Rietjens: “That must have been around 2010, 2011. I was still living at home at the time. My father has been playing in a blues band for fun all his life. There was always a keyboard or drum kit somewhere. Over the years, our basement was transformed from a gathering place for instruments into a place where I could make music without disturbing my parents or my sisters. Also the first beats, loops, cuts and breaks from STIKSTOF were created. The more others saw how I did that, the more they came to realize exactly how a song was created. Spending time together was contagious.”
Later, Rietjens – and therefore also STIKSTOF – would end up in an apartment on the Vlaamsesteenweg and in the Koningsstraat in Sint-Joost, where Who is Guy? was recorded and mixed until the FRONTAL studio above Les Brasseurs in Anspachlaan was finally completed. Brihangs was first there Airframe canned, and then Family above all and Swamp. “That studio on the Vlaamsesteenweg was also my bedroom. On one side was all the equipment, on the other a double bed. I lived there for almost two years. Actually that wasn’t healthy. I remember conversations with ex-girlfriends wondering where this was going: I would jump from my bed to my computer first thing in the morning. That’s cool when you’re young, but it felt liberating to be able to commute to the FRONTAL studio and let loose in the evening. Allocating space to your work is also a form of taking your work seriously.”
6. Dabbling in the underground, 7. Brussels arrives and 8. Guy is everywhere
In the slipstream of the Niveau4 project at Couleur Café, it Brussels arrivesconcert in Dour and the almost instant solo success of Zwangere Guy, STIKSTOF’s career also gained momentum in 2016 and 2017. While their first album was launched at a self-organized party in Allee du Kaai, 200 fans showed up at the Beursschouwburg for the release of the second. But it wasn’t until Zwangere Guy released his (solo) mixtape Maternity leave vol.3 would imagine in the Vaartkapoen – a full house of 600 people – that it began to dawn on the outside world that something was in the air. Nuisancepartly created during a residency at Le Vecteur in Charleroi, was presented in a sold-out Ancienne Belgique.
