Vantage Point reviewed by Clickmusic:
'Vantage Point' is a glimpse of dEUS at their best, their imaginative rock undeniably benefiting from a couple of new tricks. Best of all, their newly accessible songs do not compromise the sound at all - this is a record still more daring than a lot of modern rock records.
Next sunday Mintzkov is playing a secret show at the Ancienne Belgique (Brussels). The AB-website announced that they would bring a special guest. Since Tom sang a couple of songs with Mintzkov a couple of weeks ago in Leuven, it could be him...
(thx to Guido)
Reviews of the gig in Hasselt by De Standaard, Gazet Van Antwerpen and De Redactie.
A short item on the gigs in Paris by Les Inrocks.
If dEUS was English or American, they would have the same status as R.E.M. and Radiohead.
There's an interview with Klaas "Tronic" Janzoons on the website of BrusselNieuws (in Dutch).
The first gig of the belgian clubtour. The first time I saw dEUS after the tryout in the Mezz. I should have been a great evening. And it was. I left pretty late at home and got stuck in a traffic jam around Antwerp. Luckily, I was just in time to catch the Blackbox Revelation. It was the first time I saw them live and they blew me away. They sure have a bunch of nice songs. I was really impressed by the energy that a guitarplayer and a drummer created. A superb support act.
Muziekodroom is a great venue, but it needs an airco. The room was packed with about 800
people and it was very sweaty.
dEUS started around 21.45 hour and they played about 1 hour and 40 minutes. The setlist was more or less the same as the previous gigs. They kicked of with When She Comes Down, the openingtrack from Vantage Point. A bit of a false start, since you couldn't hear Tom's voice during the first part. Sound was beter during Sun Ra (still a live-killer) and Favorite Game. First bigger crowd-reactions during Fell Off The Floor, Man and What We Talk About.
I had the impression that Tom had some problems with his voice a couple of times. Let's hope his voice can keep up with the hectic scheme of the next days (6 gigs in 7 days). Slow is probably one of the best songs on Vantage Point, but it still hasn't convinced me in the live-version. Is it because of the thousands of things Klaas has to do? I don't know, but for me it was the weakest song yesterday evening.
After that Tom announced The Vanishing Of Maria Schneider and he dedicated it to a certain Sabine who was celebrating her birthday. Apparently Tom was wrong, because they started Nothing Really Ends (with the re-newed intro). As usual the fade out/fade in with Bad Timing was great. Bad Timing was actually (until then) the song with the heaviest audience reaction.
Bad Timing was followed by The Vanishing Of Maria Schneider and an impressive version of Instant Street. Muziekodroom went crazy on The Architect. The live-version of Is A Robot much better (and longer) than the album version. After that I was time to cool down the room with Smokers Reflect and let it explode again with Roses.
They saved the best for last with a stunning encore-series. Turnpike remains one of my live favorites. Oh Your God sounded a bit like Age of Panic by Senser during the verse and I liked it a lot. Tom (and the audience) freaked out during an extended version Suds & Soda. At the end Tom was singing some lines from another song (it sounded like Red Sky Night) instead of the Supersharp-thing they played during the Pocket Revolution-tour.
Since they played in Belgium I was expection Eternal Woman, with Lies Lorquet, too, but they didn't play it. They ended the show with Popular Culture. After the first verse, 13 children came on stage and sang the chorus. A nice climax.
I'm really looking forward to tonight's gig in Liege. Since dEUS-gigs usually get better and better during the tour, I could be a fantastic night tonight. See you there!
(pic by Razzi, more pics here)
I uploaded the Black Session to the podcast. You can listen to it here. Since the source is a mono real audio stream, it's not the best quality.
(Source: dEUS-fr)
This is probably the most hectic week of the year. dEUS is playing Belgium and I will cover it largely. Since I'm going to 5 of the gigs, you can expect reviews and setlists of those 5 gigs. (In case you're wondering: I'm skipping Charleroi for family reasons).
29/04/2008 - Muziekodroom, Hasselt
30/04/2008 - Droixhe, Luik, Belgium
01/05/2008 - Het Depot, Leuven, Belgium
03/05/2008 - Cactus at MAZ, Brugge, Belgium
05/05/2008 - Ancienne Belgique, Brussels, Belgium
If anyone of you is up for a meeting before or after the show, please leave a word in the dEUS Tourdates discussion. Could be great to see some faces...
