This Is Not Fiction
Author : Richard Belgium
Editions Lamiroy
Release : 16 march 2024
ISBN : 978-2-87595-909-6       
75 pages
Price : 14 € Printed book + CD free bonus

And so it goes…
Two years later, you hold this book in your hands…
This is the result of no coincidence, the music did the trick!
Lamiroy publishing spread the gospel, fell for the recordings, we met and came up
with the idea of publishing the lyrics to the songs of « This is not Fiction ».
− And why not include the CD as a bonus?
I agreed to such enthusiasm and we proceeded godspeed.
To cut a long story short, during the recordings which took place 2021 & 2022, my daughter Alice, who sings backing vocals, fell deeply ill.
After the job was completed on the album, I engaged into medical checks with the aim of giving her a kidney, 2023 was decisive in her cure & all promo, gigs, were put on hold to ensure her a better life. During that process I released
a collector cd limited to 500 copies.
Now you possess an enhanced version completed with the pictures of all participants.
As for the future recordings… I met my muse, Ariane Fitschy, an extraordinary woman whom I am very lucky to cherish with passion.
The title of the following opus shall be « White Man Speaks With Forked Tongue » a saying quoted from the native Americans, originated as a result of the French tactic of the 1690’s, in their war with the Iroquois, of inviting their enemies to attend a peace conference, only to be slaughtered or captured.
The British and later the white Americans, pursued this massacre.
Expect the unexpected, the recordings should be available current 2025…

Debut solo album from Richard Belgium, which mixes Rock music with a ton of different styles, while singing words of wisdom, corrosion, love and lust.

Gratitude to the wonderful human beings who made this possible, especially to Misty & Laurence for being the catalysts of it all.

With lead, backing vocalists & choirs : Laurence Castelain, Egor Kurdello, Hugues Van Houtte, Kiù, Natacha Wuyts, Alice Wonder, Sri Calamity, Tracee Westmoreland, Agathe Kitoko, Alain-Pierre Wingelinckx, Romano Giacone, Marc Van Eyck & Philippe Genion

Hat designed by the one & only Elvis Pompilio
Costume courtesy of Charlier
Cushion courtesy of Florence Roelandts
Photography by Olivier Stourme
Logo, Layout & Flag treatment by Dominique Rocky Billaroch

Recorded, mixed & mastered at Opus Magnum Studio & Blackout Studio by Déhà, with the kind help of Jonas Sanders, 2021-2022.

Musicians are :
. Richard Belgium on lead vocals & lyrics
. Déhà on backing vocals, piano, synths, orchestral arrangements, drums programming, guitars, bass, mandoline, compositions, vocal coach & overall musical mastermind
. Didier Fontaine on drums, bongos & percussion
. Mika Nagazaki on bloody bass
. Geneviève Dartevelle on harmonicas
. Sylvia Deisser on guitar solos
. Jessy Cherry Baby on handpans & jaw harps
. Didier Odieu on synths, piano & weird stuff
. Doc Phil Good on guitar solos
. Jean-Jacques Duerinckx on saxophones
. Karine Germaix on accordeons
. Renaud Crols on violin

Contact : belgiumrichard@gmail.com
Website : richardbelgium.bandcamp.com

This album is for all friends past & present. All rights reserved.

Richard Belgium : This is not fiction

With this first ever solo release, this pillar of the belgian underground music scene since decades, (La Cuite Vandenabeele, Vitor Hublot, Itza Uchen, Henry Krutzen, Studio Pagol, Pierre Vervloesem…) who is Richard Belgium has finally decided to go all the way up.
In association with the multi-talented producer, composer, musician, who goes by the name of Déhà (La Muerte, Wolvennest, Alk-A-Line…), the british-belgian who’s Persona was born in Braine-l’Alleud, next to the battlefield of…Waterloo, delivers with This is not fiction an ambitious album, very contemporary, rich, mature, adult, funny, corrosive, all guitars on the rampage but not only.
Fourteen tracks including a melancholic cover version of « Easter » from punk poetess Patti Smith, This is not fiction is a real rock album like we like to cherish.
The sentiment of urgency haunting this work of art as diverse as coherent, above all, very sensitive and authentic, is revealed through the art cover where the artist poses in front of the village where he was stuck during his formative years, proudly bearing a hat created specially for him by the one & only Elvis Pompilio, hat maker for… Debbie Harry, Madonna... Some may say that a certain Earthling album cover of David Bowie is a wink to that fabulous artist : Richard Belgium, is facing a devastated dormitory village, holding a decrepit Union Jack cushion. Richard Belgium is possessed by a dual belgian-british identity and the Brexit farce is palpable in the desolate panorama.
All the strength, the power, the rage, the fury, of This is not fiction − a wink to Ceci n’est pas une pipe of René Magritte − is to be found in the DNA of Richard Belgium. He experienced life changing moments in the second half of the 1970’s listening to the BBC Radio One Radio to groups such as, The Stranglers, Sex Pistols, Ramones, Debbie Harry, Siouxsie Sioux.
As you listen along to This is not fiction, you party to P.I.L, The The, Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, Pixies or Depeche Mode. Our man does not disavow his belgian attitude, who else would invite Philippe Genion of 80’s indus genius à;GRUMH band to perform a vocal philosophical performance concluding the epic « You’ll never be me »? It is also on this great track from This is not fiction that the composer and pianist of Russian & Ukrainian origin, once collaborator of Peter Gabriel, I name Egor Kurdello, nowadays exiled in France, recites a poem in russian by Joseph Brodsky.
Recorded with more than twenty musicians (Mika Nagazaki, Didier Odieu, Geneviève Dartevelle, Sylvia Deisser…to name a few) emotionally inspired and sometimes lifted by flamboyant backing vocals, This is not fiction is also very personal at some moments, « Band of Nivelles » is a reminder to a very dark episode in criminal CIA foreign interference − here the « Tueurs du Brabant » whose sinister perpetrations took place very near from Richard Belgium. « Dear Hugh », magnificent closing track, is a tribute to the late virtual younger brother of the artist who passed away too soon.
This is not fiction ? Who bloody knows !

Philippe Manche, french version,
free translation by Richard Belgium.
Brussels, december 2022.