Celebrating ten years of STROOM, our editorial curator Tatyana Andrianova takes a journey through the wonderfully unpredictable catalogue of the Belgian label founded by Ziggy Devriendt (aka Nosedrip).

Somewhere in Belgium, there is a box of records that don’t have a shelf. Not because they are bad, but because nobody can agree on what to call them. Too pop to be ambient, too strange to be pop, too old to be new and too new to be forgotten. Stroom has spent ten years opening that box.

It started in 2013, when DJ and collector Ziggy Devriendt, better known as Nosedrip, launched an online radio project with a few friends. Three years later it became a record label, and what followed was less a catalogue than a very curious archive: forgotten recordings, obscure experiments and finds from corners of the world that rarely make it onto a playlist. If something sounds a little off-kilter, there is a good chance Stroom has already put it out.

Their selection for Sandy Times Radio shows how that works in practice. Ingus Baušķenieks brings wonderfully peculiar Latvian electronic pop from the late Soviet era. Pablo’s Eye, a Belgian project, sits happily between ambient, electronics and whatever else is nearby. Voice Actor drags us back to the present with a different kind of sonic tinkering. And that is before we have reached the rest of the playlist.

These 24 tracks don’t necessarily sound like they belong together. They hop between countries, decades and genres, and now and then take a turn you didn’t see coming. That is the point. Stroom has never worried much about categories. What matters is whether the music deserves to be heard.