Vantage Point reviewed by TF1.fr and a larger article on dEUS by Radio France Internationale.
Tom has compiled a Hosted by for Austrian TV Go TV. He's presenting his favorite videoclips. Here's the playlist:
dEUS is playing a Black Session tonight (22:00) in Paris. You can follow it live on France Inter.
For those of you who haven't read it in the magazine: Vantage Point reviewed by Humo.
The Architect is on #8 in the Ultratop, on #2 in De Afrekening and still on #1 in Humo's Top 20.
Cast your eyes to the right and you'll see what impressed us most about dEUS' latest album. It was not the lyricism, nor the varied pace, nor the experimentalism with sonic textures, but the humble artwork.
The second episode of the tourpodcast is online.
Vantage Point is album of the day on BBC 6 Music.
Vantage Point will enter the Ultratop Album Chart on #1 next saturday.
(Source: Het Nieuwsblad)
A rather long interview with Tom about Vantage Point and the artwork in Alternative on Flemish Radio 1. You can listen to it on the podcast.
Swiss magazine Bands Magazine talks about dEUS 2.0., Rock Sound gives Vantage Point an 8, just as NME. And there's a review in ArtRocker Magazine too.
The May issue of German magazine Visions has an article about dEUS, and on the accompanying DVD you'll find, among other music videos, the video of Slow.
There's also a dEUS feature in issue 68 of Visions Weekly, the magazine's free "e-paper", with Elbow on the cover.
There's an interview with Tom Barman on French website Evene, with a video in which he talks about Girls in Hawaii (he doesn't really know their music, but he's happy that they're breaking through, and they'll be playing at several festivals where dEUS play -- but not working with them, as the interviewer wrongly wrote), Zita Swoon (he adores Giving Up the Hero, thinks Stef is a great songwriter, but he wishes the music were a little wilder at times) and Jacques Brel (he's just too great to be covered).
In the interview, Tom stresses the importance of Klaas in the dEUS sound, because he plays the violin in a unique way, and also does keyboards & percussions -- which makes him the sportsman of the band when he has to juggle between all those instruments on stage. Tom loves playing Sun Ra and Oh Your God because they are very physical songs. He says The Vanishing of Maria Schneider took its final form when he tried to croon like Iggy Pop on his debut solo album The Idiot. He also claims that he'd love to sing in French, but he'd end up sounding like a bad imitation of Serge Gainsbourg. He's written a few songs in Dutch, but since dEUS is his "ticket to travel", he sticks to English with the band. He recently bought The Gutter Twins' Saturnalia, because he loves Greg Dulli & Mark Lanegan, as well as the Beirut album.
Evene also reviewed Vantage Point: they give it 4 stars and think Oh Your God is the key song of the album.
There's a nice article on dEUS and Antwerp fashion in the May issue of German magazine Intro (with Notwist on the cover). Download the PDF here, dEUS and de stad are on page 44. They also reviewed Vantage Point on their website.
In Austria, now! give the album 4.5/7.
Vantage Point is also reviewed in Swedish magazines Sonic (6/10) and Dagensskiva (7/10).
French musiczine "Sur la même longueur d'ondes" suggests Vantage Point are dEUS's own Kid A. Their latest issue can also be downloaded for free as a PDF file -- the review is on page 62.
Italy's Onda Rock give the album 7/10, XL/La Repubblica give it 4/6 and Nòva100 give it 6+.
Gazet Van Antwerpen en Het Belang Van Limburg are giving away tickets for the first belgian club-show in Hasselt.
You can now watch the entire VP Studio Concert on the Studio Brussel-website.
Extra behind the scenes:
Drowned in Sound about the gig in London last week:
They draw heavily from Vantage Point this evening with mixed results; Barman’s delivery rasps wonderfully menacingly and while impossible to begrudge the band showcasing recent wares, ultimately the sheer impact of road-tested material for the most part dwarfs anything else. ‘Bad Timing’ is awesome, layers upon layers of volume and release, though the aforementioned notion is most pertinently evident in the sole offering from that album of theirs I hold most reverent – introduced by Barman as some “lighter entertainment” while strapping on an acoustic guitar, ‘Instant Street’ is airier, looser than anything preceding and greeted with suitably huge applause.
