The Belgian label celebrates its 20th birthday with a compilation of hidden treasures.
While the good old Angèle sweeps into the 2026 pop-world concert scene with Instinct, her latest blockbuster, Belgium marks Freaksville Records’ 20th anniversary—an indie outfit with punk ethics founded by the inimitable Benjamin Schoos, a musician-artist with razor-sharp humor, who hosts a bunch of quirky misfits that managed to offer a different pop narrative in response to the blandness of yesterday’s and today’s charts.
Much like the Belgian wave of UFO sightings from 1989 to 1991, when thousands of witnesses claimed unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) above the gray skies of the Low Countries, Freaksville’s story is a relatively classic Belgian B-movie at heart: a youngster who loves rock and French chanson launches a label to release music that no one else would. The first record, Hantises, comes off as a collaboration between mischief-makers—Phantom, a band led by Schoos, and Jacques Duvall, the lyricist who has written for Chamfort, Jane Birkin, and yes, the Runaways. The object is garage-rock and weird western-inspired, with a spoken word moment reminiscent of Dutronc, if the great Jacques had flaunted his swagger at the Velvet Underground.
20 Years of Hidden Treasures
Not the type to scout for the next big talent, Freaksville doesn’t chase novelty through youth. It makes the new out of cultish reverence. By rehabilitating Duvall, the punk-era icon Marie-France, and even Lio, the label lands squarely in the rocking revival that electrified Gibus club nights in the mid-2000s. Not limited to French-language artists, the label would also release albums by Alex Gavaghan, the Liverpool guitarist, or Pigeons, a London-based power trio at the crossroads of The Fall and the Residents. Not an exhaustive list, the catalog, moreover, has enough dream material: April March & Aquaserge, Michel Moers (ex-Telex, the Belgian Kraftwerk), krautrock curios, pop curios, and a bit of variety-show fare.
For Freaksville’s 20th birthday, Benjamin Schoos has taken on curatorial duties for a compilation that would showcase the “slightly more marginal facet of Freaksville”, as he puts it, titled Freaksville (20 Years of Hidden Treasures). The lineup includes Man From Uranus, also known as Phil MFU, a sorcerer of analog synthesizers and a space-age eccentric forever chasing the philosopher’s stone, but also the friends from La Bibliothèque de la Bergerie, the pioneer of French electronic music Jean-Jacques Perrey, and even Schoos himself, on the deeply sensitive and romantic Cine-Nostalgia. In short, groove galore, for as many psychedelic landscapes to explore in a record shaped like a program for the massive release of imaginations.
Happy birthday, Freaksville!
Editor’s note originally published in the Music newsletter on October 16, 2026. To subscribe to Inrocks newsletters for free, it’s here!
