Since the start of Listen Festival in 2016, the Brussels-based electronic music festival has quickly grown into a yearly five-day urban take-over in collaboration with leading Belgian labels and venues. Listen’s aims are straightforward: to provide an artistic platform for emerging artists while curating them alongside more established international names in the industry. This year’s edition is again spread over Brussels’ core clubs like Fuse and C12 as well as unique locations (Notre-Dame de Laeken), where divergent events, talks and expositions will take place with a strong focus on the local music scene and the capital itself.
Looking back at our visit to Listen in 2022 with highlights such as Terrence Dixon live in a planetarium and Jane Fitz’ progressive set in C12, we are looking forward to what this year is going to bring. To prevent refined listeners from drowning and getting lost in the rich program of electronic exquisiteness, we have carefully selected the events, art and labels to put on your list.
1 Malibu & Marina Herlop live
In collaboration with Le Botanique (Brussels’ beacon for alternative music) and Berlin-based record label PAN, Listen Festival presents a unique live concert in the Notre-Dame de Laeken. The event features two emerging artists with a musical approach that most likely will resonate deeply with the architecture and spiritual feeling of the neo-Gothic church. The work of electronic composer Malibu sails between ambient and ethereal music and her sound feels highly emotional. Her new EP titled Palaces of Pity seems almost intended to match the power of church acoustics.
Marina Herlop is a musician from Barcelona whose practice is rooted in classical piano and vocal training. Recently, she has extended her artistic tools to include electronics and experimental rhythms, allowing her to explore more and more possibilities of sound and music.
Location: Eglise Notre-Dame de Laeken, Brussels
Date: March 31, 20:00 CET
2 Listen x Botanique
Housed in the former National Botanic Garden in the middle of the city, Le Botanique has been a cultural centre of great importance for Brussels since 1984 and is well-known for its focus on emerging artists and interdisciplinary programming. With their extensive experience in curating music events, Le Botanique shapes an evening for Listen that will transcend genres while celebrating experimentation.
This night features a diverse range of artists who fuse electronics or synths with acoustic sounds and vocals in an emotional and personal manner, like the Danish composer and producer ML Buch or the French musician Ange Halliwell. These artists are interspersed with fervent club DJs like the British Kaiju and the German Mechatok.
In addition to this club event, you can also visit Le Botanique’s temporary art exhibition in the same building.
Location: Le Botanique, Koningsstraat 236
Date: March 31, 19:00 CET
3 Listen x STROOM
The Belgian electronic record label STROOM will collaborate with Reset, a new temporary creative space in Brussels. This occupation of a former bank is a unique two-year project led by the cultural foundation Arty Farty that will host club concepts, panel discussions and audiovisual art exhibitions in this contemporary cultural hub.
STROOM invites the American ambient sound musician Ana Roxanne to perform at Reset together with the eclectic music group Dali Muru & The Polyphonic Swarm. In addition to the concert in the auditorium, you can visit the immersive digital art exhibition Whispering Lights, which challenges traditional norms of art exhibitions. The artistic journey offers a sensory, labyrinth-like art experience through hidden and abandoned spaces inside the building.
Location: Reset, Rue De Ligne 8
Date: March 31, 20:00 CET
4 Listen x Not Your Techno
Not Your Techno's events are perhaps the figurehead of raving as a form of activism. ‘OUR DIVERSITY IS NOT YOUR ECONOMY’, reads a large banner at one of their latest events. The party collective aims to bring more diversity into the scene, foregrounding female-identifying, queer and POC artists. It is co-founded by the Belgian and Tunisian DJ and producer Sara Dziri who will, among others, also play during Listen’s event. Her sets and productions are rhythmically complex with a melancholic and hybrid character, and are often to be heard during the closings of club Fuse where she regularly performs as a resident DJ.
This event takes place at L'imprimerie: an intimate new venue in the abandoned printing house of the National Bank of Belgium.
Location: L'imprimerie, Boulevard de Berlaimont 56
Date: March 31, 22:00 CET
5 Gay Haze x SPEK
Amidst some desolate warehouses in the industrial Buda district, you will find BUDA BXL: a multifunctional space focused on practices in audiovisuals. In this industrial club setting, two leading organisations of Brussels' underground scene, Gay Haze and SPEK, team up once again to organise an unforgettable 27-hour rave. The party features several familiar international faces like Octo Octa and Byron Yeates, programmed alongside local artists such as Fais Le Beau and SPEK’s founding father Sixsixsixties.
This selection of artists promises a euphoric and damping dance session (sweat guaranteed), covering various electronic genres ranging from New Beat to trance and 90s rave to electro.
Location: BUDA BXL, Budasesteenweg 96
Date: April 1, 23:00 CET - April 3, 02:00 CET
4 Listen x Not Your Techno
Not Your Techno's events are perhaps the figurehead of raving as a form of activism. ‘OUR DIVERSITY IS NOT YOUR ECONOMY’, reads a large banner at one of their latest events. The party collective aims to bring more diversity into the scene, foregrounding female-identifying, queer and POC artists. It is co-founded by the Belgian and Tunisian DJ and producer Sara Dziri who will, among others, also play during Listen’s event. Her sets and productions are rhythmically complex with a melancholic and hybrid character, and are often to be heard during the closings of club Fuse where she regularly performs as a resident DJ.
