Belgium doesn’t always come up when people talk about underground music scenes, but maybe it should. In this episode, we sit down with Andrew Bennett, founder of Jezus Factory Records, and Rudy Trouvé, Belgian singer-songwriter and founder of Heaven Hotel, to dig into a world of music that’s been quietly thriving in Antwerp for decades.
We also talk about the current state of music criticism, why social media is both essential and exhausting, the lost back catalog that keeps Andrew up at night, and what it actually means to champion artists you love when nobody’s buying records anymore.
https://jezusfactoryrecords.bandcamp.com
https://heavenhotel.bandcamp.com
https://www.instagram.com/jezus_factory
https://www.instagram.com/rudytrouve
The J-Card is presented by Rue Defense Tape Club, a quarterly, mail-order cassette compilation and DIY audio project. Each episode is part music discovery, part oral history, part hangout show. We ask artists, musicians, filmmakers, and other music-minded folks to build us their own personal mixtape and talk about the moments and memories that inspired it.
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Created by Alexei Shishkin
Associate Producer: Alivia Stonier
Booking: Jamie Halliday
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⏱️ Chapters:
00:00 - Intros to Andrew and Rudy
02:07 - Heaven Hotel Origins
05:30 - The Belgian Connection
11:47 - Rudy’s Creative Process
15:27 - How Andrew Finds Artists
22:10 - Music & Social Media
26:39 - Critical Reception
32:22 - The Mixtape
33:09 - “A Greater Loss Than Pain” by Kiss My Jazz
35:07 - “Leona” by Plano Remoto
38:28 - “Second Hand Clothes” by Pasmans
41:19 - “Torch” by Rudy Trouvé
47:56 - “Not Available“ by The Rudy Trouvé Septet
51:14 - “Forgot More Than I Ever Knew” by Benny Zen
58:41 - Honorable Mentions
01:00:06 - Game: Blind Ranking Belgian Cities
01:07:19 - Plugs & Outro