There was a long feature on the VP Studio concert in showbiz-magazine De Rode Loper.
(thx to Gilles and Kevin)
... can be found here.
Veel liefde en passie houdt ook veel lijden in. Maar misschien heb ik wel bindingsangst. Ik wil gewoon doen en laten wat ik kan. Stel dat ik morgen naar Argentinië wil emigreren, dan kan ik dat. Nou ja, niet helemaal, want ik heb een band, ha ha.
The Architect is now on #8 in the Ultratop and on #6 in Humo's Arriba.
What is really important to you? That's the question asked to Tom Barman by the people of the 99Matters website. In a one-minute video, Tom talks about passion and the word he hates: "Whatever."
There's an item on the dying art of record sleeve design on one of the blogs of The Guardian. The article mentions dEUS as follows:
The only really eye-catching album sleeve I've seen so far this year has been by dEUS - who got artist Michaël Borremans to give them a characteristically sinister painting for their excellent new album Vantage Point. The care they put into the music is reflected in the care they put into the packaging
Just noticed that Het Nieuwsblad also had an article about the status of dEUS this weekend.
There was an interview with Tom about Vantage Point in Brussels Vlaams (Studio Brussel) yesterday evening. Nothing special, Tom talked about Mauro, the recording progress and reviews (he isn't interested in them). He also said there will never be a woman in dEUS because that would mean the end....
You can listen to the entire interview on the podcast.
Tom talked about his favourite album in De Morgen this weekend. He picked Sign Of The Times by Prince and tells how he occasionally met Cat and Mico on the street before the concert in Antwerpen (1988).
Tom beautifully describes some songs and tells us how he managed to get in to the afterparty where he was recognized by Cat and introduced to Prince.
A newsitem from the Flemish national tv-channel about the VP Studio Concert.
Vantage Point reviewed by Steven Lemmens (Studio Brussel) for the newssite of the Flemish national tv-channel.
A live-video of The Architect as played on Motel Mozaïque is available on the Jimmy Alter-site.
(thx to dakjuh on ISR)
You can watch one song of the The Vantage Point Studio Concert on Stubru.be. They announce the complete gig (and some backstage footage) to be available on tuesday evening.
If you can't wait that long, there's a recording available on Rapidshare too.
dEUS will be performing at the Pont du Rock-festival in Malestroi (France). The festival is scheduled during the last weekend of July.
(Source: dEUS-fr)
There's also a nice overview of the number of albums dEUS has sold so far in De Standaard. In total they've sold more than 1 million albums.
There are no numbers for My Sister=My Clock or the No More Loud Music-compilation.
There's a very interesting interview with dEUS-manager Christian Pierre in De Standaard. It also contains some old dEUS-pics.
According to Gazet Van Antwerpen about 20.000 people have pre-ordered Vantage Point in Belgium. That means a golden record.
Tom was interviewed shortly on Studio Brussel by Tomas De Soete yesterday afternoon. You can listen to it here. He mainly talked about the webcast next sunday and said most of the guests will join them in the studio. They will play Vantage Point entirely like it is on the cd.
Two reviews from the Melkweg-gig: Bas Timmers and Jimmy Alter Community for new & Alternative music.
Since Vantage Point has hit the regular recordstores today, it's now also available on the Belgian iTunes Music Store. Click here to order it.
Strange: De Morgen has published two reviews of Vantage Point. One on April 11th (the day after the Heineken-incident) and one last tuesday. It even gets more funny as they were written by brothers (Bart & Dirk Steenhaut). There are some minor differences, but the Steenhaut-brothers clearly don't share opinions on The Architect...
(thx to Joost Peeters)
No tickets for the gig in Brussels? Try your luck in this contest from Nieuwsblad.be.
Two videosnippets with with quotes from Buckminster Fuller you'll probably recognize.
(thx to Wouter)
The Architect remains at the top in Humo's Top 20 and De Afrekening (Studio Brussel).
You can now relisten the interview with Tom in Mezzo on the (unofficial) podcast. Tom shortly talked about the embargo-riot and said people should read this article in De Standaard from last monday.
He talks about the next album and he announces more choirs on it. Tom has already one song ready called Back to School.
