"Free your mind and stay weird"
An interview with Bart de Paepe by Gary Cummiskey
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Bart de Paepe is a musician and artist living in Belgium. Since 2005 he has curated Sloow Tapes, which has released a substantial catalogue of music and poetry. Of his latest album, Zürahümnah, Forced Exposure says it ‘is an immediate and immersive dive into solitary inner and outer worlds of light and darkness…. a mysterious journey through detached time and space.’
You have been influenced by psychedelia, and this is reflected not only in your own music and art but also in much of the music you have released under Sloow Tapes. What is the relevance of psychedelia in 2026?
Maybe now it’s more relevant as ever considering all those right-wing conservatives in power everywhere whose only interest lies in creating a control-freak environment of paranoid nationalism against civil liberties. Free your mind and stay weird, I say.
You are a musician and an artist. When did you start making music? Do you see yourself mainly as a musician, or is your music and art of equal importance to you?
I started playing guitar when I was 12 or something. Playing on my own and in high school bands that never went anywhere or until other bandmembers left because they couldn’t cope with my uncompromising attitude. Then I got invited by Sylvester Anfang to play with them. We played a lot of shows here and everywhere and released quite a few LPs and cassettes at the time. Drawing I’ve been doing for as long as I can remember. Both are equally important.
What bands did you like when you started out playing music? Did you like psychedelic bands back then? What about so-called ‘krautrock’? And the English Canterbury Scene?
Back then I was into bands like Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr. As I was living in the backwaters it took me a while to find the psychedelic scene and that was after I cleansed myself with abstract free jazz and improv for a few years. I like “krautrock” bands such as Faust, Can, Ash Ra Tempel, Neu!, Popal Vuh, Tangerine Dream, also Amon Duul, Silberbart, Embryo, Gomorrah, Mythos, Thirsty Moon, etc.
You have created much of the cover art for Sloow Tapes releases. What artists have influenced you?
Specific for covers were influences such as sixties psychedelic poster art, art nouveau, LP covers. Nowadays it’s artists like Toyen, Andrée Arty, Annie Debie, E.L.T. Mesens, Jacques Lacomblez, Jacques Prévert…
What is your opinion of Dada and Surrealism? Have they influenced your outlook as much as the 1960s and early 1970s counterculture?
They influenced me to a certain degree, I guess. Not too long ago a project (together with Erwin van Looveren and Ignace De Bruin) called ГРЉАШИ was part of a surrealist compilation for Ron Sakolsky’s Oystercatcher magazine. And I’m always on the lookout for surrealist poetry and movies.
You started Sloow Tapes in 2005, but what prompted you to do so? Was it to give another platform for alternative music?
It was mainly through encountering local Antwerp CDR/cassette labels like Imvated, Ultra Eczema and Audiobot that were so inspiring to me that I wanted to start a label myself. I chose the cassette because I like the format and they last longer than the CDRs I got at that time. I wanted them to have more of a personal feeling, so the first ones were usually handmade and home dubbed. I just contacted some of my favourite artists at the time (Keijo, Family Underground, etc) and went from there.
In South Africa, cassette tapes are almost obsolete. Is there a resurgence in Europe? According to an interview with Honest Bag back in 2012, you had started producing vinyl as well as cassettes. When did you join Bandcamp?
I’m sure in some hidden dark corners cassettes are hip again to a certain degree, but it’s not that I’m suddenly selling hundreds of tapes. I released several LPs during the years at the beginning of other bands, but after a while mainly my own music (Ilta Hämärä, Louise Landes Levi, Wendingen 1918…) as nobody else seemed to be interested. I’m not very much into things like Bandcamp; smells evil corporate to me and it devaluates music, making it even more ephemeral. I’m more in the physical ritual of putting a record on and staring at the cover. But it is handy to check every now and then what’s going on in the digital universe.
You said in the Honest Bag interview that you started releasing poetry tapes after recording Louise Levi Landes, with whom you have collaborated. I am interested to hear how your recording with Ira Cohen came about, and how it went.
