With 10 Belgian acts proudly sitting on the line-up, fans of homegrown music are more than covered.
It’s Belgian Music Week, so we’re putting our Belgian BRDCST representation in the spotlight. From carefully assembled trios to solo scene-shifters, from deep listening trance to boundaryless avant-pop. Belgium on top, all weekend long.
Fenne Kuppens: solo, at her stillest
In the podcast KUNST, KUNST en nog eens KUNST, Fenne Kuppens (Whispering Sons frontwoman) said: “It’s always been a dream of mine to make a solo album… I’m going to work hard for it.” At the end of 2025, she unexpectedly held a few try-outs, and suddenly we heard a side we didn’t know: tranquil, spare, fragile, introspective.
BRDCST immediately offered her a five-day residency in our brand-new AB Salon. She’ll work on new material, refine songs, and expand her trio (with Kobe Lijnen and Nelle Bogaerts) into a quintet. BRDCST is the moment where that work can be discovered for real, for the first time.
KVR: STUFF. x Jameszoo, for fans of Thundercat, Hudson Mohawke & The Comet Is Coming
KVR is the triumvirate of STUFF. members Lander Gyselinck (drums) and Dries Laheye (bass), plus Jameszoo keyboard-man Niels Broos. De Standaard praised their “mix of electronica, grooves and crunchy drums” in a four-star review.
In spring 2026, Spam Vol.2 follows, with wonderfully short titles (Bleit, Tankje, Hey) and even more room for groove nerds and rhythm fetishists. Bonus: with three shows, Gyselinck can basically call April 2026 his AB month. But at BRDCST: KVR. Period.
Youniss: avant-pop that refuses to obey
Antwerp-based Youniss Ahamad shifts between genres like others switch playlists: from cerebral dance (debut, 2020) to post-punk/hip-hop/noise on White Space (2023). That album carries the spirit of his (fore)bears, roots stretching from Ivory Coast to Iraq, and the lived reality of colonial patterns of thought that still seep through Western structures.
In spring 2026, Good Effort! arrives: yet another shift. This time toward jazz, or as he situates it himself: somewhere between To Pimp A Butterfly-era Kendrick Lamar, Flying Lotus and Slauson Malone. The single Gits Worse (feat. Petite Noir) was described by Clash as “avant-pop that refuses to obey genre lines.”
Berlinde Deman: midnight concert on the serpent (AB Salon)
Berlinde Deman is the regular tuba player with Flat Earth Society Orchestra and moves effortlessly between jazz, theatre and classical music. But at BRDCST she goes even deeper: with the serpent, a rare 16th-century wind instrument she’s been obsessively exploring for years. “The many subtle sounds of that instrument are incredibly beautiful,” she says. That dusty, warm tone sits at the heart of her solo work.
On her debut Plank 9 (Relative Pitch Records, 2025), she explores the outer limits of slowness using serpent and loops/electronics, far from everyday noise. Deman puts it razor-sharp: “There is so much noise pollution around us… There are quiet carriages on trains that are never respected. We live in a sea of noise. I hold an instrument from a time before electricity… when the world’s volume was, I reckon, many decibels lower. That sense of stillness is something I very much want to bring into my music.”
Experience it as a midnight concert in our new AB Salon, for those who want to ease into the night gently.
Klinck Trio: Belgian deep listening supergroup
Klinck Trio is one of those rare bands that doesn’t place silence “between” the notes, but beside them. Adia Vanheerentals (sax/voice), Maya Dhondt (piano/voice) and Elisabeth Klinck (violin/voice) create contemporary improvised music where every pause carries meaning.
The Wire wrote: “These three musicians… play so quietly as to draw their audience into a kind of deep listening trance. Their dreamlike electroacoustic compositions connect contemporary chamber, improv en avant pop.” Their stunning debut My Hair is Everywhere came out via Ghent’s VIERNULVIER Records, and it's an intimate exploration of vulnerability.
Frederik Croene: a morning concert with a “Trilogy of Hopelessness”
Frederik Croene questions the identity of the classical pianist through a practice at the intersection of virtuosity and experiment. With Sans Retour (cortizona, 2025), he completes his “Trilogy of Hopelessness”: six piano pieces with video work by Karl Van Welden, an in memoriam for aviation pioneers who died in crashes.
The stories are as absurd as they are moving, from Yukio Seki (the first kamikaze pilot), Bessie Coleman (the first Black American stuntwoman with a pilot’s licence), to Richard Russell (a.k.a. Sky King). Croene himself even flew to Tokyo to mail blank Sans Retour album covers back to Belgium from different post offices, meaning each cover’s final design is shaped by whatever happens to it: damage, stamps, postmarks. No return address, deliberately. A morning concert to look forward to in our new AB Salon.
Julia Eckhardt: musical fieldwork
Julia Eckhardt is a musician, a researcher at the VUB, and artistic co-director of Brussels sound art workspace Q-O2. She moves through sound art with rare ease, and international recognition to match: “The results of Eckhardt's combination of field recordings, photographs and viola improvisations are testament to her diverse talents and imagination.” (All About Jazz)
At BRDCST she performs Blanca (Another Timbre): eight short compositions born from a residency in the Spanish town of Blanca. Each day she walked without plan or destination, made field recordings and photographs, and on returning recorded a viola improvisation reflecting the energy of that accidental place.
Joseph Branciforte & Jozef Dumoulin: Fender Rhodes, fully reinvented
Okay: Joseph Branciforte is American, but this duo is also a Belgian showcase via Jozef Dumoulin (BE/FR), a cornerstone of the European jazz and improv scene for years. Together they make Iterae: a deep musical conversation built around the Fender Rhodes, where technology doesn’t lock improvisation down, but cracks it open.
The Wire sums it up dryly: “Glitchy, fragmentary, repeating and arrhythmic and about as far from 1970s Herbie Hancock as it’s possible to imagine.”
Grégoire Gerstmans: minimalism with the power to bring everything to a halt
Liège-based pianist Grégoire Gerstmans possesses an almost absurd power: a few keystrokes and it feels like a frantic world could grind to a stop. His debut Hypnagogie (that space between waking and sleep) caught the attention of critics who don’t hand out hyperbole lightly: Les Inrockuptibles called it “une beauté à tomber”. Magic RPM: “The magnetism of these scores is hard to explain.” Indiepoprock went even further: “Each note seems to have been stolen from another dimension.”
During BRDCST, Gerstmans performs every day in our brand-new AB Antenna space. Our tip: headphones on, eyes closed, and your back ostentatiously turned to the outside world.
