Philadelphia Five interview: ‘I think it’s quite flattering that artists I enjoy now, take time to let me know that our music did something in their musical education’ 

In the 1980s, Belgium was practically the home of underground Electro. Bands such as Front 242, The Neon Judgement, The Klinik, A Split Second, SA42, àGrumh, The Weathermen ao were among the biggest names of the scene, and their influence can still be heard in artists today. One group that emerged in the late 1980s, and remains in my opinion unfairly overlooked, is Philadelphia Five. Mark Borgions and Jo Lijnen debuted with the maxi-singles “Bump! Jerry” and “Heaven,” followed by the album “Trilogy” in 1990. Their sound stood apart from that of many of the aforementioned bands. It was underground and thoroughly Electro, but perhaps less cold and austere, with even a touch of humor – or perhaps self-deprecation. Their cover of Boney M is a perfect example of this, and something quite unheard of at the time.

Sadly, the duo eventually disappeared from the scene, partly because of the terrible treatment they received from their record label, KK Records. At the time, the Belgian label was synonymous with quality, and the older generation among us will remember artists such as Vomito Negro, Cat Rapes Dog, Insekt, The Force Dimension, Lassigue Bendthaus, and many others. Unfortunately, however, it would later become clear that the label did not always pay its artists. For Philadelphia Five, this marked the end of the road.

And yet, more than 30 years later, Philadelphia Five has clearly not been forgotten. Last year, for instance, Philadelphia Five performed at the notorious Ombra Festival in Barcelona, while this year they are scheduled to appear at Belgium’s BIM Festival. For years, I had wondered what had become of Philadelphia Five. So when one of our loyal readers – who will probably recognize themselves here – suggested that I get in touch with the band, I took the opportunity. I eventually managed to convince Mark and Jo to sit down with me for a retrospective interview. What followed is a fascinating conversation that looks back at the band’s history while also opening a window onto today’s Electro and underground scene. This interview is a tribute, but above all, it is an expression of gratitude for the music these two artists created all those years ago. Their story follows below. (Picture credits by Remo Perrotti / Interview courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries)

Philadelphia Five interview

Q: The Philadelphia Five music immediately takes us back more than 35 years. What was your musical background at the time? Who were your main influences, role models, or even muses? And how did Philadelphia Five actually come into being, which I believe was briefly a trio in the beginning, if I remember correctly?

Jo: My roots go way back. I remember Woodstock being my first musical revelation, over a love/hate relationship with Disco, to Punk. The first records I ever bought, I bought in London in the late ’70s were Jimi Hendrix, Tuxedomoon, Rory Gallagher, Sex Pistols. The Great Rick’n Roll Swindle completely blew my mind.

I was in university with Mark’s sister, and it’s through her we met midsummer 1982. I had a collective / band called Das V.E.R. with some friends, organizing events and playing gigs with covers of Joy Division, Cabaret Voltaire and the likes. I played a Yamaha CS15.

Mark: I was about 15 then and I thought that extremely cool. I myself had a fondness for the early Electronic New-Wave / Post-Punk scene and all things with a good four-to-the-floor / bass / arpeggio combination. I was into buying records and regularly got invited to DJ on their events, private and public. I only played Electro, which made some people’s head explode back then. But I was completely fascinated by the music.

Through a friend, my dad had good pricing deals on Roland gear, and I got an SH-101 and a TR-808 when they were still in production. So, we both had a fondness for synths, and one thing led to another. First time we played a set together was at a private party. We called ourselves De Apostels Van De Auto-Erotische Stoet and I remember we played covers of A Blaze Colour’s “The New Ones”, “Warm Leatherette” (of course), Mistral’s “Jamie” and a couple of original songs. 

Jo: Not long after that, we changed our name to Philadelphia Five. We remained a duo until 1987, when Ilse Stalmans joined the band. That coincided with our first interview – with the tape magazine Mad in Belgium. So she is part of that. We had fun with other musicians, too. But quite soon, both for practical and musical reasons, we returned to being a duo.

Mark: The issue of MiB included our version of Boney M’s “Baby Do You Wanna Bump”, recorded on a 4-track Tascam. Enter Jo Verbruggen. He had a record store in Sint Niklaas and was about to launch a record label. He heard our track and showed an interest in signing us. And so we got signed to KK Records before it really existed and headed to Tienen, to Luc Van Acker’s studio to record our first vinyl.

