Front 242

Front 242 were formed in Aarschot, Belgium in 1981 by Daniel Bressanutti and Dirk Bergen. After a few singles, Jean-Luc De Meyer (vocals) and Patrick Codenys joined the group and the first album, "Geography", was released. At this stage, Dirk Bergen left the group to become their manager. In 1983, Richard 23 (Richard Jonckheere) joined the group as vocalist/percussionist. With this line-up, the band released many albums of EBM, gaining more popularity with every release (EBM stands for Electronic Body Music, a term first used on their album "No Comment" appearing on the inner sleeve but not used as or considered as a genre name yet. The term was actually established as a genre through a marketing concept by promoter Jens-Markus Wegener. It was strongly pushed to German media to promote the SPV compilation “This is Electronic Body Music” in 1987/1988. Sometimes the term itself is also credited to Kraftwerk from an interview in 1978, but according to Wegener the Kraftwerk reference wasn’t known at that time neither to him nor Front 242.). They also established a solid live reputation, with an energetic show in para-military outfits. The year 1993 brought a radical change in style, with guest musicians, the disappearance of their military look and the exploration of both harder (guitar samples) and softer (female vocals, ambient) sounds. After many years of silence, except for a few live/remix-albums, Front 242 re-appeared in the spotlight in the late nineties with their Re:boot-tour, bringing modern, techno-like cover versions of their own songs. In 2003 they took a step back towards their EBM-roots, with the release of "Pulse" and "Still & Raw". Before Front 242, the members were already involved in other projects, like Prothese (Daniel B.), Under Viewer (Jean-Luc De Meyer & Patrick Codenys) and Tranik Ind. (Richard 23).