Ze Noiz

Guitarband that was reckoned among the most promising of these parts at the end of the 80's, start of the 90's.

As so many bands in this Belgian Pop & Rock Archives, Ze Noiz started their career by scoring in Humo's Rock Rally, in their case by winning the 1988 edition "con brio" (with them on the rostrum were The Romans and the B-Tunes, with the brothers Mosuse, later with The Radios). The band's reputation came from the vocal qualities of singer "Rico" (Bart van den Bossche) and the riffs of guitar-player "Zaman" (Frank Haelman).
Note : it is clearly not the Bart van den Bossche who made his claim to VTM-fame with "Heuveltjes van Erica" and other crap. Let there be no mistake about that.

The group kept looking for a way to develop a sound of their own, and this resulted in 1990 in the first album of the band ("Thy Will Be Done") which revealed the true nature of Ze Noiz : popsongs mixed in with rough & agressive tracks or slow, cut&bleed songs. Singles of this album became CD "She's Alright" (tot date the best-known song of Ze Noiz with the lyric "My baby she's alright, she's sleeping with another man), the fast "G.G.Y.Y." and the bluesy "Hanging Down".
As Jan Delvaux wrote for Knack Magazine about this album: "After doing away with the redundant tracks and sighing about the ramshackle production, what remains is a vitamin course af a small half hour. The REM-taint that still sticks on them since She's alright (reworked here), disappears under the biting detergent of tracks such as "G.G.Y.Y" and "Didn't wanna shoot" (foot on the peddle and not looking back) and the strangulating ballad "Prisonland". Singer and lyricist Bart Van den Bossche surprises most in his encounter with Nick Cave and Iggy Pop in "I hate Andy". And you can get it in any record shop."

In 1992 the band had moved label from the Belgian G-Rox-P (an experiment of PIAS) to the Dutch label Indisc, and recorded for them the CD "His Master's Noize" (a first batch came with a free 7-track unplugged cd containg acoustic versions of their songs). This was a production by Allard Jolles, guitar-player from the Dutch band L'Attentat and producer of guitar-bands such as Claw Boys Claw and The Paranoiacs, The Spanks and The Slumbers. An album about which mxp in Humo wrote "the sleeve is ugly, the title stinks, and the album is great.", but also "Ze Noiz sound at their best in the dark: on a night with a thunderstorm rolling in, a flickering TV and a view on a desterted, wet street ... This has to do with the way VDB writes and sings: smothered, flustered, condensed ... Take for example "Back", a slow, aashtrey, typical Ze Noiz-song: filled to the brim with death, crime, faith and cripple emotions. Full of atmosphere. Touching".

About a year after "His Master's Noize" Ze Noiz disbanded.

Singer Bart van den Bossche, who was a photographer, later went to work as a designer and world traveler, worked on a dadaïstic film with "Walbers und Hansen", and made his debut as a writer at the end of 2000 with a well-received book "Vuur" (Querido, ISBN 9021472600), which he published under the name Bart Koubaa.

Rik Vermeir started a longlasting career in modrock with his band Golden Green. Zaman became the guitarist in Mill and producer of a whole range of beginning rockbands (bands such as Eden, De Bossen, Looplizard and Nemo recorded their fist demo's with him), even doing cd-recordings for Walter and the very same Golden Green.

Band members :
- Bart van den Bossche (vocals)
- Frank Standaert / Johan De Bondt (bass)
- Frank Haelman (aka Zaman) (guitar)
- Rik Vermeir (guitar)
- Hans de Cock (drums)

Buy CD's of this band at

Albums :
- She's Alright (S, 1989, Green)
- Thy will be done (LP/CD, 1990, G-Rox-P)
- G.G.Y.Y. (S, 1990, G-Rox-P)
- Hanging Down (S, 1990, G-Rox-P)
- His Master's Noiz (CD, Indisc, 1992)
- Name of God (S, Indisc, 1992)
- Fly in Time (S, Indisc, 1992)
- Back (S, Indisc, 1992)
- The Curtain (MCD, Liquid, 1993)

Websites :
- Zenoiz.com, the official website.