Benjamin Lew

Born and raised in Liège, Belgium, Benjamin Lew came to Brussels at a time when the Belgian capital became an affordable haven for the counterculture, akin to mid-century Paris, 1970s New York, and Berlin in the early 2000s. A visual artist, writer, and music producer, Lew was the prototypical “enlightened amateur, in an almost Renaissance-like sense,” as Marc Hollander, of boundary-pushing label Crammed Discs, puts it.

Bands like Tel Aviv’s Minimal Compact and San Francisco’s art-punk troupe Tuxedomoon injected Brussels with an international cool at the time, and Lew was a focal point of the scene. Behind the counter of a popular tropical bar, he served drinks to the underground. Additionally, Lew made fanzines, designed event posters for iconic venue Plan K, and recorded a string of acclaimed but near-forgotten albums for Crammed Discs throughout the 1980s. A new compilation of his years with Crammed Discs, Le Personnage Principal Est un Peuple Isolé, released on the much-hyped Belgian label Stroom in 2019; it’s an urgent attempt to celebrate Lew’s life’s work while he’s still around.