Belgian Nuggets 90s - 00s Vol.1 on Mayway Records: Belpop nostalgia!

The story of the relatively new Belgian recordlabel Mayway Records and the Belgian Nuggets series is an interesting one. It's a Kortrijk based independent label that was started out of sheer passion for all kinds of genres of music. The label bought a huge amount of  promo and demo records from the vaults of our national radio network and decided to release the Belgian Nuggets series with selections of these lost and found gems (next to the other bands they release records for).

I got the Belgian Nuggets Vol. 1 double LP as a gift last christmas and was really excited to put in on my turntable. I discovered some great unknown belpop bands and tracks, took a trip down memory lane and got reacquainted with an old crush.

There's a lot of music on this double LP but I'll talk about my favorite tracks.
I used to be a huge dEUS fan. I loved (and still love) their early work. 'My wife jan', their song on this compilation is a B-track from the 'Little arithmetics' single that I already knew but hadn't heard in a long time. I used to tape trade with a girl in my hometown and she had all the dEUS singles and B-sides and made me a mixtape with these songs. So this song was my first trip down memory lane.

When puberty kicked in I had a crush on a couple of female singers. These crushes were very serious in my eyes. My first crush was Vanessa Paradis but a lot of them followed, including Elsje Helewaut, singer of Elisa Waut, a Bruges based band. I loved her voice. The Elisa Waut song on this compilation took me back to those days. It's a nice dreamy song.

A more recent favorite is de Portables. I got to know them at the beginning of the 2000s and I saw them play some great and often hilarious live shows. All of their records are recommended and their song 'Haut gay' (with the extended outro exclusive for this compilation) is my favorite song on this compilation. Listen to this great song here:

A band I had never heard of is Pop Machine. Their song 'Sage' is a swinging tribute to sixties french singers and music like Françoise Hardy. I love this song. Apparently this was produced by Alex Callier (of Hooverphonic and shitty Belgian tv talent shows...) and some label had pretty big and ambitious plans with it but somehow all of those plans never happened. A shame.

I also like the Volt song 'Rincez-moi'. Volt is an early nineties electropop band with Daan Stuyven, known from Dead Man Ray and his solo project Daan. Great song but I would have loved it if their song 'Train to interzone' was on this compilation, a personal favorite of mine.

There's a lot more to discover on this great compilation. And I stil have to dig in deeper to get to know these bands. I'm looking forward to the next volumes of Belgian Nuggets and some other releases on Mayway Records.
Especially the Definitivos LP that will be released on record store day. I'm very excited about this one as Definitivos are a legendary punk band from my hometown.
Mayway Records already released records by Ugly Papas, JTOTHEC and Gèsman. Some talented local acts that aren't exactly up my ally but are worth getting if they are your thing.

Get to know Mayway Records and their releases here.  Totally recommended!