From Brussels (BE)

It’s been nearly a decade since Ziggy Devriendt launched Stroom, the idiosyncratic Belgian label that has become a cult favorite for seekers of the spectral and strange. And yet, he’s still learning to steady the wheel. “Every year you have to fight a new devil,” he says from his apartment in Brussels—he recently moved to the Belgian capital after years in Ostend, the windswept coastal city where he was born.

Launched in 2014 as Belgium’s first 24/7 online radio station, Stroom gradually evolved into a label devoted to unearthing forgotten sounds and private-press obscurities. At Stroom’s core, as Devriendt puts it, is a compulsion to share. “It might sound stupid, but I just want to pass things on to the world—music, stories, the things you learn along the way,” he says.