Humo, Nov. 25th, 1997.

It's raining when we ring the bell at the backstage-entrance of the Shepherd's Bush Empire in London. Inside the soundcheck of Front 242 is droning. A large, black man in a bomber jacket opens after fifteen minutes. 'Who did you say you were? And with whom did you have an appointment?' Good question. If you make an appointment with Tom Barman (singer of dEUS, Torch) or Helmut Lotti (a popular Belgian singer, Torch), you meet Tom Barman and Helmut Lotti. If you have a rendezvous with Front 242, you have a rendezvous with ehm, those guys with their welding-glasses. Look at it this way: if Eddie Vedder goes to the butcher, he puts on sunglasses to be not recognized. In the mid-eighties, the guys of Front 242 just had to put off their welding-glasses to be incognito.

Daniel Bressanutti : A disco-beat with a lot of punknoise on top. No, it wasn't a conscious combination : they were just our influences.

The Chemical Brothers say they got 1500 pounds for their first remix of a Primal Scream-song. They didn't earn a lot on it, because they wanted to use a Fairlight compressor like The Beatles used to have one, and it already costed 1200 pounds to rent one. How much did you earn in the beginning ?

Bressanutti : Just to continue to exist, we had to go above our budget. We bought sequencers that then costed 300.000 francs (about $ 8200, Torch) and that only Kraftwerk was able to pay for. There was nothing left to live on.

Patrick Codenys : I once won the lottery. I then bought an Emulator II instead of a car. But look, we never kicked on technology. Even if we now buy a machine, it won't be the most expensive. Don't forget that our records always costed a lot less than those of The Scabs did. Our debut, 'Geography', was a four-track-record. It was recorded in one week in a room a lot smaller than this one here (we are sitting in a small room). We sold 2.000 copies of 'Geography' then, but now that has risen to 300.000. Not a single record of Front has costed more than half a million. There is one exception : 'Fuck up evil', but our largest cost there was the paycheck of mixer Andy Wallace (who also mixed Nirvana). And the cost of 'Up evil' was still incomparable with that of a record of Arno, which easily costed four million.

Bressanutti : Front 242 had few studio-equipment, and we had to compensate that with ideas. Poor makes creative. On the covers of Kraftwerk and Yellow Magic Orchestra there were lists with very expensive instruments. Compared to them we played with Fisher Price (laughs).

In an old interview you say :'Musicians hate us. Only jazz-musicians accept Front.'

Codenys : Front was more complicated than Depeche Mode and Blanc-mange. Front was programming and soundresearch. Most musicians didn't hear that. The jazz-musicians did. They were talking about a solo of noise (laughs). That was before new beat. As from then we were accepted, of course. New beat and techno are actually a simplification of what we did. That was, honestly said, welcome, because when I listen to our first records, I sometimes think : what difficult music (laughs).

If you listen for two seconds to Dire Straits or R.E.M. or Front 242 , you immediately hear that typical, original sound. Did you find that sound by accident ?

Bressanutti : Yes. We tried to not have it. We worked three years to grow out of it and it didn't work. It keeps sounding like Front. You notice it the best if you remix someone other's work. You always keep getting back, if you want it or not, to the same sound. The Chemical Brothers must have that too. If they touch anything, it too immediately becomes Chemical Brothers. Ask that question to them in about five years.

If you hear the techno-rival, do you always know how they made their music ?

Codenys : No, not at all. The Chemical Brothers is a big puzzle to me. The last band on which I really broke my head, was Air Liquide. Very bizarre. And low budget. But very cool.

Bressanutti : They have tricks, but at least they work. The ones we use, don't work anymore. That's why we don't release anything new. We try to be as good as Atari Teenage Riot, The Chemicals and Roni Size, but it doesn't work. To show you how little I 'know' of the electronica of others : I thought that Roni Size did make his record on his own. I'm glad that it's a real band.

You once said : Front 242 is a brand, like Fuji or Coca-Cola. A logo, a concept.

Bressanutti : Okay, maybe it was a stunt. And a good quote. But I always found it to be a big compliment if people came to me to say they didn't watch to a rockband anymore. The event has always been more important than the people behind it have. Front was and is at first a sound, an image and a concept. Front was the result of switching the channel in Belgium. Long before all the other countries did, we had 16 and more TV-channels. And in Belgium you have the advantage to not have a background. We don't have folklore like in France. Or better, we didn't have one, because now there's VTM (a Belgian commercial channel, Torch). Front stood in the middle of the twilightzone of commercial clips, images and slogans. Front was a bunch of journalists : we read the headlines of the eighties.

And you did that with a perfect feeling of timing. 'Welcome to paradise', with its 'No sex until marriage'-sample of Tele-evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, was released for a few months and suddenly, Swaggart had to ask for forgiveness en plein public for obscene behavior with a prostitute. And Colonel Khaddafi just played the head-role in 'Funkhaddafi', or Ronald Reagan bombed the man's house in Tripoli.