I first read some of Louise’s poems in the collection edited by J.N. Reilly and Ira Cohen, Shamanic Warriors Now Poets, and soon after I tracked down some of her books. Then I finally got hold of Louise’s email and asked her if she’d be into doing a spoken word cassette. She finally made it over here and during a couple of days we made a recording of her reciting poetry. When she was here we listened to some LPs and it turned out she knew quite a few people like Susan Archuletta (who turned out to be one of her best friends) from The Habibiyya and Pat Kilroy, among many others. Louise was also very good friends with Ira Cohen, so a little while after, when she went back to New York, she recorded him at home. Ira was already ill by that time and a few weeks after the recording he stopped talking altogether.
How did you manage to get hold of recordings by Piero Heliczer and Sinclair Beiles?
The Piero Heliczer recording I found somewhere on the internet and then I got in touch with Wynn Heliczer, his daughter, who lives in Amsterdam, to ask if I could release it. She was unaware of the existence of the recording herself. I asked my friend the late René Van Der Voort (Counter Culture Chronicles) if he had some visuals for the cover as he was a big Heliczer fan and had met Piero a couple times. Some years later me and René did a small book on Piero together (I Must Be More Like an Ant Than a Cigale Because I Like to Sing in Winter). Sinclair Beiles was through Fred de Vries from South Africa. I think Gerard Bellaart of Cold Turkey Press sent me his contact (Gerard had published Beiles in the seventies). One of the few recordings of Sinclair that are out there, I believe.
Your latest album, Zurahümnah, was released as an LP last year. I believe Thurston Moore listed it as one of his favourite albums of the year?
Thurston has been following Sloow Tapes since the beginning. Zurahümnah has recordings I made at home three or four years ago. Synth, guitar, some percussion. To listen to in the dead of night. Also don’t forget the great poem/review David Erdos wrote over at International Times (‘As Steel Sings’), with references to Michael Moorcock, among other luminaries.
To celebrate 10 years of Sloow Tapes, in 2016 you published mellow my mind, a discography. It’s a beautiful production and a record of evidence of what can be produced independently, with a relatively low budget. This sort of work is essential to keep an alternative art/music/literary scene alive.
Only analogue is real, as the saying goes. A lot of those reviews mentioned in the book have since vanished and sadly quite a few people whom I did release have moved on towards other spheres as well. When I leaf through the book now it seems to come from a different era. The dimensions have definitely shifted since those days and especially since Corona, and mostly not in the right continuum.
In my mind I always associate Belgium with Henri Michaux and Sophie Podolski But how is the art and music scene in Belgium these days? Is there much interest in the Belgian surrealist group – artists such as Magritte?
Sophie Podolski I don’t know. Michaux was born in Belgium, but he lived most of his life in Paris. Definitely an interesting writer and artist. Louise Landes Levi worked closely with him on a translation of Vers la Completude (Toward Totality). I don’t really know much about the contemporary Belgian art scene except for what some friends are doing. Last thing that blew my mind was the Ferre Grignard expo. I knew him only as a musician from the sixties/seventies, but he started off as a painter. As far as music goes, Timo van Luijk and his La Scie Dorée and Metaphon labels, Vlaamse Primitieven, W Ravenveer, etc.
Magritte gets a big expo occasionally, the most recent was in a large museum in Antwerp. For what would have been his 125th birthday, Duvel, a well-known beer brand, issued the Ciel Bouteille. Last year there was the This is not a murder mystery tv series on national TV, with Magritte, Dali, Man Ray, Lee Miller, Max Ernst. I don’t know if it was any good because I didn’t see it. Other Belgian surrealists get less attention of course, and if they do, it’s usually in the smaller galleries or museums. Still waiting for a big Jane Graverol expo.
Artwork
Cover art for Marcula Kuru (2022) by Marcula Kuru
Cover art for Rhode (2014) by Bart de Paepe. (This was also the cover art for the Sloow Tapes discography, mellow my mind, published in 2016)
Cover art for S/T (2013) by Rotifer Puls
Cover art for Smoked the Whole Thing (2011) by Bear Bones Lay Low
Cover art for Stargazer (2011) by Hands of Hydra and Janina Angel Bath Duo
Cover art for Pohyb-zvuk-prostor Žive v Opave (2018) by Tom Cartier and Eric Arn
Cover art for Recherche dans le Reve (2021) by Wendingen 1918