Watch Tom Barman performing The Vanishing of Maria Schneider on VPRO's Café De Liefde. You can also watch Bad Timing, published last week. [thx to Jasper Koning]
Vantage Point is also cd of the day on Flemish Radio 1 today. Tom will be interviewed in Mezzo at 11.30 hour.
Vantage Point is cd of the day on Studio Brussel. You better listen carefull because they will be giving away a tickets for the Vantage Point Studio Concert next sunday.
There's a contest on Standaard.be. You can win an autographed version of Vantage Point or the complete dEUS backcatalogue. Click here to enter.
There's now a dEUS tour podcast on deus.be, maintained by Vincent, live sound engineer of the band. He hopes to publish a new entry every ten days or so. The first post is the track-by-track commentary as heard on Last.fm, with an intro featuring Karin Dreijer's Slow vocals.
During the Pocket Revolution tour Vincent ran a tour diary in French, on the website of Belgian TV-weekly Télémoustique.
On the Télémoustique website you can win tickets for the sold-out dEUS concerts in Brussels, Charleroi and Liège, as well as the Vantage Point album.
In this week's issue of the magazine, there's also a 2-page review of the album - they give it 3 stars and think its sound owes more to The Ideal Crash than to Pocket Revolution. No interview, though: the Télémoustique journalist refused to sign the controversial embargo contract.
The new dEUS album reviewed on the BBC's music website (you'll need a good English dictionary for that one), KindaMuzik ("een groeialbum bij uitstek"), "pre-reviewed" (with utter disappointment) on the Volkskrant blog.
Please get in touch if you read anything about dEUS in other European media which we can't easily cover, be that in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe or anywhere else vaguely exotic.
The BBC 6 Music Session is now available on the podcast. dEUS were interviewed and they played Maria Schneider (acoustic) and the ghettoblaster-version of The Architect. Photo's and video will probably be available soon on the Hub-website.
Tomorrow at noon Tom Barman will be the guest of Belgian radio La Première's 'Culture Club' programme.
And right now you should tune in to the Beeb's 6Music website and listen to dEUS playing an acoustic session. So far they've done The Vanishing and they're now doing some sort of play-back performance of The Architect. I suspect the ghettoblaster's receiving some more love.
A small interview (with nothing new) on Nu.nl, including another The Architect-ghettoblaster-performance.
Speculation on the place of the dEUS-gig in Antwerp has started. This blogger puts his money on the Stadspark.
Rock Werchter has released its time schedule. dEUS will headline the festival and play as the last band from 23.45 hour until 1.15 hour.
Interview with Tom on the website of French magazine Les Inrocks. Again, I'll only summarize any information not published in another interview.
A small dEUS-special on Entertainment.be, including an album review, a look back and a nice dEUS-quiz which shouldn't be too difficult for most of you.
Highlights from dEUS-fr's summary of the Tom Barman interview in French mag "Noise" -- just the stuff we haven't heard from other interviews:
The highlights from the interview in Focus Knack
Shall I knock you down with another summary? Here's one from the interview in Humo.
A round-up from the interview with Stéphane in DaMusic:
Tom said in De Wereld Draait Door that dEUS will headline Lowlands this year. Interviewer Matthijs van Nieuwkerk announced that they will be closing Rock Werchter this year and Tom added “and Lowlands too”.
Lowlands is scheduled from August 15th until August 17th.
The highlights from the interview in Het Nieuwsblad:
The highlights from the interview in Het Belang van Limburg and Gazet van Antwerpen.
A summary of the interview in free newspaper Metro:
Flemish (economic) newspaper De Tijd published an interview with dEUS-manager Christian Pierre and Klaas Janszoons today. They're mainly talking about the whole marketing-machine behind Vantage Point.
Othin Spake, one of Mauro's sideprojects will release a new album titled Child of Deception and Skill on the 15th of May. Click here for more info.
(thx to Wim)
Vantage Point is now available on the French iTunes Music Store (and probably the rest of Europe too. It's not (yet) available in Belgium and the UK. Click here to download it on iTunes.
AFP, the leading French press agency, also interviewed Tom. Interestingly, they asked him about the recent political crisis in Belgium (we had no governement for about a semester). He doesn't want to talk too much about that, since it's such a sensitive issue, but he believes there were some paranoid reactions on the Walloon side, while most Flemish people do not want Belgium to come to an end, but think that the country needs deep reforms.
