GUESTMIX#55: Benelux Energy [Quantum Natives]

October 2018 saw the release of the 20th entry in the astounding, free, downloadable Quantum Native‘s music collection which started in 2013 and has already confirmed the outcome as one of the leading, most thriving music and transmedial art community of DJs, performers, video artists, and producers in the mid-to-late 2010s. Patrick Jumpen Touched By An Angel (QNR020) is the amazing debut EP of Benelux Energy, the club-oriented music project spanning from Genot Centre‘s co-founder Wim Dehaen, who draws inspiration from hardcore and jumpstyle to craft a conceptual piece of work which investigates the relationship between the famous duo Patrick Jumpen, mainstream music,  and the possibility to annihilate late capitalism’s everlasting drive for profit via the definition of a new language.

What if the stolen and deformed vocabulary of jumpstyle could be reappropriated and used again for its original utopic goals and inclusive ideology? Could Patrick’s outsider gospel serve as a blueprint for a sincere, non-scalable, spiritually fulfilling music?

The EP, which can be downloaded for free here, is called after what happened recently to Patrick Pereira aka Patrick Mantizz. After ending the Patrick Jumpen activities in 2013, five years from the beginning of the meteoric career that also brought him to sign for Ministry of Sound Recordings in 2009, he allegedly found his way to God and became a street evangelist: you can catch a glimpse of his preaching here, and here. SIDE NOTE: the whole situation becomes even more surreal considering Patrick Jumpen were arrested during their Jumpstyle Italy Invasion in 2008 for dancing on Pope’s pulpit in Piazza San Pietro.

Starting from this very peculiar and inspiring event, which must have had a very resonating impact to those who were Benelux teenagers in the period of the rising jumpstyle market phenomenon, Benelux Energy puts together the typical build-up tricks 90’s club genres have thought us, heavy sampling from the genre-defining Patrick Jumpen’s debut record One Man Army, and overwhelming, reverberated melodies. The result is a record that could perfectly match Patrick Pereira’ late spiritual awakening as if Wim imagined the soundtrack for his religious epiphany.

 

 

This is confirmed by the tracks’ titles, which roughly translate to something like Ascension Day, Free Fall, The Secret, Enchanted, Unsigned Melody, and Holy Day (thank you Google Translate!). Further on, as you can see from the video clip here above which has been released together with the EP and has been produced by Quantum Natives’ co-founder Awe IX (also known as Yearning Kru), the dancing silhouettes have most probably been sampled from jumpstyle dance tutorials such as the highly marketized Jumpen Doe Je Zo DVD that came out in 2007 after the Patrick Jumpen outbreak, or possibly the first Patrick Pereira’s video dating 2005. This closes the circle around what brought a Belgian producer, Benelux Energy, years later his adolescence, to confront with the sediment Jumpstyle left in his aesthetic, artistic and musical personality, and reflect over the deeply intricated mechanisms underlying mainstream music (/culture) and its post-utopian, pervasive influence.

The major-key quantized supersaw preset melodic detritus squeezed by 145 bpm claps and associated dance idiom of Jumpstyle must be exposed as a lowest common denominator, engineered to instantly appeal to the West-European youth market, as a weapon of conformity – a tool to deradicalize post-euphoric club oneness.

We’re extremely happy to present you today with the 55th entry in our GUESTMIX series, coming with an amazing piece of artwork by Benelux Energy himself. If you are in Italy next week, you shouldn’t miss for any reason Benelux Energy’ show as a part of the Quantum Natives showcase alongside Æthereal Arthropod (in case you missed it, take a look at GUESTMIX#52) and Terribilis inside Saturnalia Festival at Macao, Milan. See you there! And push the button!

Follow Benelux Energy on Soundcloud. Check Quantum Natives catalog here. See the entire Saturnalia Festival line up here


TRACKLIST

teka b – we are one
tekken 2 ost – yoshimitsu (playstation theme)
gatekeeper – flame of displeasure
dr rude – feelings
wwwings – shadow realm ft silk road assassins
n1l – neural uberization
dr rude – freak
dj nj drone – syn stair (blind)
diablo 1 – tristram village music
our.v – hmbeautysalons
wat zullen we drinken (jumpstyle versie)
atomik v – for all jumpers
dj massiv – massiv goes spain
chicago zone – tokyo trip
nkisi – g.e.o.
dj jaho vs sej – surrender (springstil remix edit)
a-lusion – elixir of life

 


 

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We are a non-profit organization registered in December 2018, operating since late 2015 as a webzine and media website. In early 2017, we started our own event series focused on arts, experimental, and dancefloor-oriented music. We reject every invocation to “the Future” meant as the signifier for capitalistic “progress” and “innovation”, fully embracing the Present instead; we renounce any reckless and ultimately arbitrary division between “high” and “low”, respectable and not respectable, “mind” and “body”; we support and invite musicians, artists, and performers having diverse backgrounds and expressing themselves via variegated artistic practices.