One of the city's great hidden treasures, the Brussels music scene hosts some of the biggest and best up-and-coming artists and bands in the international, European and Belgian scene.
Every month, Europe's capital has no shortage of thrilling concerts – and picking out the best gigs can be tough. This is why we have put together a monthly guide to discover the best live acts in the city, perfect for new and old Brussels folk alike.
Carefully selected by music journalist Simon Taylor, here are The Brussels Times' choices for the concerts and gigs that you and your friends should not miss throughout March 2025. This month, we feature two gigs further afield: in Leuven and Louvain-La-Neuve!
Best gigs this month:
3 March
The Weather Station
Botanique
If you had asked me back in 2017, “would you like to spend the evening watching a Canadian band led by a former child actress perform an album of songs about how we are heading towards global disaster because we are not doing enough to tackle climate change”, I would probably have stayed home with a cup of tea and a packet of chocolate Hobnobs.
The Weather Station Credit: Brendan George Ko
And yet the album in question, Ignorance, was one of the best albums of 2017 and Tamara Lindeman’s band, The Weather Station, are captivating live. The LP boasted standout tracks, Robber and Tried to Tell You. Lindeman followed it up with How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars in 2022, a quieter and less strident record. Last year, the band released their seventh album, Humanhood late last year.
4 March
Émilie Simon
Le Spott, Louvain La Neuve
Whenever I write about French artists, I always fall into the cliché of faux surprise that the French of all people could produce great pop music. Great cheese, yes; great wine, yes; but pop music is for us Anglo-Saxons (see the piece on Ivy Falls below). Well, Simon is another of those “exceptions” that should finally convince me to stop acting as though our Gallic neighbours don’t produce great music. She has been making great music for over 20 years. Her first self-titled album came out in 2003 and contained the classic Désert. Simon is an artist like Björk or Christine (once of the Queens) who takes a highly theatrical approach to her music and their performance. Like the Icelandic alt-pop princess, Simon channels her love of the natural world into her compositions. The cover of her first album features her with her back covered with outsize ladybirds. Her second album, La Marche de l’Empéreur, was inspired by her love of the Arctic landscape, while her third LP, Végétal, was inspired by the world of plants.
Émilie Simon
Despite the inspiration from the organic world, Simon uses electronic instruments for her music, often creating a textural contrast with the delicacy of her voice. Simon’s next record, The Big Machine, which only featured songs in English, was her biggest hit, reaching number eight in the French charts. The next two, Franky Knight in 2011, and La Mue (the moulting) in 2014, failed to match the success of Machine. In 2020, she put out a EP which included a series of covers including Wham’s Last Christmas and Vanessa Paradis’ Joe le Taxi. Her gig at the tiny Spott club in Louvain La Neuve (a short 45-minute car ride) comes just over 20 years since the release of her first album. Simon’s investment in staging and live performance is impressive and the show promises a glorious visual and sonic showcase of her best material.
6 March
Max Cooper
Ancienne Belgique
Like Dan Snaith, aka electronic dance legend Caribou, electronic music artist Max Cooper is a scientist by training. Cooper, originally from Northern Ireland, did a PhD in computational biology at Nottingham University. Snaith, by the way, has a PhD in maths from Imperial College, London. Both artists bring their computational expertise to their music making, creating intricate soundscapes from electronic patterns. In Cooper’s music, the sequences are in constant evolution, like biological forms. Recently, he has been accompanying his work with state-of-the-art visuals by contemporary artists.
Max Cooper
Whereas Caribou’s music is firmly focused on the dancefloor (Caribou performs with a combination of live instruments and pre-programmed rhythm tracks), Cooper’s work is more in the tradition of electronic music pioneers and their quest to push the sonic boundaries of what digital music technology can do. I hear echoes of Tangerine Dream’s sequencing work. Expect booming bass, big beats and scintillating sonic tapestries that hang and shimmer in the air before collapsing in on themselves in a foreshadowing of the heat death of the universe. Something like that, anyway. Oh, and Max is a thoroughly nice chap who usually comes out at the end of his gigs to chat to his fans.
