Fan Club Orchestra  VL_Stay 

Fan Club Orchestra (FCO) has its roots in collaborative performances and recordings that began taking
place in the late nineties in Brussels. These continued into the second decade of the new millennium
around Belgium and neighbouring countries. At a time when large contemporary arts spaces were less
professionalised, less obedient to funding and attendance numbers, and Still tuned to their founding DIY
impulses, FCO were able to nurture their nebulous cast of players with their unconventional ensemble of
instruments to their own ends. The apparent informality of their performances, mixed with the sheer
spectacle of their unfolding, transplanted the experimentalism of New York's downtown scene of the
1960s into the cracked consumer electronics period of new media art at the turn of the century. A newly
regrouped FCO now present their album 'VL_Stay' on 12th Isle. This iteration of FCO sees Baudoux
joined by Ann Appermans on guitar and bass, and Zéphyr Zijlstra on trumpet. Appermans is an original
FCO member as well as a frequent collaborator with Baudoux. Zijlstra is a jazz student at the Royal
Conservatoire of Brussels. Recorded in just two weeks, the trio invoke the pedigree with which FCO first
toyed, while sketching a continuity with new references.