Q: I find the period in which Philadelphia Five emerged extremely interesting, because in the late ’80s there seemed to be a kind of cross-pollination between the underground Electro scene on the one hand and the rise of New-Beat on the other. How did you experience that musical crossroads, and what impact did it have on your own music?

Jo: In the early 80’s there was a new wave of bands using new electronic instruments. Gary Numan (“Living Ornaments”), Heaven 17 (“Penthouse” and “Pavement”), Laurie Anderson (“Big Science”) come to mind. All that had led me to buy that CS15, but also a programmable AV computer and a Philips Videomixer. There was all sorts of interesting new technology.

Mark: When I started buying records, it was the time of the early Some Bizzare and Mute releases. I was really very much into that sort of thing. The early Human League albums, Kraftwerk, The New Romantics scene. Some of that music started appearing on hit lists. The sound of the drums, the heavy presence of synths, it all appealed to me very much. That and some more Experimental and underground bands like Throbbing Gristle. That was the music that formed me.

New-Beat started happening when we had found our thing already. I remember Jo from  KK Records sent us to Stonesound Studios in The Netherlands, because they had recorded “The Sound Of C”, and Jo really wanted “Heaven” to sound like that. But it was never really what we wanted. And we clashed with the engineer quite a few times over sound vs production quality issues. In hindsight, I think “Heaven” and “Trilogy” sound too clean. 

It was because of New-Beat that KK Records wanted stuff like “Bonga Walk” on “Heaven”, and I think we may have pushed that track somewhat more in the New-Beat direction than we should have. I was never a fan of that scene. It all felt too clean, too commercial. There were more than enough interesting sounds out there to keep myself busy. 

Jo: Still, we kept our eye on what was going on with New-Beat. We visited the New-Beat temples to see what was happening. “Bonga Walk”, in essence based on an Italian head banging tradition, just happened to fit the mold. But I don’t remember it being played much in those clubs. It’s only years later that the song appeared on that definite New-Beat compilation.

Mark: We did get to do some gigs because of New-Beat’s popularity, I’m sure. And we more than once had issues with the venues because we wanted to play live as much as we could, when most acts were just dancers and a playback tape. It’s because of New-Beat that we played in places like Ancienne Belgique (the Antwerp club, not the Brussels venue). That would not have happened otherwise, I’m quite sure. 

Q: One thing I always found quite original about the Philadelphia Five songs was that they sounded less cold and dark than many Belgian EBM groups of that time. To me, you sounded more accessible and harder to pigeonhole into a specific genre. Was this a conscious choice, or because of what you just told? And what was your relationship like with other Belgian bands from that era?

Mark: I think it just comes from all we just laid out. I think we didn’t take it all too seriously, and we had fun toying around with the machinery. Not being real musicians. We had lyrics that were not so serious, sometimes just read from stupid books, manuals or magazines. 

Jo: Ho there! Those songs definitely had an autobiographical undertone! Songs like “Jerry”, “I Am Shared” and “Watch Out” were straight from the soul. Also, a lot of the stuff that never made it to vinyl was very personal.

Mark: We liked the dance aspect of it more than the doom part. And we both don’t have graveyard voices. That also. I don’t think we ever really were part of the Belgian scene, in so much as that was a thing. We did meet some bands through KK Records and concerts, but we were mostly just busy with our own things.

Jo: Our manager, Dries Vandermeersch (aka MDM-management), did help us a lot in connecting with the right people. He arranged for us to play in Germany and The Netherlands. And he connected us to Jo Casters and Duc Nhan Nguyen, who both did FOH for a couple of our shows. 

Q: What made you completely different was the rather surprising – and perhaps somewhat daring – cover of “Baby Do You Wanna Bump” by Boney M. The crazy thing is that it worked perfectly and really caught on. What on earth had you used or drunk back then to come up with such an idea (lol)? And more seriously: how did that version come together, and do you know if anyone from the Boney M camp ever heard it?

Mark: The cover was a direct result of us really liking the directness of the original. There was very little cross-genre consideration, really. The bassline just carries the song in the same way we had basslines pushing our songs forward. The bass is very much like a plucky sequencer sequence, what’s not to like?

Jo: I remember when I started going out as a teenager, dancing to “Bump” had a puberal intimacy thing going, too. And musically, I always felt it stood above most of the commercial Disco tunes. We know that Frank Farian was surprised and flattered by our cover request. He had made the song in ’74 in his home studio. Boney M was the packaging for tv appearances.

Mark: I’m not sure if he ever heard ours, though. He never told us. I know he received his share of the rights, though.