Codenys : If you want to mix topicality with music, you automatically follow the news and predict a bit what's going to happen.

Bressanutti : That the people who believed in Jimmy Swaggart forgave him, that is for me the most insane.

If you now would make a new song, would it involve the Dutroux-committee (Dutroux was a Belgian man arrested for child molesting, Torch) or the war in Algeria ?

Bressanutti : No. One : we wouldn't be able to predict such a large conflict again. Two : everybody liked 'Funkhaddafi', but with 'Disco Dutroux', we would, in my opinion, collectively commit suicide. The VTM-people would lynch us.

Codenys : It also wouldn't work anymore. We don't live anymore in the same slogan-society as during the Cold War. The sampling of voices, it has been done once too many. Technology used to be stranger than now. Then, those voices were needed to less confuse the people. Now they would sound artificial.

Bressanutti : Now, music doesn't have a message. The Chemicals don't have a message. But also Sinead O'Connor can't have a message anymore. People don't buy that anymore.

On the Internet, your fans constantly update their Front-hitlist. 'Headhunter' is at number one. Did you know when you had written it that it was better than the rest ?

Codenys : No. We didn't think of it as a single. The record company chose it. We wanted 'Welcome to paradise' as single.

Which Front-songs are missing in that Internet-top 3 ? Third : 'Quite unusual'. Second : 'Masterhit'. First :'Headhunter'.

Richard 23 : I don't know. Do you think I know our songs well ? I never listen to Front at home. Never. I just learned the songs that we do live. I don't even know the setlist . Only our drummer, Tim, knows it. (To Tim) What's the second song tonight ?

Tim : 'Masterhit'.

Richard 23 : You see.

In the movie 'Reservoir Dogs' is a radio on that's constantly playing hits from the seventies. Which three songs must be on an eighties-radio ? And only one of yours .

Codenys : 'Headhunter', because of the catchy and yet alternative personality. And further : anything from Joy Division. And late Kraftwerk.

What's the best and what's the worst Front-concert that you ever played ?

Richard 23 : I remember a concert as supporting act for Depeche Mode. There were 10.000 people in the hall, and you got 35 minutes to show that you exist. That was a kick.
The biggest disaster must be Louvain La Neuve in 1987. It was the first concert of the tour. There were 1.000 people in the hall. After a minute or two, the stage came down. Suddenly, we were playing two meters lower (laughs).
The first concerts in America were also cool. The two guys from Wax Trax (the electronic body music record label) really believed in us. They had a small shop and many bands begun thanks to those two. The disadvantage was : they were no businesspeople. They were doing it out of love for the music. In the beginning that was cool : 'How much do you need for the cover, did you say?  Just take it with you .' After that they went bankrupt. Chicago was hot then. You had a sound and an attitude, and so you got a scene. Bands like KMFDM and Thrill Kill Kult even moved to there.

And Front was left behind in - of all places - Aarschot.

Bressanutti : I couldn't live in America. That's a fascistic country. France, Spain or Italy, that would work. The people still live careless there. If you're going to live in London or Chicago, you got to work harder. The last two years of Front were already hectic enough. We earned a lot of money, but we had to work so hard, that we couldn't live from it anymore. That kind of stress just killed us.

'Funky Shit' from The Prodigy is Front all the way. When did you hear more Front-influences ?

Richard 23 : The remix from Empirion of 'Firestarter' is a Front-copy. And in Germany there is currently a revival taking place. They're all copying our sound.

David Bowie was mad at Nirvana, he once said, because they had the success and not the Pixies. Are you still mad at The Prodigy ?

Richard 23 : I thought Nirvana was better. They had better songs and a better sound.

Bressanutti : Not me. For me the Pixies were the successors of Talking Heads. I can agree with Bowie. But yet I think : the Pixies have only themselves to blame. Actually, we too. If we can't go along anymore, we just can't. The End. But I can't be mad or jealous at The Prodigy. I'm proud of them. We let them remix 'Religion' when they didn't mean anything yet.

Richard 23 : We always have fought completely for the electronic music and so we are glad that The Prodigy has continued the tradition.

Bressanutti : I think The Prodigy deserve it. They surpassed us. Jean-Michel Jarre who's popular, that I can't understand. That even makes me aggressive.

Richard 23 : Sometimes I think by myself : 'Maybe we were a few years too early'. I listened for the first time to a CD of Can to look for a sample for my new solo-project Tchack !. I discovered that Tricky hasn't invented anything. And Tricky sells a lot more records than Can.

What did you learn with Front ?

