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HooverphonicMad About You
On 10 October 2008, Geike Arnaert, the lead singer of the band, announced she would leave the group by the end of the year to pursue her solo career. Arnaert had been working on solo material for a few months.[1] The last concert of Hooverphonic with Geike was on 13 December 2008 in Tele-Club, Ekaterinburg, Russia. It was filmed by the local MTV station and was shown on Russian TV in 2009. On 29 October 2010, Hooverphonic announced their
new single on their website. The videoclip showcased fourteen possible
singers but only one of them, Noémie Wolfs,[2] proved to be the
real successor of Geike Arnaert. On 4 November 2010, the new singer
was announced on De Laatste Show at the VRT, the Flemish public
broadcasting organization. The original members of the group were vocalist Liesje Sadonius, keyboardist Frank Duchêne, bassist Alex Callier, and guitarist Raymond Geerts. The band achieved international recognition through the inclusion of the track "2Wicky" (from A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular) on the soundtrack to Bernardo Bertolucci's 1996 film Stealing Beauty. "2Wicky" also appeared on the soundtracks of I Know What You Did Last Summer and Heights. The track's main riff is sampled from Isaac Hayes' recording of the 1960s hit Walk On By. Sadonius left Hooverphonic on amicable terms shortly
after the release of A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular. Kyoko
Baertsoen, singer for fellow Belgian trip-hop band Lunascape, filled
in for Sadonius for three months of a European tour in 1997 before
Geike Arnaert was made the permanent singer in early 1998. Additional
session musicians: Eric Bosteels was a session drummer with Hooverphonic
from 1997–98, replaced by Mario Goossens until 2005. David Poltrock
was keyboard player from the group on-and-off from 1998 until 2005.
In 1998 Hooverphonic contributed to the Depeche Mode tribute album
For the Masses, with their cover of "Shake the Disease". After an extensive European tour with artists such as Massive Attack, Morcheeba and Apollo 440, and a tour opening for Fiona Apple in the United States in 1997, the band released Blue Wonder Power Milk in 1998 with 18-year-old Arnaert on vocals. A marked departure from their debut, the album is driven less by breakbeats and samples and more by organic string elements and traditional song structures. The single "Club Montepulciano" was
a hit in native Belgium and a minor college hit in the U.S., while "Renaissance Affair" was featured in the North American commercial campaign for the new Volkswagen
Vapor Beetle. "This Strange Effect" and "Eden" were both featured in American cell phone commercials-- "This Strange Effect" for the Motorola SLVR, and most recently in 2006, "Eden" for the Cingular 8525. "Eden" was also used in the 1998 slasher film "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer". At the time of their release, both songs were also featured in two separate
third season episodes of La Femme Nikita. Shortly afterward, Sarah
Brightman recorded a cover of "Eden" on her 1998 album "Eden". The band followed up Blue Wonder Power Milk with 2000's The Magnificent Tree, which expands on the sound of Milk with a warmer, more approachable sound.[citation needed] Highlights from the album are the string-laden "Out Of Sight", "Mad About You", and the title track. The same year, Hooverphonic was asked to write a song specifically for the opening ceremony of the 2000 European Football Championship, which took place in Brussels, Belgium. The result - a 12-minute long track called "Visions" - became the theme song of the championship, and Hooverphonic's performance at the opening ceremony was heard/seen by more than 1 billion people. On the heels of Tree's success, the band became
the first Belgian outfit to headline the Belgian musical festival
Rock Werchter in 2001. 2002 saw the group shifting gears again, this time releasing the concept album Hooverphonic Presents Jackie Cane. The album tells the story of the fictional title character, a celebrity and singer catapulted into stardom at the expense of her relationship with her twin sister. Driven to the brink of insanity by the pressures of fame, Jackie quits show business and returns home to attempt reconciliation, where her sister kills them both with a poisoned last supper. Jackie Cane retains the dreamy elements of Hooverphonic's
previous works, most notably on songs "Nirvana Blue" and "Human Interest" (which contains references to "Echoes" by Pink Floyd), but tracks like "The World Is Mine" (the first single) and "Day After Day" have a clear Broadway influence and quality to them.[citation needed] The album
went platinum in Belgium and won the group ZAMU's Best Pop/Rock
Band and Best Album awards in 2002. In 2003, the band released a live (i.e. recorded
live with an orchestra but without any audience) album entitled
Sit Down and Listen to Hooverphonic, featuring a selection of songs
from the band's body of work, as well as the new songs "Antarctica" and "The Last Thing I Need Is You", and a cover of Lee Hazlewood's "My Autumn's Done Come". The band launched into an extended European tour in September 2003, performing
in over 100 concert halls. The band's fifth studio album, a double CD entitled
No More Sweet Music/More Sweet Music, was released in December
2005. Both CDs include the same 11 tracks, however, they are all
different versions. In 2006 the band left Sony/BMG, complaining of
lack of label support for No More Sweet Music. A best-of album
(Singles '96 - '06) was released to end the relation with Sony/BMG.
The band is now going to work without a label. In an interview for the Spanish TV program Nosolomusica, Alex Callier gave some hints of a new, more psychedelic orientation for the band's music. During a show in Moscow (October 2007) the band revealed the first single of the new album, "Expedition Impossible"[1]. Alex Callier told [3] Side-Line Magazine that the new album also means an abrupt end with their previous label Sony. The President of the LSD Golf Club, was released
in October 2007 in Belgium and Holland. The album was released
in Europe in March 2008. Following the release, Geike announced
she would be leaving the band to pursue a solo career.[4] On October 29, 2010, Hooverphonic released the
single "The Night Before" to introduce new singer Noémie Wolfs. This was followed on November 26 by the
release of the full length album "The Night Before". The album went platinum in Belgium soon after its release.[5] "2 Wicky" has appeared in numerous movies, including I Know What You Did Last Summer, Permanent Midnight and Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty. It was also used in an episode of Entourage. "Eden" was a part of the soundtrack of the sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. "Inhaler" was featured in an episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and is also on the series soundtrack. "Renaissance Affair" and "This Strange Effect" were used in the Belgian movie Shades, as was "Shades" (the theme composed for the film). "Renaissance Affair" was also used in the USA in a Volkswagen New Beetle TV ad circa 2000. Alex Callier worked as the composer for the movie. "This Strange Effect" was also used in the 20th episode of the third season of the TV show La Femme Nikita. In episode 10 of season three of the same television series, the song "Eden" was used. "Battersea" was used in the 1999 pilot of NBC TV series Third Watch and in the end of the show's last episode ("Goodbye to Camelot"), in 2005. "Mad About You" was used in the CBS TV series Cold Case, in the third-season episode "Sanctuary". The song was also featured in the film A Lot Like Love during the New Year's Eve sequence, the 2002 film "New Best Friend" and in the movie Driven. "The World is Mine" was featured as the theme song of UK television series Mile High (2003–2005), following the lives of airline crew at the fictional UK airline "Fresh!". Hooverphonic music has also appeared in a number of adverts and other TV series.
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