Rotterdam’s Lewsberg is a four-piece band named after writer and fellow Rotterdammer Robert Loesberg, famous for his novel Enige Defecten from 1974 (it’s a difficult and dangerous book, and has never been translated). That is the greatest source of inspiration for the band: the counterculture and big-city cynicism of the 1960s and 1970s. Lewsberg ( initially made up of (ex) members of Venus Tropicaux, Rats on Rafts, Bonne Aparte and Boring Pop) make rudimentary and repetitive rock songs, full of a tough, big city nonchalance. The English lyrics, delivered with a heavy Rotterdam accent, are full of existentialist overtones and laced and black humour.
At Hull 2017, the band also played with various WORM workers and friends from Rotterdam.
Heretic Verse with Dorian Cox and Elise Hadgraft
Dorian Cox, former guitarist from the chart pop band, The Long Blondes, and Elise Hadgraft from Sylvia performed experimental, existentialist poet-pop alongside Lewsberg and friends.
Solo projects
Marijn Verbiesen from the MiMa organisation played solo as Red Brut, working through a stack of cassette tapes and warping the sounds through an array of analogue and digital equipment. Drummer Joris Frowein – aka Segadeath – played his charming, strange 80’s electro pop inspired by the cities of Schiedam and Rotterdam. And guitarist Michiel Klein from the MiMa organisation performed a set of lofi-industrial electro as jsca.