The Neon Judgement
BIO
The Neon Judgment hail from the small town of Leuven near Brussels, Belgium and gave birth to the New Beat and EBM scenes worldwide with the release of their first two cassettes Suffering (1981) and TV Treated (1982). Always a consistent duo of Dirk Da Davo (synthesizers, vocals) and TB Frank (guitar, drum machine, vocals) The Neon Judgment worked in a parallel world alongside Suicide, Cabaret Voltaire, and the Deutsche Neue Welle recording under the watchful eyes of Roland Beelen (Antler-Subway) & Ludo Camerberlin (A Blaze Colour).
Davo Da Davo and TB Frank veered between minimalistic industrial drones and odd, new wave-ish synth pop and dance music, underlain by cold, mechanical rhythms. The band combinded brash and seedy lyrics, with raw synthesizer stabs and repetitive drum machine beats both aggressive and danceable. In 1983 they released the infamous Cockerill-Sombre EP containing the dance-floor smash “The Fashion Party” for Anything But Records. Due the success of this EP, The Neon Judgement signed a deal with Play It Again Sam label in Belgium and released their first album, Mafu Cage in 1986. Their first American came in 1987, with the sex-themed concept album Horny As Hell. Subsequent recordings included Blood and Thunder (1989), The Insult (1990), and Are You Real (1992). The duo took a three-year hiatus to rethink the direction of their music, after which they returned in 1995 with At Devil’s Fork, an LP recorded with percussionist Ben Forceville entirely in a wooded area. The band briefly stopped performing in 1998, but reformed in 2004 and started performing live again to promote a series of remixes and re-releases of their material. The touring continued into 2006, with the band promising on their website that, “Live, The Neon Judgement will continue to give art terrorism a good name, finding new ways of marrying noise and beauty, machines and magic”.
Dirk Da Davo is also have in the side project Neon Electronics, for which he started his own record label Dancedelic-D and he both reworks old classics and composes new material.
LINKS
http://www.theneonjudgement.com/
The Neon Judgement on Myspace
The Neon Judgement on Discogs
VIDEO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSoZXIVArN8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mpwtaw20kfs