Focus Knack will have an interview with Tom in the issue of tomorrow. They've already published some snippets online. The most interesting one is probably that Tom is negotiating to get the movie rights for The Alcoholics, a novel by Jim Thompson.
Universal Music Belgium's marketing manager has warned that Le Soir and De Morgen's failure to comply with the press embargo will have consequences. (source: Le Vif/L'Express)
Update: According to Universal, if you didn't sign the interview contract, you still had the possibility of meeting Tom Barman on April 18. The contract was signed by 20 journalists, with just one person refusing to sign (source: De Morgen, via Kevin)
dEUS will be in De Wereld Draait Door tonight.
(thx to Matthijs)
Look at this still from Actu24's video in the Vantage Point Studio... looks like this white board has a list of the songs that dEUS have been rehearsing for this tour! All Vantage Point songs, plus Suds & Soda, Via, Roses, Theme From Turnpike, Fell Off The Floor Man, Instant Street, What We Talk About, Bad Timing, Nothing Really Ends, Sun Ra, plus a few more which we don't see. Serpentine, The Ideal Crash (!) and Let's See Who Goes Down First (!!) are on that list, but sadly they're crossed out.
Tom Barman is again -- rather deceivingly -- on the cover of Le Soir, for a tiny quote in their special edition about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There's also a small article about the "embargo affair" in their "Swarado" kids supplement.
La Libre Belgique, another leading French-speaking Belgian newspaper, has decided not to publish Tom's interview, saying Universal Music's €25,000 fine was a "clunky, useless, inefficient and unacceptable measure". They strongly criticize Le Soir's very ambiguous position.
La Dernière Heure however didn't make a fuss: here's their short interview with Tom. Nothing new, except that Tom describes Alan as a "weird but great guy" ("un peu space, mais c'est un mec super").
The newspapers of the Vers L'Avenir group published the full interview in their paper edition, and excerpts of it on their Actu24 website. A few interesting bits:
Interviews from De Standaard, Het Nieuwsblad and DaMusic. I also noticed interviews in Gazet van Antwerpen and Metro. I'll try to make a summary later today.
(updated after Poison's information - actual setlist differed from the paper setlist)
The highlights from the Oor-interview:
The highlights from the interview with De Morgen:
The Knack-review of Vantage Point (3 stars):
(thx to Joost Peeters)Tom Barman alternately in the skin of a crooning rocker and balladeer, and Mauro Pawlowski as pathological saboteur: the fifth of dEUS is fabulous again.
The website of Humo has some special features online: an overview of Tom Barman-quotes, a selection of dEUS-videos and footage from Humo's Rock Rally 1992. There will be an interview in tomorrow's magazine.
The Architect remains in the top 10 of the Belgian Ultratop-chart. The single is still at 6 after 4 weeks.
There's an interview with Tom in De Morgen today (but not online yet). Other Belgian newspapers are respecting the embargo. There's an article in De Standaard that explains why they are respecting it.
I'll summarize the interview from De Morgen and Oor tonight.
French-speaking, public Belgian radio Pure FM starts its dEUS week this Monday. They'll play the entire Vantage Point album over the week, giving their listeners several chances to win the record, and on Tuesday they'll air Sylvestre Defontaine's interview with Tom Barman.
Tom played two songs yesterday evening at the Bourla theatre (Antwerp) during the Hugo Claus-tribute: Nothing Really Ends and Right As Rain.
According to Metro, a Dutch free daily paper, dEUS will play at Lowlands 2008.
(thx to zjitnepoz on ISR)
Tom Barman is on the cover of today's De Morgen Magazine. DM photographer Charlie De Keersmaecker visited the Vantage Point Studio several times during the making of the new dEUS album. There are 9 full pages of photos and texts, including an interview with Tom De Keersmaecker. You can get a preview of the whole magazine on the De Morgen website.
[thx to Thomas for the tip]
On Last.fm you can now listen to the entire Vantage Point album, with track-by-track comments by dEUS members. [thx to lovedeus]
Le Soir doesn't seem to care about the "embargo" and published their interview with Tom today. It doesn't really contain anything new, but ends with some allusion on Alan. Tom says he isn't ready for kids at this moment and he doesn't want to make children all around the world like the bass player...