Q: I have to admit that Boney M has always been one of my ‘guilty pleasures’, largely because of those deep, fat bass lines. How about you guys – what was the attraction for you?

Mark: So the way I remember it, when I was a young kid, you had ABBA folk and Boney M Folk. I definitely was BONEY M. Yes, I too liked the beats and the dominant bass lines. Stuff like Amii Stewart’s “Knock On Wood” or Georgio Moroder’s “From Here To Eternity” (which we covered  also), Divine and later even some Stock Aitken & Waterman all had the same influence on us. Not all of that was synth stuff, and it wasn’t underground. But it had the same structure and that’s why we liked it. Repetitive sequences, and a hard hitting percussive elements too. 

Q: The Philadelphia Five album “Trilogy” (1990) was released on KK Records. In hindsight, some artists have suggested that KK Records was not exactly known for paying royalties properly, which raises questions about how bands were treated. What were your own experiences?

Mark: Royalty issues, really?!? (LOL). We got to know Jo from day one of his label venture. “Bump! Jerry” was catalog Kk002, but as I remember it was the first KK release to come out. Jo was always overly enthusiastic. But the royalty statements were  sketchy. It was Maurice Engelen (who lived in the same town I lived) who told me about what was going on in The States. One day he called me up:’“you do know you’ve got a big dancefloor hit in the States, right?’ We knew nothing about that. ‘Why didn’t you come to us with your music?’ Us being Antler/Subway. I guess because he never asked? Later, when discogs came to be, we learned about compilations and foreign pressings we never knew about back then.

Q: KK Records was certainly a label many people looked up to because of the big names on its roster. Was there a real sense of connection between those bands, and does something like that truly exist in a music scene?

Jo: In the pre-digital years, there was no real contact between the KK bands, or other bands from the scene. But around 2020 that changed for me. I started having online conversations with people from Vomito Negro, Force Dimensions, Kode Iv, Blue Eyed Christ, Insekt, … We all had one thing in common: decades of KK issues. There even was talk about collective legal initiatives, but those never happened for various reasons.

We ourselves managed to formally regain our rights in 2019, after they were wrongfully included in the KK catalog transfer from Coble to Warner. Luckily, we had signed contracts that returned the rights to us after “Trilogy”. So after some back and forth, Warner returned them, on the condition we would not retroactively start discussing wrongfully collected rights of all compilation releases to that date. All that happened in good faith and we are glad we have everything back in our hands.

Q: Philadelphia Five was certainly not a one-hit wonder, but after “Trilogy” nothing else followed. Was that partly due to the KK Records experience, or were there other reasons? And did you record songs back then that were never released?

Mark: The KK experience had a lot to do with it. Mainly in a sense that Jo wanted us to produce more ‘hit’ stuff and became pushy about that. To be honest, from our end, “Trilogy” was set up as our way to end the KK contract. Somewhere in the liner notes it says something about never ever playing that music again. We meant it. I personally was empty and unhappy about release pressure. The joy was gone. Our last show in Germany didn’t go too well and when we came home, I deleted a lot of the music we had on the W30, which was our main workstation. All “Not Leaving Without Jerry samples” are gone. Other stuff too. Now, after close to 40 years, I hope it’s OK to revise that Never statement. 

Q: Looking back today, how do you feel about the album “Trilogy”, and what memories have stayed with you from the entire production process?

Mark: To us, what came before “Trilogy” is more important. The individual releases of “Bump! Jerry” and “Heaven” are closer to our hearts. I like that there’s a remix thing going on with the tracks, but today I like the originals more. The way we recorded a lot of the music was 24 tracks of loops, sequences and other repetitions, and then we sort of ‘played’ the master mix on the console. So every time we played a song to a stereo end mix, it was somewhat differently constructed. I also remember making edits on a physical cut table. Lots of tape scrubbing. Some of it is in the final mixes. 

Jo: When we were in Luc Van Acker’s then new studio to record “Bump! Jerry”, it was all about the feel and the sound. The recording had a bit of a lo-fi thing going. When we did the remix of “Bump” and “Jerry” at Stonesound, the engineer there did nothing but complain about the lo-fi quality of the recording. But it had all the feel we wanted, and that was the most important thing. Some of that feel got lost on the “Trilogy” versions. 

Q: One thing I always remember from several songs were the explicit moans and suggestive – not to say sexually charged – samples. “Heaven” is just one example. Was that simply youthful provocation, or was there something more behind it? And what inspired you lyrically in general?

