About RetroHouse

The memory of Belgian nightlife

RetroHouse.net gathers the memory of club culture in Belgium: the clubs, the DJs, the record shops, the bars, the radio stations, the parties and the promoters who made the 80s, 90s and 2000s move.

For almost thirty years, Belgium was one of the centres of electronic music in Europe. New beat was born here. Clubs like La Rocca, the Boccaccio, the Cherry Moon, the Illusion and the Fuse drew thousands of dancers every weekend, from all over the country and often from much further away.

Few official traces of that time remain. The clubs have closed, the buildings have found new uses, the posters were torn down. What survived mostly sleeps in drawers, attics and shoeboxes. RetroHouse was born to bring those memories together before they disappear.

Thirty years of Belgian nights

The late 80s: new beat. It all starts with a slow, heavy, hypnotic sound, played slower than intended on the turntables. People call it new beat. Within months it takes over the Flemish clubs, the radio and the charts. The Boccaccio in Destelbergen and La Rocca in Lier become places of pilgrimage. The first cassettes in the archive date from this time: 1987, 1988.

The early 90s: the explosion. New beat gives way to house, techno, trance and hardcore. Parties get bigger, line-ups get longer, DJs become stars. The Cherry Moon in Lokeren opens its doors and becomes a name known far beyond the borders. Every weekend, thousands of young people cross the country from club to club, from Saturday night to Sunday noon.

The mid 90s: the golden age. This is the richest period in the archive: nearly 3,000 sets between 1994 and 1999, more than 300 in some years. Clubs compete with decor, lasers and guests. The tapes sell like hot cakes: you order them at the bar, copy them for your friends and play them in the car on the way home. The Fuse opens in Brussels in 1994 and brings in the big names of international techno.

The 2000s: memories and retro parties. The scene changes. Some clubs close, others reinvent themselves. But nostalgia sets in quickly: retro parties, club anniversaries and reunions of former residents multiply. The archive follows them until 2016, with recordings more and more often made digitally.

The tapes: the heart of the archive

The heart of the site is the recordings. Back then, parties were recorded on cassette, straight from the mixing desk. Those tapes passed from hand to hand, were copied, swapped in car parks and played over and over in the car on Sundays.

Today, RetroHouse offers more than 7,800 of them to listen to, recorded from 1987 to 2016. That is more than 10,300 hours of music: enough to listen day and night for more than 14 months without ever hearing the same set twice.

Each set is filed with its club, its date and, when they are known, its DJs. You can browse them by year, by club or by DJ, or simply follow the "On this day" block on the home page, which every day brings back the parties recorded on the same date, years earlier.

The clubs and the DJs

The archive covers nearly 70 clubs. The best represented are La Rocca (1,145 sets), Cherry Moon (817), Illusion (688), Fuse (613), Extreme (438), Carat (409) and La Bush (373). They are followed by the H2O, the Boccaccio, At The Villa, the Lagoa, the Axiome, the Balmoral, the Real, the Montini and many more.

Each club has its own page: its history, its dates, its residents, its parties, its photos and all its sets. Each DJ has one too, with the clubs they played and their recordings. More than 60 DJs already have their page, and new ones are added regularly.

The record shops where you bought your vinyl on Saturday, the bars where you met before going out, the radio stations that played this music and the promoters who put it on stage also have their place, because the night was never just about the clubs.

Everything is connected

What sets it apart from a simple gallery is how everything links together. A DJ leads to their clubs. A club leads to its residents, its parties, its tapes and its photos. A flyer leads to the set recorded that night.

So you can start from a name you heard thirty years ago and, link by link, find the party, the line-up, the flyer and the sound of that night.

Flyers, photos and memories

Alongside the music, RetroHouse also keeps more than 3,100 documents, including more than 2,600 flyers. There are also photos of venues and DJs, membership cards, press cuttings, CDs and objects. They tell what the recordings don't: the atmosphere, the looks, the line-ups, the entry prices, the coaches chartered from France or the Netherlands.

Articles and videos complete the collection, telling the story of the scene and of the people who made it.

How the archive is built

Behind every set online lies a lot of work. The cassettes are digitised, then cleaned up and split into sides. Each file is then filed with the name of the club, the date of the party and, whenever possible, the DJs on the decks.

Finding this information is often detective work. A date scribbled on a cassette sleeve, a flyer announcing the line-up, an MC calling out a name, a former regular who remembers: everything helps. Flyers are compared with the recordings to link each party to its sound.

The same party sometimes circulates in several copies, longer or shorter, better or worse preserved. Each recording is compared with the others to avoid duplicates and keep the best version.

One rule guides all this work: better to show "date unknown" than an invented date. When a piece of information is deduced, for example a DJ recognised in a title or a date read on a flyer, it is checked by hand before being published.

This work is never finished. Some tapes don't have an exact date yet, others are waiting for someone to recognise their DJ. Every correction makes the archive a little more accurate.

How to explore the site

By year: pick a year and listen to what was playing that season.
By club: each club has its page, with its history, photos, flyers and all its sets.
By DJ: look up a resident or a guest and follow them from club to club over the years.
On this day: on the home page, the parties recorded on the same date, years earlier. On 31 October, those are the Halloween parties. On 31 December, the New Year's Eve ones.
Search: type the name of a party, a DJ or a club, even if you don't remember it exactly.

The player keeps playing while you browse. So you can start a set and look through the flyers of the same party while you listen.

Frequently asked questions

Is listening free? Yes. RetroHouse is a non-commercial project.

Can I download the sets? Yes, that is exactly what they are here for. Every set can be downloaded freely to listen to at home, in the car or anywhere else. Just mention RetroHouse if you share it.

I recognised a DJ or a date on a set. Great! Write to us with the title of the set and what you know. We update the page after checking.

I am in a photo and would rather it was removed. Write to us and we will remove it quickly.

I have cassettes at home but no player. Get in touch anyway. We will work out together how to digitise them, and you will get them back.

An archive that grows with you

RetroHouse lives on the documents you share. If you have kept cassettes, flyers, photos, membership cards, press cuttings or any memory of those nights, they belong here.

You can also help us complete the archive. Many sets don't have an exact date or an identified DJ yet. If you recognise a voice, a mix or a party, let us know.

Every document is checked before it is published, and its author is credited. If you made a recording or a photo and would like it removed or credited differently, write to us: we will do it, no questions asked.

Who is behind RetroHouse

RetroHouse was started by Sébastien, who still keeps it going today: digitising, sorting, tracking down dates and DJs, putting everything online.

RetroHouse is a project made by enthusiasts, with no commercial purpose. To write to us, share a document or report a mistake: staff@xbeat.org.