Xavier Defrang

I'm off for few days. Time to take a break away from the big iron and go spend a few relaxing days up north in Edinbourgh, all the way via a sleepless night Brixton, just to contemplate my body collapse under dozens of tons of rock solid bass.

I'm back from a few days off at the Vlaamse Kust. I haven't done much but kicking back and relaxing with friends. I did however a couple of absurd yet sociologically interesting excursions. I paid a visit to the Mecca of Flemish nationalism — which looks like a cheesy level in RTCW — and the nearest ville de province at a driving distance just to get a little taste of France... Holidays always leave a bittersweet taste of Houellebecq poetry in my mouth...

It's now high time I start to plan my next trip to Poland, via Berlin. Let's add already the new DDR Museum to the must-see list.

If suddenly your shiny new MacBook with a RAM upgrade starts to throw kernel panics at random, make sure the memory banks are properly plugged in and, trust me, you may have to push very hard. One of my buddy's MacBook had been running smoothly for more than a week before the problems started to occur...

I hadn't been in London for about a decade so I was eager to rediscover the City. The scale and density of London really impressed me. Once you drive away from central London, it looks more like a conurbation than a town which expanded organically. I've been dreaming for years about a city which never stops and London is the closest thing I've witnessed to date. A kebab shop open at 2am is no big surprise but I would be willing to pay to have 24/7 supermarkets in Brussels!

I actually spent most of my time in the Mecca of grime: South London. I had a great time hanging out and doing some record shopping with Plasticman. That was just what I expect from a city trip, just feeling the atmosphere, changing the pace and tasting another lifestyle, one bitesize at a time...

The DMZ party was big : nice venue decently packed with a friendly crowd. The 12k soundsystem more than lives up the hype: it is absolutely guts twisting. I had never felt my lungs and my throat vibrating from the inside. Every kick is just a short moment of compressed silence lost in a continuous stream of deep, monstruous sub bass lines. We entered the venue minutes before Joe Nice took control of the decks. He started with really slow dubstep tunes but finished his set with a couple of totally killer tracks (including 'Empire', a smashing piece by distance) that definitely got me into the party. For the next couple of hours, the crowd was taken over by the Digital Mystikz & Loefah, delivering some slow and dark material, dropping dubplates after dubplates, back to back style. D1 gently drove on the highway built by the Mystikz, he still managed to make things get darker and louder. Plasticman hyped up the crowd with a very energetic 3 decks set. Every Plasticman mix I've heard recently just sounds better than the previous one. I can't get enough of these tight beat and harmonics matching! If you want to hear how it's like, check Plastic's latest Rinse FM mix, it's "serious"!

Big up to the whole Plastic family, Mala & Coki, Skream, Distance, Quiet Storm, Joe Nice, JME, Messiah, all the Rinse FM crew, and all the Croydon, Thornton Heath and Brixton massive! Boooh! That's some good time we've had!

I'm heading off to South London to hang out with some buddies and attend the DMZ party, UK's biggest grime and dubstep night. Living in Brussels, we can barely scratch the surface of what that grime vibe is all about. I keep on reading it's an insider thing, an extreme local phenomenon, that lyrics are crippled with private jokes... I'm looking forward to checking this from the inside! About the party, the line up (plasticman, joey nice, loefah, digital mystikz, slaughter mob, youngsta, ...) gets easily even with the massive amount of kilowatts stacked up in the DMZ sound system so expectations are rather high!

There's a bunch of flickr galleries of previous DMZ nights and it looks fairly good...

Hidden somewhere in Les Marolles (next to the famous bar Chez Jeannine), there's this new restaurant called Soul.
Yes, it's yet another one of these conceptual fooding outlet but the Chef (coming all the way from New York, via Amsterdam) is so cool and talented that it's really worth paying a visit. Especially if you consider how hard it is to find some healthy food at a reasonable price in downtown Brussels. Oh yeah, and the place is 100% non-smoking!

PS: Ethan, that custom vegan plate was truly awesome! :)

Birthday present time is slighlty approaching... hint.

If you are into extreme electronic music and your actual meatspace is not far from the center of Europe, you can't afford to miss this party which will take place in Brussels :

Here is a video of the NYE Free Party which took place in Brussels Central Station. That was an incredibly exciting event!

Happy new year everybody. The recent lack of updates can be explained by quite a large amount of work to be dealt with, a trip to Paris, some spare-time party organizing, movies watching, noise making and hell a lot of sleep.

I've been working on the relaunch of Le Gazon, that explains the lack of updates... see you there!