Ostend exhibition of album covers shows vinyl's magic isn’t only in the sound

Hunkered down behind the dunes north of Ostend is Fort Napoleon, a squat pentagon of dark red brick, built on the orders of the little general in 1811.

Those visiting the fort as a historical relic this summer might be taken aback to see the techno pioneer CJ Bolland peeking over the outer ramparts, alongside punk originals The Kids and the doyens of electronic body music Front 242.

These images form part of Belgium: The Vinyl Frontier, an exhibition of record sleeves by local designers from the last five decades, which the fort is currently home to.

There’s a wonderful incongruity between this formerly militarised location and the oddball art on display. It’s the strangest mash-up I’ve experienced since visiting an exhibition of outsider art curated by Sonic Youth in a former U-boat bunker in France.

The Ostend exhibition is the brainchild of Francis Weyns and Ben Van Alboom of Red Bull Elektropedia, an online platform launched in 2009 that documents Belgian nightlife. Belgium: The Vinyl Frontier is the subdivision that focuses on independent music made here.

Colours and walls

The reasons for picking Fort Napoleon were straightforward, Weyns says. “Ben has had two exhibitions there that proved a huge success. The city of Ostend and the people of Fort Napoleon were very supportive. Ostend is becoming one of the biggest cultural cities in Belgium; this combined with the summer season was ideal for our exhibition.”

The show is accessed through doors emblazoned with a blow-up of a TC Matic 12-inch sleeve: shocking pink lettering over a chiaroscuro male torso, bulging veins and musculature, which splits neck to crotch as the doors slide open. It’s a bold statement of intent; the exhibition, like its entrance, is playful but not playing it safe.

The exhibition proper begins with a series of “walls” grouped by colour. Placebo’s Ball of Eyes, The Sore Losers’ Skydogs and Brel’s Les Vieux 2 are on the Orange & Red Wall. The Subs and Amatorski feature on the Blue & Green Wall. On The Wall, with its cream, black and white palette, we find the 1970s jazz album Good Buddies, with its price sticker still attached.

The sleeves on display have been sourced from various collectors, labels, record shops, Weyns and Alboom’s personal vinyl collections and from records found on the website Discogs.

There are other idiosyncratic groupings, too, with Ferre Grignard, Dez Mona and 2 Belgen on one wall and Burt Blanca, Luc Van Acker and Melanie de Biasio on the adjacent wall.

Discover the unknown

These sleeves, like the vast majority in the fort, stand proudly out of context, without explicatory text, and have to be taken on their own terms. A visitor without a working knowledge of 50 years of Belgian music will have no choice but to take the sleeves at face value as visual works of art.

Weyns: “Just as we once did, the visitors will get a chance to discover a lot of bands, labels and artwork they’ve never heard or seen before. We wanted primarily to let the artwork speak for itself and guide the visitors to their own discovery; just like when you’re in a second-hand shop and you find records with artwork that intrigues you, even though you’ve never heard of the band.”

Deeper into the exhibition lies the Comics Corner, for designers taking a more graphic approach. Matto Le D’s work for Fifty Foot Combo is highlighted here. Indeed, throughout the whole exhibition certain designers are showcased more than others: Sozyone Gonzalez, Rudy Trouvé, Dr Lektroluv and Ever Meulen’s sleeves for Telex.

Why these? “For their love of music, their immaculate taste, their originality and their sense of humour,” says Weyns.

Next to featured designers there is a bit of text, taken from the luscious coffee table book that accompanies the exhibition and was put together by Van Alboom and Weyns. Listed at €39.95, visitors can get a €10 discount with a coupon from The Dusty Needle, a newspaper that can be picked up free at the exhibition.

To each their own

There is also the Black Corner, nominally featuring the more audacious sleeves, next to old scratched and sprayed graffiti that has been allowed to remain on the fort’s walls. Here are Argonauts and Magneto by Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat, two sleeves from The Kids and Last Chicken in Paris from Limburg post-punkers Bedtime For Bonzo.

In the slyly ironic Ladies Corner, one corny sleeve features a figure silhouetted behind venetian blinds about to lick her fingers. “The girl on the Calypso album by Sven Van Hees is actually the artist himself, dressed up as a woman,” explains Weyns. “If you don’t know it, you wouldn’t see the difference, but the story is in our book.”

It would also be easy to take offence at Vive la Fête!’s Attaque Populaire, with singer Els Pynoo semi-naked, trussed up and ready to be sat on like a chair. Out of context in the show, it looks as sexist as Spinal Tap’s legendary Smell The Glove, rather than part of a battery of aware and defiantly sexualised imagery deployed by the band.

Your reaction to the image will depend largely on your knowledge – or lack of it – and general feelings about the band.

Celebrate the sound

Weyns admits this is risky, but adds: “We don’t want to be the jazz police. Almost all the bands are in control of the things they do; we’re pretty sure they know what their artwork is about.”

That would also be true of the section devoted to The Lords of Acid and their sleeves for Rough Sex, I Want To Increase My Bust and The Crablouse.

A pair of record decks is set up, but when I visited the only aural context was provided by a vintage 1957 Rock Ola jukebox playing an array of seven-inch singles, including The Chackachas’ brilliant “Jungle Fever”, immortalised in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights. The sleeve – crass faux-afrocentrism at best, racist at worst – has worn less well.

The exhibition, book and The Dusty Needle are all part of a concerted drive to celebrate all things vinyl. They are part of the same movement that coalesces once a year on Record Store Day (RSD).

The book is actually a sequel to Belgium: The Vinyl Frontier Part 1 which was in the format of a vinyl single and featured interviews with seven record collectors. The 1,000 copies were distributed exclusively through independent record stores on RSD in 2014 and instantly went out of stock.

Alive and well

One of the leading lights of RSD is Diederik Decroix, who is heavily involved in maintaining the event’s social media presence. He feels that vinyl is doing better now than it has in 25 years, even if it only makes up 2 or 3% of all music bought in Belgium. “It’s gaining popularity, but it is still a small market,” he says.

For enthusiasts, listening to vinyl is a commitment, and an immersive, sensual experience. “Listening to vinyl is about setting aside some time for music, enjoying the moment of putting the needle on the record and letting it spin; taking the time to get to know an entire record, not just one song, and enjoying the artwork while listening to the sound,” Decroix says.

He attributes vinyl’s current success to services like Spotify. “If you don’t like a song after five seconds, you skip and skip until you find something you like.”

Red Bull Elektropedia, he says, has been crucial for initiatives like Record Store Day and for vinyl in general. But every record shop owner also deserves credit. “They are the ones who are truly passionate about music and vinyl, giving advice to their customers day in, day out.”

Until 25 September, Fort Napoleon, Ostend