Mark: We were two young guys in early video store days. No wonder we heard a lot of silly and suggestive dialogue and moaning (LOL). Although the “Heaven” samples are from a documentary by Diane Keaton. Not from cheesy porn. But some of the moaning is! Some came from a cassette tape we bought on a trip to Italy, at a gas station. The tape has seashore sounds on one side of the stereo, moaning on the other. And Italian dirty talk of which we understood nothing on the B side. Still have that tape somewhere. We were just looking for good material to sample. Maurice Engelen once told me he was envious of our samples. As it turns out, so much so that he later named one of his own releases “Heaven Is An Orgasm”. You’re welcome, Maurice. 

Q: Your music comes from an era when Electro was still largely made with analog equipment – a very different world from today. What did your home studio look like back then? And how do you view that period in relation to today’s digital production, software synths, AI in music, and all the technological evolutions that have taken place? Have you kept up with these developments yourselves?

Mark: Our first gear was pre-MIDI. The CS15, SH-101 and MC-202 were CV/Gate, and there was din sync to the TR-808. The Juno-60 had its own protocol. Later we bought a second 808, a Moog Prodigy, and two Roland samplers, an S-50 and the W-30. Those each had their own sort of sequencer. And they had MIDI. We had a Roland sync box that hooked the MIDI to DIN and could lay a click track. At home we recorded on a PortaOne. Later I bought a second hand Yamaha TG77, which I was told came from Daniel B. But we never used that on a recording. Mostly, we used samples of the old gear on the samplers. 

Jo: We also had Dynacord drum pads and modules, one of which could hold very short samples. The bass drum module is on all the old recordings and has a very specific sound.

Mark: I’ve remained a gear head. I toyed around with early Propellerheads stuff and later landed on Ableton Live, which I still use today. I had a time when I was exploring soft synths, but I really missed the immediacy of knob fiddling. Live was the first software that communicated with the old analog gear in ways that were actually working. I’ve always added gear. I’ve got a decent modular setup that keeps growing and I have finally learned to program the TG77.

Most stuff I do now still comes mainly out of the analog gear, but the sequencing is so much easier in Ableton. Now, all is connected to Live for sequencing, recording, scene organizing and mixing. I like the workflow. As for AI, I have mixed feelings. I use mastering plugins that rely on it and that’s wonderful. But it will never replace the heart of the music, I think. I hope. And AI generated crap is truly problematic. I want to stay away from that as far as I can. If nothing else, it stimulates me to push things the other way as much as possible. 

Q: How did Philadelphia Five actually come to an end, and what happened afterwards? Did you stay in touch, continue making music individually, or remain connected to one scene or another?

Mark: At some moment in time, we had lost the joy. The thing we started for in the first place. We kept in contact. Not always as active, but we never lost sight of each other. I kept playing with the gear. But never really results oriented. 

Jo: The financial shenanigans with KK drained a lot of our energy. And the joy. But also: we had both started our ‘grown up life’, which took most of our focus. So it ended a natural end. But every now and then, we had ad hoc creative encounters.

Q: I believe Mark remained active in the broader artistic world, but what about you, Jo? What artistic paths did you follow afterwards? And more broadly, what do Art and creation mean to you personally?

Jo: In the late 80’s, I started zaal BELGIE in Hasselt, which ran on a bunch of passionate volunteers. BELGIE quickly grew in scope – artistically and infrastructural. That became Kunstencentrum BELGIE vzw, a multidisciplinary art center with a wide scope of international productions and activity. A lot of very interesting artists performed there, some even had residencies. Last March, I retired, but I stay very involved.

Q: At that time, Belgium was on the world map as a pioneering land of Electronic music – it all felt new, visionary, and focused on the future. Contemporary Electro, on the other hand, often seems to look back, especially to the ’80s. How do you see that? Do you think today’s artists are less innovative, or is that perhaps too simplistic?

Mark: Oh but I think there’s plenty of interesting music out there. I think it’s mainly that the market has changed. It sometimes feels like there’s no longer such a thing as the underground or the alternative. It’s all equal to a certain extend. Look at festivals like Dour, there’s all these acts I’ve never heard of, yet they play the big stages and it’s completely sold out. That would not have happened in our days. And with today’s digital distribution, even the smallest release is global. But there’s also an over-saturation. And it’s a different process to find the interesting music.