This event takes place at L'imprimerie: an intimate new venue in the abandoned printing house of the National Bank of Belgium.
Location: L'imprimerie, Boulevard de Berlaimont 56
Date: March 31, 22:00 CET
5 Gay Haze x SPEK
Amidst some desolate warehouses in the industrial Buda district, you will find BUDA BXL: a multifunctional space focused on practices in audiovisuals. In this industrial club setting, two leading organisations of Brussels' underground scene, Gay Haze and SPEK, team up once again to organise an unforgettable 27-hour rave. The party features several familiar international faces like Octo Octa and Byron Yeates, programmed alongside local artists such as Fais Le Beau and SPEK’s founding father Sixsixsixties.
This selection of artists promises a euphoric and damping dance session (sweat guaranteed), covering various electronic genres ranging from New Beat to trance and 90s rave to electro.
Location: BUDA BXL, Budasesteenweg 96
Date: April 1, 23:00 CET - April 3, 02:00 CET
6 Our Scene x Kiosk Radio
An integral part of the festival is Our Scene, Listen’s attempt to reflect upon nightlife in a mutual way. Here they give room to discussions on the festival’s hectic pace, safety and (non-)inclusivity, and (new) ways of archiving. In a broad discursive program of keynotes and conversations, divergent diversity issues are explored, for example in relation to queer politics by writer and critic Amelia Abraham. How do existing structures of nightlife represent the people and communities they serve? What are valuable collective memories to archive for the future?
A keynote to look forward to is that of Black collective Technomaterialism. This organisation proposes to use technology as an activist tool instead of instrumentalizing it for existing oppressions. They criticise the (racial) discourse of capitalism that is intertwined with the culture industry. The keynote takes place in the Beursschouwburg from 16:00 CET - 17:30 CET and registration is free.
Following the program of Our Scene on both Friday and Saturday, there are free concerts hosted by Kiosk Radio from 20:00 to 22:00 CET, featuring DJs like Salamanda and Ssaliva.
Location: Beursschouwburg, Auguste Ortsstraat 20-28
Date: March 31, 14:00 CET - April 1, 22:00 CET
7 Under My Garage x Kalahari Oyster Cult x Chanoirs
C12, a club in the night-time and partly Brussels’ Central Station in the daytime, is the setting for a night filled with raw inventive beats, electro, IDM and techno. It is co-curated by the Amsterdam label Kalahari Oyster Cult, led by Rey Colino who will also play for the occasion together with ISAbella. Colino’s style often incorporates elements of ambient, dub, and experimental music, which gives his productions a distinct and ethereal quality, while ISAbella knows how to create a high-energy atmosphere on the dancefloor.
Not to be missed during this event is Berlin-based superstar Objekt, famous for his innovative and forward-thinking approach to electronic music, often featuring hard-hitting drums, thrilling basslines and unconventional structures, all blending into a distinctive, genre-defying sound.
Location: C12, Rue Marché aux Herbes 116
Date: April 1, 22:00 CET
Tired of dancing and listening or in need of some variety? Brussels is also an international player in the field of groundbreaking contemporary art and audiovisual installations. The following recommendations offer some guidance in the city’s broad cultural field.
8 KANAL - Centre Pompidou
In 2017, one of the biggest museums of modern and contemporary art in Europe known as the Centre Pompidou in Paris, signed a structural partnership with KANAL Foundation in Brussels, resulting in KANAL - Centre Pompidou. At the moment it is still under construction, but it will become the largest cultural institution in Brussels with 35,000 m2 reserved for contemporary art in multidisciplinary forms. The definitive opening is scheduled for 2025 and the museum will be housed in a former Citroën garage.
During the period of construction, the museum invites interdisciplinary artists to cover the immense exterior of the building with a digital installation. Brussels-based contemporary artist Laure Prouvost, a big name in the field, is the first in line. In her immersive installations, Prouvost deconstructs linear narratives, using personal memories as well as elements of fiction by combining film, performance and language in an associative manner.
Location: KANAL - Centre Pompidou, Sainctelettesquare 21
Date: March 25 - September 2, 2023
9 argos centre for audiovisual arts
argos is a producing institution and resource centre for audiovisual arts with a critical character. It was founded in 1989 and contains two exhibition spaces, a projection room, a media library, a climate-controlled archive, studios, offices, a café and a bookshop. They apply a pay-what-you-can-policy, allowing audiences with a diverse range of socio-economic backgrounds to visit their exhibitions and events.
In February, the first solo exhibition by Puerto Rican artist Beatriz Santiago Muñoz opened, featuring a large-scale audiovisual experience spread out across the whole building. The exhibition entitled Oriana unfolds across forests, rivers, caves and the ruins of industrial and colonial infrastructures.
Location: argos, Werfstraat 13
Dates: February 11 - May 7, 2023
Listen Festival 2023 will take place from March 29 to April 3. Full programme and details can be found on the website.
