1979–1985
New Wave in Belgium
Cold synths, black coats and cheap drum machines: how Belgian new wave turned austerity into a sound.
Belgium's music memory, reimagined
MABEL
Music Archives Belgium
Preserving the past.
Inspiring the future.
Punk · Post-punk · New Wave · EBM · New Beat · Garage · Fifties Rock · Electro · Indie · Underground ·Punk · Post-punk · New Wave · EBM · New Beat · Garage · Fifties Rock · Electro · Indie · Underground ·
What is MABEL?
Stories first.
Archive second.
Museum later.
MABEL preserves Belgian music heritage through archives, photography, publications, documentaries, exhibitions and — one day — a museum. But we don't start with vitrines. We start with the material itself: the negatives, the tapes, the posters glued to a wall for one night in 1979.
Belgium produced punk, new wave, EBM and new beat that shaped music far beyond its borders. Most of that history sits in attics, shoeboxes and basements, quietly decaying. MABEL exists to rescue it, digitise it and give it back — as stories worth reading, images worth seeing and sounds worth hearing.
Featured Archive
Enter the material
12,400+PhotographyGig, backstage & street
3,100+PostersScreenprints & offset
8,700+VinylSingles, LPs, test pressings6,200+FlyersClubs, squats, festivals1,450+FanzinesDIY print culture2,900+AudioTapes, demos, radio sessions780+VideoLive footage & TV60+GuitarsStage-used instruments2,000+MemorabiliaBadges, shirts, passes5,300+DocumentsContracts, letters, riders1,900+MagazinesBelgian & international9,000+Press clippingsReviews & interviewsBelgian Music Timeline
Seventy years, one thread
1950s
Rock 'n Roll
Belgian dancehalls discover electric guitars. Homegrown rockers press their first singles.
1960s
Beat
Beat clubs multiply. Belgian bands answer the British invasion with their own raw sound.
1970s
Punk
1976–1979: a DIY explosion. Fanzines, squats, cheap amplifiers and no future.
1980s
New Wave · EBM · New Beat
Belgium becomes a laboratory: cold synths, body music and the 33rpm-at-45 accident.
1990s
Alternative · Electronic
Guitar noise meets rave. Belgian labels export a sound to the rest of the world.
2000+
Today's scenes
Fragmented, global, restless — and already becoming tomorrow's archive.
Scroll sideways →
Featured Stories
From the archive
Photographers
Belgian Underground Photography
The photographers who stood in the front row, and the negatives sitting in shoeboxes ever since.
Venues
Legendary Clubs
Ancienne Belgique, Boccaccio, Vooruit, Hof ter Lo — rooms that shaped how Belgium sounded.
Design
Posters, Fanzines & Artwork
Ink, glue and urgency: the cut-and-paste graphics that announced a scene overnight.
Rescue
Lost Archives
What happens to a lifetime of tapes and photographs when nobody comes to collect it.
Bloody Belgium
Belgian Punk 1976–1979
Publications
Printed evidence
Published by Les Iles Publishers, Bloody Belgium documents the explosion of Belgian punk between 1976 and 1979 through unseen photography, flyers, fanzines and first-hand testimony. It is the project from which MABEL grew — and the first of a series.
Documentary · In production
Bloody Belgium
The Film
A feature documentary tracing Belgian punk and its aftershocks, built from archive footage, unseen photography and the people who were there.
The Collection
Twenty kinds of evidence
Photography, audio, posters, tickets, passes, vinyl, letters, setlists, instruments — catalogued item by item, and eventually searchable by everyone.
Future Museum
A permanent home
MABEL begins as a digital archive and will grow into a physical museum, exhibition space and research centre for Belgian music heritage.
Support MABEL
Archives disappear quietly
Donate a collection, become a partner, fund digitisation, volunteer or sponsor the archive. Every rescued box is a piece of Belgian music history that survives.