Maybe the last true technical innovation came with the accessibility of synths, and how our generation f*cked around with that new technology, not knowing anything about music theory. And with that, I think it’s inevitable that there’s people harvesting what people in the 80’s sowed. And I think it’s quite flattering that artists I enjoy now, take time to let me know that our music did something in their musical education. But as I just said, I think there’s plenty of music that walks interesting paths, still today. 

Jo: Yet it’s true, a lot of what is happening now feels less impulsive. Everything is more constructed by marketing and economics. Innovation is a buzz word, but it’s different from how we did it in the 80’s and 90’s. Back then, it was all DIY. New things came from the base and worked themselves up from there. Coloring outside the lines was adventurous, not only in music.

Q: Last year Philadelphia Five were invited to play at the big OmbraFestival in Barcelona, and at the end of this year you’ll be playing in Belgium at the legendary BIM Fest. Has Philadelphia Five been given a second life? Is there anything new in the works, or are these just a few special one-off performances?

Mark: Short answer: remains to be seen, I guess. It’s certainly the case that now the negative pressure is gone, the joy is the central thing again. And although I’ve always been making sequences and melodies, it did bring me back into a work-on-a-thing-until-it-is-a-song ethic, which I quite like. Over the years, my main issue was that I couldn’t figure out how to bring our 80’s sound to today. But I think I’ve cracked that nut while preparing for Ombra. I’ve made some new music, but it’s not a consistent set. And maybe not all is P5 material. When there is a bunch of tracks that fit together, I’d love to release something again. And we’ve been talking about releasing a “Jerry” archive EP for years now. First with Death of Rave, but those talks ended alas. And now we’re figuring out how to release it ourselves. We have the original Luc Van Acker mix, my 2025 remix that mainly ups the punch, we have a demo that’s quite interesting and we have Silent Servant’s remix which was never released and has become stuff of legend. 

Jo: Last year, a “Jerry” remix by Andi Harriman was included in one of Curse’s Next Wave Acid Punx Records. I think that brought us to a new crowd, too.

Q: I can imagine that being back on stage after more than 35 years must have been a very special feeling. How did you prepare for that, both technically and emotionally? And how did you experience those performances yourselves?

Mark: There were three months between the agreement with Ombra and the festival date, of which I was on holiday most of the first month. That left two months to prepare. About half of that went into figuring out how to do it in the first place. We’ve never travelled with gear on an airplane. And we surely weren’t bringing the fragile old gear. So, what gear would we use? I had to research how to do a complete live set in one Live set. And how to keep that ‘live’ enough. How would we output? Multi-out or one stereo mixdown? And what about visuals? We always tried to use video and projection. But the last time we did that on a stage, it was portable tube tv’s with VHS tapes and slide projectors. Today there’s ways to really sync video and audio. But how? Again, more research and learning. 

In the end, we had one Mac with the Live session, with 8 synth and sample tracks, 8 drum tracks, a SMPTE time code track and a couple of Sysex tracks. The SMPTE connected to a second Mac with Resolume Arena software and a Komplete Kontrol setup with basically Kontakt resamples of the original S-50 and W-30 samples. Everything controlled with Push, two Faderfox controllers, two AKAI controllers and some pedals. 

Jo: We did have access to the BELGIE venues, so we were able to do a couple of PA system repetitions. That helped us gain confidence for the Ombra show, last December (2025). And more importantly, it helped us find the joy in playing again. Gradually the show got in shape. But it’s a fact there was no time to do a lot of new music, or to rework some of the early, unreleased material. In the days, we had all the analog gear lined up and we experimented together. Now it was more of a reclusive thing, with Mark working on his Macs. We tested the progress on the PA, and I gave feedback. Which lead to more work for Mark. Our lives simply don’t allow for the experimentation of the past. I’m quite sorry about that evolution.

Mark: There was so little time to prepare, there was hardly any time to feel anything, really. It was all about being ready in time. For me, the emotions came after the show. And I still feel them today.

Q: With all the experience and wisdom you’ve accumulated since then, what advice would you give to the younger versions of yourselves who started making music in the ’80s?

Mark: Work harder on your music. Take more time for it. And above all: finish tracks. Come to think of it, the advice still holds.

Jo: Have fun, and remain impulsive, with life as your guide. I don’t like the ‘work’ verb of it too much. It’s not how we initially made music, nor how it can grow still. Our Barcelona experience showed us how our approach connected with a colorful contemporary audience. That adrenaline stayed high for months. If only for that, I wouldn’t mind doing more shows now.