Richard 23 : To stay calm. You can't mischief a lot on stage  You know that 'Spinal Tap'-situation in which the band can't find the stage and gets lost in the hallways behind it. Been there, done that. We already heard the starting-tape running and we stood there. It doesn't matter. If we were locked in the toilets, and we would have entered when the third song was playing, the people would have thought it was part of the show. When the stage is on fire, Patrick is playing his keyboard badly and we both start singing with awful voices, then people would think :'What's happening now ?'

What goes wrong a lot with Front ?

Richard 23 : The computer loses its memory once in a while. Recently, in the Botanique, we lost everything. We pressed the bass-key and violins started playing. But it lasted only for a minute.

You used to have TC Matic and Front 242 and Luc Van Acker. Now you have dEUS and Evil Superstars. I fear that again other people will get rich of their ideas. Probably Americans . Or is it the same problem as with our beer : nobody can make it better, but the whole world drinks Heineken ?

Richard 23 : I don't know dEUS that well. But fuck the world if they are stupid enough to drink that shit from Heineken . Do I have to take in account the opinion of the world ? The world has no taste. If I want to see a good movie, I got to hurry, because in Brussels, they only show it for a week.

Jean-Luc De Meyer : I saw dEUS live. I think they suck.

Richard 23 : I don't like them myself. And Hoover, that must be some great guys. They change the singer every week. The bar-stories will be the same as they used to be. If dEUS came from America…tralala. If, if,if…If Michael Jackson was born in Brussels, maybe now, he would work in a shoarma-place. If Madonna started singing in Switzerland, she would now be in prison. T'as encore des questions stupides comme ça, toi ?

When you toured on Lollapalooza, you met Rage Against The Machine. At Pukkelpop that year, you did a song with Tom Morello from Rage. He now plays with The Prodigy on the soundtrack of the movie 'Spawn'. Those are millions that you missed out on.

Bressanutti : We would need a good recordcompany and a good manager, and those contacts we do not have. I think Morello is a cool guy and an intelligent one, but he hated the money-collecting of Lollapalooza. Then why is he playing there ? It's to promote the album, he said. But he's keeping the money, right ? To my knowledge, he didn't share it with the homeless people of Los Angeles. The same with Atari Teenage Riot. I think their sound is great, but their dialectic is naďve.

Do you think Front 242 has accomplished anything ?

Bressanutti : You better not ask me that . I think a person has never accomplished anything. I experienced a few cool things, that I have. I know that Al Jourgensen toured with Ministry as our supporting act. In the beginning they sounded like a poppy new wave band with two synthesizers. Jourgensen watched us every evening and at the end of the tour they sounded harsh and mean, haha. And I admit, sometimes you get a kick. For example, if you see a poster of your concert in the legendary Fillmore in San Francisco between posters of Jimi Hendrix and Grateful Dead. But that lasts for two seconds, and then it's over.

The first thing I saw at your website was the message 'Stop fascism'. I thought people would know...

Bressanutti : Forget it. We still are having problems in France. We still can't play in Lille. But the weirdest happened in Salt Lake City. Mormons came to visit us backstage to buy T-shirts with 'No sex until marriage' on it. They weren't allowed to watch the concert, that was really prohibited. Those are things that make me think : what a strange world we live in ?

To not say anything about the Shepherd's Bush Empire. The hall is sold out. Together with 2.000 British Front-fans, we experience the last two songs of Empirion (Prodigy meets Executive Slacks). We gave up on Cubanate (the German Niets, and then also drunk) after about ten minutes. The audience looks like they are auditioning for a parody on the disco-scene of 'Desperately seeking Susan'. We don't know where you like to hang out, but for us it's been a while when we saw men with bottles of hairspray in the toilet. Those WERE the days, my friends. In 1997, Front 242 sounds as too old bodies into too tight outfits in the hall. And no Underworld-eyeshadow in a renewed 'Happiness' or a mini-drumsolo in 'Headhunter' can change that. 'No shuffle', 'In Rhythmus bleiben' ('Ein zwei drei im Rhythmus bleiben', it even wouldn't work with irony) and the countdown 'Headhunter' doesn't only sound like a patched old bitch, people dance on it with a pathetic look-at-me attitude, that makes you think of the critic who once wrote 'Front 242 is hardcore dance music for corrective punishment'. Maybe then, it was meant as a compliment. They were strange times, the eighties. One moment illustrates how important Front 242 WAS (at least for Underworld and Paul Mennes (Belgian writer, Torch)) : it's the Swaggart-sample in 'Welcome to paradise'. 'Hey poor you don't have to be poor anymore. Jesus is here' is first banalized by the endless repetition, and then the words are being mixed so that it becomes :'Hey poor you don't have to be... Jesus'. A cut up of a cut up. Swaggart biting in his own tail. That was revolutionary. Then, in the eighties. For a bunch of Mormons in the Midwest. The end for Front ! Another concept ! Another logo ! Now !

Gert van Nieuwenhove

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