentions. A statement glimpsing her idea about the ideal club night, as we’ll uncover later. These and many other thoughts are discussed in her living room on a warm afternoon in August, surrounded by Gillain’s musical gear. The musician and part-time professor in sociology of art and sound creation and experimental music at La Cambre offers us coffee and water, before we dive into a long conversation.

Isabel, Camilla, Lola, Ariana, Marieke, Aleksandra, Nel, Tanja and Marie. Meet the members of the Burenhinder collective. Their name is a legal term, best translated as neighborly or private nuisance, and got stuck in Ariana’s head during her law studies. Being the exact reason why many clubs have to close their doors, Burenhinder felt like the perfect name for their own club night. As some kind of a warning of what was about to happen… The term also holds a subversiveness, widening the shoulders while saying ‘here we are’. There is a direct link with the politics behind the collective, with their shared philosophy and point of view on what’s going on out there, in the world, in the clubs and the DJ booths. And last but not least Burenhinder stands for the music propagated by the collective, which is mostly hard dance music played at a certain amount of decibels. Curious as we are, we meet up with six Burenhinder members in the garden of Trix in Antwerp, the location of their first party ever.

The product of a Peruvian father and Belgian mother, the prolific DJ and producer Diego Cortez Salas aka DC Salas is a real Brusseleir, born and raised in the capital. Landed in Uccle, the Cortez Salas family’s only child spent his childhood in the 1180 municipality until he expanded his horizons in Etterbeek, Schaerbeek and - nowadays - Laeken.  

Moogy Maserati is still relatively new to Brussels. She moved from Rotterdam to the Belgian capital in 2021 to get her master degree Fine Arts at LUCA School of Arts. While she had been deejaying already in her home country, her DJ career really lifted off in Brussels. Coming from the Dutch indie scene, she discovered the Belgian electronic scene and a pivotal Kiosk Radio show propagated her former soundscape style into a more hybrid DJ persona, effortlessly moving from soundscapes into club selections or the other way around.

As a remainder of a former obsession with Betty Boop, several figurines of the animated cartoon character oversee the living room of Bibi Seck. All designed in different settings, one turns the 1930’s born personage into a DJ. Below them a series of vinyl records are exhibited, giving an insight into some of Bibi's musical heroes: Evelyn Champagne King, Vanity 6, Prince Charles & City Beat Band, … all from an era in music history pivotal for Bibi Seck. Say hello to the 1980’s and the rise of electronic instruments, smoothly bridging the disco, funk and soul music of the 1970’s and the house music of the - at the time still unknown - future. Situated somewhere on this exciting junction, Bibi Seck found her musical crush and many moons later started to build her own musical identity as a DJ.