On air from 20h till 21h30

This is a first guest mix curated by the Antwerp brand Howlin.

Their first quest is Jiro Bevis, a London-based illustrator with whom they have worked together for their current spring summer collection.

Jiro Bevis is a well-known fixture in London’s graphic landscape. Taking influence from a multitude of reference points, from ‘80s teen movies, to his childhood interest in Manga, to the comic books he used to go through from his dad’s vast collection, and many things in between.

Jiro also holds down a monthly slot on NTS exploring a variety of sounds from around the world, from UK punk to Japanese techno-pop. He is also a big lover of the Belgian New Beat area and as the complete Howlin’ collection is fully made in Belgium the theme of their collaboration was pretty clear.

To celebrate the launch of their newest collection Jiro did an exclusive New Beat mix and in anticipation of this mix we have a selection of questions asked by the Manchester retailer Oi Polloi to the guys of Howlin’.

Oi Polloi: Maybe a bit of a boring question, but it’s one worth asking… what have you lot been up to today?

Howlin’: We are busy working on our next spring/summer collection. Today there are some prototypes in and they look very promising. For spring/summer all our stuff is made in Belgium in a couple of small factories and we’ve been experimenting a lot with the knitting machines. In the meantime we are preparing everything for winter.

Oi Polloi: You recently hit upon making t-shirts out of terry towelling. Who came up with this genius idea? What’s your inspiration?

Howlin’: Summer is indeed a tougher time for knitwear but you can do some fantastic things with it. About 30% of our summer collection is knitwear. We use 100% premium cotton or linen and mix these into various combinations. There is also some finer merino wool which we use for finer gauge knits.

In the beginning of Howlin’ we only wanted to stay with knitwear but two years ago we found a couple of small factories in Belgium. 

Together with these small factories in Belgium, each carefully chosen for their own speciality, we managed to make a diverse range of products which include lighter weight knitwear, jersey and towel fabric garments. Our goal was to create durable, functional and original products which far outlives seasonal trends.

All pieces are produced in small batches and with close attention to details. Extra special is the fact that we don’t import fabrics but that we knit everything entirely in-house. Therefore we can proudly say that all our MIB products are truly 100% produced in Belgium.

We found some inspiration in pictures of us wearing towel shorts when we were young and decided to reproduce this fabric and use it a lot in our collection.

For our made in Belgium pieces we were also heavily inspired by new beat and in particular its predecessor: the AB Sound, hence the acid Belgian logo which is on all care labels.

For those who are not familiar, new beat is an electronic music genre that flourished in Western Europe during the late eighties and got its origin in Belgium.

There are many different, ‘mythical’ stories on how this new beat got born, but we like the story of a talented dj called Fat Ronny who was simply too wasted and played 45 rpm records at 33 rpm and pitched them +8 on his turntable. The result was a new robotic sound which was very bass driven.

While disco was the big thing he played a hypnotic mix of slowed down tracks by artists like Severed Heads, The Human League, PiL, Carlos Peron and Boytronic. (If interested, more Ab Sounds here). Together with a group of likeminded dj’s they soon created a real cult vibe with tracks like Max Berlin’s “Elle et Moi”. Soon after “New Beat” was born and due to the great succes there are tons of bad commercial tracks out there but nevertheless, if you dig a little bit deeper, there is some amazing music to be found from this lost era.

TRACKLIST
  1. Chayell – Beach
  2. Shakti – Rainbows
  3. A Split-Second – Scandinavian Bellydance
  4. Nacht und Nebel – Beats of Love (Special Remix)
  5. Code 61 – Drop the Deal
  6. Shock Taktix – Morocko
  7. In-D – Virgin In D Skys (Special Adventure Mix)
  8. Nux Nemo – The Mysterie
  9. The Weathermen – Poison
  10. Kings Of Agreppo – Agreppo
  11. Boytronic – Bryllyant [33 1/3 Plus 8 Radio Edit]
  12. Telex – Raised By Snakes (Razormaid Remix)
  13. Double I.D. – Communicate (Rock Beat Dynozor Mix)
  14. Fatal Error – Fatal Error
  15. Neon – Fade To Grey
  16. Space Opera – Mandate My Ass
  17. Liaisons Dangereuses – Los Niños del Parque
  18. Honey Dolly – No Squall Talk
  19. La Fura Dels Baus – Mareá
  20. Flash – Boom Boom
  21. Signal Aout 42 – Carnaval (Plastic Acid Mix)