The Tweeters - The Berchem Tapes (May 1976)

Ultra Eczema do more of what Ultra Eczema loves to do with this latest dive into the underbelly of Belgian music, firing up an archival division they're choosing to christen 'Pendantwerp' (typically lol) for this collection of tracks by Antwerp-based artrock/free jazz collective, The Tweeters. Active in the early 70s, the group broadly fit into a wider context of improvised music in Belgian at the time - Fred Van Hove perhaps the most familiar name within that realm, and one amongst many each member also separately played with - though as their chosen moniker might suggest, there's something essentially off-centre at play that seems to position them outside of the usual institutional arrangements. The timestamp of 1976 is a bit of a giveaway too, landing the group somewhere between jazz traditions, prog adventurism, and DIY artrock iconoclasm - when Liliane Vertessen sings over the lilting cafe culture waltz of 'Foolish Things' we're suddenly as much in the realm of Robert Wyatt/Recommended Records/Blue Gene Tyranny hybridised eccentricity as anything that might be considered idiomatically 'jazz'. A year later this might have been considered old news; a year after that, and Rough Trade might well have released it. If you're looking for a shorthand reading of The Tweeters' story, it might just be in that lineage. 
 
FFO: Soft Machine, Robert Wyatt, Ornette Coleman, Peter Blegvad