Put together by the DJ and producer Jerome Hill, New Beats the House is the first part of his Belgian Odyssey mix series. I can think of few people better suited to educate and illustrate this often overlooked part of dance music’s history.

My knowledge of the New Beat scene is tiny compared to what I know about Detroit and the origins of techno in the 80s; and I’m hardly the expert on the Belleville Three or UR either. Jerome:

People talk about Detroit as being the place that shaped the techno sound, but you don’t often hear about the Belgians, who for me and many others were equally important and had their own individual and harder sound which gradually morphed through New Beat and Hard Beat to Acid, Rave, Techno and even Trance…

He continues:

These are some of my favourite New Beats to come out of Belgium in the late 80’s and there are a couple of later Techno/New Beat tracks on there too.. Two tracks on this mix weren’t made in Belgium, but could have been…

How many parts this series will run for, I don’t know yet. In the meantime here’s an article from a 1991 issue of NME written by The Grid’s Richard Noise.