euro house music
UPDATE: see Jazzques's report. Beer flavours corrected.
UPDATE: photos added.
Yesterday I stopped by at the grand opening of the European Music House. It's destined to be a combination bar/music store/office space (I'm not sure what kind of business will be taking place in the offices). It's still a little bare, but should fill up rapidly.
Also, they've launched their own line of beer: Jazz Sax (blond), Jazz Bass (amber) and Jazz Drums (brown). I've all but stopped drinking beer, but made an exception. The Bass is delicious and the Sax good as well (I'm not really a blond fan). They'd run out of Drums before I had a chance to taste it. These beers should be available in other jazz clubs soon.
Along the walls they had already put up a sampling of the CDs they'll be selling.
The display reminded me of something I've been thinking about recently. Namely, how ugly or boring most Belgian jazz CD covers are. De Werf, for example, puts out a lot of great music, but the packaging is almost always terrible. Recent exceptions have come from either the albums being on French labels (Octurn's 21 emanations) or the musicians using their own designers (Pascal Schumacher's Personal Legend).
Younger musicians putting out their music independently have also recently been bucking the trend, drawing either on an indie/Downton/DIY esthetic or on Dutch zany/coolness.
These covers also reflect an evolving music: Frederik Leroux's Angular reminds me of Chris Speed and Happy Apple and throws in some light hard rock riffs; Red Rocket's Mitten scatters glorious Sigur Róssian slow-rising soundscapes amongst more abrasive free-jazz-rock (or free-rock-jazz).
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