18 March
Steel Pulse
Ancienne Belgique
We don’t get many reggae bands playing in Belgium and even fewer of the really great ones. Steel Pulse are without doubt one of a handful of seminal bands who wrote their own chapter in the history of reggae and its journey from the Caribbean to the home of its colonial masters. From Handsworth in Birmingham, the band formed in 1975, inspired by Bob Marley and the Wailers.
British reggae band Steel Pulse
Over the next four years, they produced two of the greatest roots-reggae albums: Handsworth Revolution in 1978 and Tribute to the Martyrs in 1979. Handsworth included the classic Ku Klux Klan, while the title track of Martyrs stood out, along with Jah Pickney – R.A.R., a song about the Rock against Racist movement which was formed to fight back against the rise of the neo-Nazi National Front and their presence on British streets. If you have any interest in reggae, please check out this band. You are unlikely to have a chance to experience reggae this sublime again for a very long time.
20 March
Echt!
Ancienne Belgique
Echt! (genuine or pukka in Flemish) are a four piece from Brussels who have been playing together since 2017. Trained at Brussels Conservatory, the four play a conventional-sounding line-up of guitar, bass, keyboards and drums but take an approach to music making that is much closer to that of hiphop DJs and their use of samples to create tracks.
Echt! Band
The band has covered numbers by legendary hiphop artist J Dilla and electronic musician Aphex Twin. To my knowledge, this is the first time they have played a venue as big as AB so it will be a test of their slightly introspective music to come across in a big space. Expect lots of head nodding.
22 March
Tom Skinner / Gwilym Simock
30 CC Leuven
This evening, part of Leuven jazz festival, was supposed to feature legendary British jazz bassist Dave Holland and Herbie Hancock’s guitarist, Lionel Loueke, but Holland had to go to hospital for urgent surgery. In their place comes UK jazz drummer and experimental musician Tom Skinner with his own band. Skinner established himself as one of the UK’s most talented and exciting drummers playing with Sons of Kemet alongside sax and flute player Shabaka Hutchings.
Tom Skinner. Credit: Worldwide FM
More recently, he has been part of The Smile, the group of Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke and guitarist Jonny Greenwood. Skinner’s own band is a more traditional jazz line-up but is a vehicle for his own unique talent and creativity. Also appearing on the same bill are Welsh jazz piano wizard Gwilym Simcock who has accompanied guitarist Pat Metheny.
26 March
Los Pirañas
Ancienne Belgique
Los Pirañas
This snappy bunch (geddit?) hail from Colombia and play a distorted and deranged form of the local music style cumbia shot through with psychedelia. They have been together for over 30 years and their music is an exciting mix of their different musical influences, a real gumbo. For fans of Khruangbin, Los Bitchos and Altin Gün.
27 March
Ivy Falls
AB Club
Ivy Falls is the stage name of Fien Deman, a singer-songwriter from Ghent. Deman released her first album, Sense and Nonsense, in 2024. I hate to lay bare my own prejudices but when I first listened to her music, I assumed she was British or American, such was the quality of her songwriting and soft, beguiling voice.
Ivy Falls
Her music reminds me of British singer Lucy Rose, among others of similar pedigree, and she succeeds in combining her intimate lyrics with bold melodies that linger in the consciousness after she has delivered the lines. Check out the tracks Golden and Lemons to hear what I mean.
28 March
Eddie Chacon
Botanique
The story of soul singer Eddie Chacon warms the cockles of this ageing writer’s heart. The California native came to the fore in 1993 as part of the soul-pop duo Charles and Eddie, who had a hit in the UK with Would I Lie to You? along with the late Charles Pettigrew. Chacon worked as a songwriter (unlikely as it seems for 2 Unlimited, a rap outfit famous mainly for grossly sexist lyrics) and toured with Tom Tom Club, the band of former Talking Heads members Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz.
Eddie Chacon. Credit: Jack McKain
In 2020, Chacon returned to the scene with his solo album, Pleasure, Joy and Happiness (a nod to Frankie Beverley’s Joy and Pain?). That and the follow-up LP, Sundown, were highly rated by the music press. This year he has released his third album, Lay Low. A rare change to listen to a veteran and survivor of the all-too-brutal music business.
