Alfa Matrix news - THE NAMES return with remix album "Balancing Chaos"

Belgian post-punk band The Names have released the remix and companion album “Balancing Chaos (RMXing The Names)” via Spleen+, the post-punk division of Brussels label Alfa Matrix. The 17-track release appears as a CD.
"PROCRASTINATION" - THE NAMES - HARD FACTS Rmx
The Names - "Far From The Factories"
“Balancing Chaos” expands on the 2025 studio album “Encore!” with 13 remixes and 4 original album versions of “Far From The Factories”, “Watching For The New World”, “Last Train From Nowhere” and “Apophenia”. Digital pre-orders are available now with the two advance tracks: “Last Train From Nowhere (Gil Robert retrofuturistic remix)” and “Procrastination (Hard Facts remix)”.

The release follows a run of Spleen+ titles that reintroduced the band through the 2-track single “Far From The Factories“, the four-track “Volume” EP, the full-length “Encore!“, the “Swimming With Brian Jones” EP, and the digital “Procrastination” EP centred on the track of the same name.

Remixers include Jean-Marc Lederman, Kyiv-based producer Hard Facts, Gil Robert, Nevel (featuring Reverend Basstorius), Eden, Mike Theis, Halcyon Loop, Rob G. Nichols, Diskodiktator and Error Fate.

Jean-Marc Lederman contributes a rework of “Watching For The New World” dedicated to the late Annik Honoré, while Hard Facts delivers a club-oriented version of “Procrastination”, following earlier work on the “Procrastination” EP. Multiple mixes by Gil Robert are also included, ranging from a retro-futuristic take on “Last Train From Nowhere” to an extended dark electro pop version of “Apophenia” and an ambient electro-focused treatment of “Swimming With Brian Jones”.

Mike Theis, known for work with artists including Tricky and Massive Attack, appears here with the “morecowbell” remix of “Last Train From Nowhere”. Additional interpretations by Eden, Nevel, Halcyon Loop, Rob G. Nichols, Diskodiktator and Error Fate complete the set before the album versions return the material to its original band arrangements.

About The Names
The Names formed in Brussels, Belgium, in 1978, emerging from an earlier local group called The Passengers. The original core featured bassist, vocalist and songwriter Michel Sordinia together with guitarist Marc Deprez and drummer/keyboard player Christophe Den Tandt, with Robert Frankson and Isabelle Hanrez passing through the line-up in the early years.

Their debut single “Spectators of Life” appeared in 1979 on WEA as part of a push for locally produced new wave. After a concert by Joy Division in Brussels, the band signed to Factory Records and, with new drummer Luc Capelle, recorded the single “Nightshift” in Manchester with producer Martin Hannett in 1980. Further singles “Calcutta” (on Factory Benelux) and “The Astronaut” (on Les Disques du Crépuscule) led into their first album “Swimming” in 1982. A BBC session for John Peel’s Radio 1 show that same year was later issued as the digital EP “Radio Session 1982”.

The band split in the mid-1980s as the initial post-punk wave receded, but Sordinia and Deprez continued together in the project Jazz, releasing the album “Nightvision”. Archival releases such as “Postcard Views”, the expanded “Swimming + Singles” editions and the compilation “Spectators of Life” kept the early catalogue in circulation through labels including LTM and Factory Benelux.

The Names reunited for the “A Factory Night (and then again)” event at Plan K in Brussels in 2007 and moved back into the studio. They released “Monsters Next Door” in 2009 via Str8line and “Stranger Than You” in 2015 on Factory Benelux, followed by the live album “German Nights” in 2018 and the archival set “Hidden Tracks” in 2021.

From 2024 onward, the band became part of the Spleen+ roster within the Alfa Matrix group, issuing the single “Far From The Factories”, the “Volume” EP, the studio album “Encore!”, the “Swimming With Brian Jones” EP and the digital “Procrastination” EP. The latter centred on multiple versions of “Procrastination”, including the Hard Facts remix that now reappears on “Balancing Chaos”.

"Music is the shorthand of emotion. Music is a way of expressing personal feelings and getting them out there. It's something which helps you escape reality." - Alan Wilder -