Weird Dust

“Weird, loud, fast or slow”

Weird Dust released two excellent new beat and disco influenced singles this year: “The Chase” and “Aqua Velva” / “When You Were Mine”.

Michael Crabbé: The first one I released was on Knotwilg Records called “The Chase” and “These Things”, both songs are inspired by John Carpenter soundtracks and I was so happy that Johan Loones from Knotwilg Records chose these two songs as to be my first vinyl release. The artwork is done by Johann Kauth, and we screenprinted the sleeves together.

The second one is released by Kerm, a label that already released 2 tapes of mine. On this 45” you can listen to “Aqua Velva”, a synth disco track and “When You Were Mine”, a melancholic space odyssey. The sleeve was designed screenprinted and lasercut by 1ste VERDIEP.

Do you see what you do as retro, by going back to disco and new beat?

There is definitely a strong retro-vibe in what I do, this is mainly because the gear I use to record with and on is vintage. I also don’t want to bound to just one style of music so that’s why it’s eclectic like my taste in music.

How did you got into music?

I got into music from a young age, but starting making music in my teens, first playing punk songs on a guitar and a tiny amp in my room, when I was 12 or so. I even had a rap group with some friends when I was 15. So there was always something, and I liked so many stuff as long as it was weird, loud, fast or slow. I really didn’t care, still don’t for that matter. I started making electronic music after I was at my friend Bernd’s studio, where I saw so many crazy vintage synths I fell in love with their sound. Totally forgetting that I didn’t understand any of it. I bought a Korg Mono/Poly as my first synth. So by trial and error I started to teach myself how these things work. I still play this synth on an almost daily basis and you can still hear it in most of my recordings. I’ve recently purchased a Tascam 34 (4 track reel to reel) and record everything on that machine now. I’ve got a lot of hardware. I don’t use a computer in the whole process of recording. I use sequencers, digital and analog synths, drum machines and effects/signal processors.

Do you record at home?

I record at home.

In what kind of environment did you grew up?

Well actually I spend my teens in Tienen, my family moved quite often when I was younger, untill we settled in the sugar capital of the world, haha. Tienen is quite a harsh city when I compare it to a lot of other cities, not much to do, and a lot of industry. But luckily there were some people with good taste in music that all went to the same bars at a square called Veemarkt in Tienen. I think I worked in pretty much all of these bars and met all the people with freaky taste in music, some of them also musicians. And as it goes in small towns, we all hung out together… Pretty much 24h party people style! But I guess the first time I saw Man Generated, a local noise band, play. I got some notion of the freakscene and that music didn’t even needed to be ‘musical’. This was in a bar called THE VORTEX, I must have been 14 years at that time… Later on all of these guys became good friends and still are. One of them called Olli Diskoster organised the now legendary ‘Live In The Living’ and ‘Don’t Cum If You Don’t Like Noise’ parties. There I met pretty much the entire Belgian underground. These were fantastic years. It’s Olli that pushed me in making music and also came up with the name Weird Dust.

Later on, you moved to Brussels.

I studied first in Brussels, moved to Ghent for a while to study there and after that I went back to Tienen for a couple of years. Brussels always had a great attraction to me so I went back about 5 years ago. Now I live in a small town on the edge of Brussels.

Is it true that your first name is Michael, after Michael Jackson?

My name is Michael indeed, I was born in the 80’s, there were a lot of famous Michael’s at that time, pick one!