Zita Swoon have a new album called Big Blueville. In a February interview with French musiczine Froggy Delight, Stef Kamil Carlens talks about his past experience in dEUS, which he left after the recording of In A Bar, Under The Sea.
With hindsight, don't you regret you left dEUS?
Stef: Sometimes I do -- music-wise, it was a very cool experience.
Christian Pierre reacts on the Heineken-incident in the Belgian media on the Knack-website.
Vantage Point reviewed by Belgian newspaper De Morgen. (Google Translation)
Vantage Point will clearly need much listenings before it reveals all its secrets, but it's certainly a record that excites and intrigues.
The May-issue of Oor Magazine (in stores now) has dEUS on the front and include a 7-page interview with Tom and some nice pics by Guy Kokken.
Vantage Point is no longer available on the Spanish Heineken-website. Yesterday all Belgian newssites (starting with Het Laatste Nieuws) reported about the pre-listening possibily as Heineken.es. Obviously Universal (the record company for Belgium) wasn't very happy about it.
The deal with Heineken was made by Co-operative Music (COOP), the late V2, the record company that is representing dEUS in the rest of the world. Universal didn't known about the deal.
Yesterday evening, while the news had been widely spread in Belgium, Heineken removed the album. It's still unclear if this incident will affect other (already announced) pre-listening possibilities such as the VPRO-luisterpaal.
(Source: De Morgen, Gazet van Antwerpen en De Standaard)
Update: dEUS manager Christian Pierre was interviewed by Focus Knack about this.
(thx to Steven Adam)
An interview with Mauro from Mijnnl, a Dutch citymagazine. Quick round-up:
"Tom always expects us to come up with brilliant ideas, but there's never a shortage of ideas. That's a luxury. If I'm not inspired, because of the world situation or narcissic occupations, then the drummer will take care of providing ideas."
"dEUS and Evil Superstars were in the middle of the Belgian music boom in the 1990's, when suddenly anything from Belgium was great."
"I've played in ball orchestras, collaborated with extremely different people, I even made music for a doll theater. Anything is possible: I'm a professional."
"Vantage Point was named after our studio. Or so I thought. I've asked about that, but I still don't know what 'vantage' means exactly. I think it's something about a departure. So that, when the five of us are together, we are the vantage point. Sounds good eh? I just don't know if that's what it means. I've asked three times already, but you can't keep asking forever, so in the end you just make something up."
A commercial from Belgian energycompany Electrabel that might have been an inspiration for the The Architect-video.
There was an interview with Tom in De Volkskrant Banen last tuesday. You can find it here. Here's a quick summary (or a Google Translation) :
(thx to Roy)
Tom performing Bad Timing for VPRO's Café De Liefde. Next week theyl'll put The Vanishing of Maria Schneider online.
dEUS will perform at the Paléo Festival in Nyon (Switzerland) on July 22nd. Other bands on the bill include R.E.M., Manu Chao, Mika, Ben Harper, Massive Attack and Vanessa Paradis.
(Source: dEUS.be)
The Drowned In Sound-contest tells us more about the Vantage Point Studio Concert. Apparently dEUS will be performing for a webcast at 3 PM.
BTW: In order to win you have to answer this question: If Tom Barman, dEUS singer, was a type of sweet, what type of sweet would he be? So if you're not entering the DIS-competion why not leave your answer in the comments of this blog?
The video for The Architect is now also available on the dEUS-Youtube-channel. If you want to know how it was created, click here.
It's probably too late to enter, but German webzine Intro had a competition with tickets for the gigs in Saärbrucken and Mannheim.
If you live in England, you may now enter the Vantage Point Studio concert competition on the Drowned in Sound website and win a trip for 2 persons to the dEUS studio in Antwerp on April 20! [thx to Jo]
And if you live near Mannheim, you can try to win 2 tickets for the April 10 gig on the Intro website.
Next sunday Tom will be doing something at a tribute for Flemish novelist Hugo Claus, who passed away a couple of weeks ago. The events features the cream of Flemish literature and takes place in the Bourla-theatre. The event will also be broadcasted on radio Klara (live stream) and starts at 18.00 hour. More info here.
(Source: De Standaard)
