Band Members (then & now)
Alex Callier
guitarist and keyboardist
Alex Callier
guitarist and keyboardist
Alex is a founder of the band along with Raymond they remain as the core of Hooverphonic. To say Alex is a Belgian musician is true he is Belgian, the other members are too, and they perform mainly in live venues across Belgium and The Netherlands. However, their success has made the band international and this is mainly due to Alex’s talent as a sound engineer, musician, and song writer.
Born on 6 December 1972, Sint-Niklaas, Belgium, Alex’s career has been wholly to do with sound. He is better described as a composer and producer, and the main driving force of the group. What he says goes, outside of contractual arrangements with the likes of Sony.
You could also say he is an enigmatic guy, but he is also a simple guy, takes life in his stride and is probably 100% aware of his musical talent, so overall he is a humble guy utterly disciplined and respectful of others.
raymond geerts
lead guitarist
raymond geerts
lead guitarist
Raymond has been around since the start with Alex. He started out playing drums in a band from Sint-Niklaas, Belgium until he met Alex and together they formed the group The Love Letter Boxes and soon after released the song Inhaler under the new band name Hooverphonic.
As well as coming up with magical guitar riffs Raymond is involved in the song writing and occasionally provides backing vocals. He plays video games to pass the time on recordings and tours, prefers diesel clothes and Doc Marten footwear, and prefers to read a comic over a novel.
He has a real nostalgia for the retro vibe, having opened a shop called Vintage Corner in Sint-Niklaas with partner Franka Lutin which focuses on the 1950s through 1970s and does antiques restorations too.
Geike Arnaert
former lead singer
Geike Arnaert
former lead singer
Geike on this members page also appears further down under ‘previous lead vocalists’ because she left the band way back in 2008 and I’ve left it as it. Now that she is back as lead singer, she relegates Luka and once again rises to the dizzy height of third place on this page making her an integral part of the band.
Yes it’s true that without Geike, the other two maintained for years (since 2008 in fact’) that they were the only two necessary to legitimise the band. We’ve learned that without a lead singer noboby wants to watch two men staring at the floor while playing their guitars. Yes Geike returns to the band, and the band is whole again.
Alex in interviews has been asked about a Geike return and never ruled out this possibility. Raymond insists there were never any drawn knives over their split. But perhaps it took a long break for them all to realise what they could really achieve together and celebrating the anniversary of an iconic album and participating in Eurovision seems like an explosive start as any could be.
An album with Luka was recorded but not released and Alex says he has about three albums written during the pandemic period so things also could not be more exciting – Get ready for a lava flow of steady output from Hooverphonic.
Peter Piersman
guitarist & vocalist
Peter Piersman
guitarist & vocalist
Despite always seeming to wear the same top, Pieter is actually a pretty cool guy. Since 2016 he has been the first male voice front-man for Hooverphonic. His rendition of Vinegar & Salt is especially moving, a song which Noémie Wolfs had perfected. Pieter had already been voted the best singer-songwriter of Flanders in 2014. Gentle Intruder was released in March 2018 via Starman Records, a Belgian music label and he is in the band Slow Pilot.
Just a month later in April 2018 he appeared with Hooverphonic in London. Pieter is one of a trio of front singers that have filled the void since Noémie’s departure. Even if the Vinegar & Salt versions of Geike or Noémie are preferred by some, there is no doubting the song can be transposed to a male singer, Pieter brings melancholy and deep feeling in his version and this is exemplified in his rendition of Badaboum.
Arnout Hellofs
drummer
Arnout Hellofs
drummer
Arnout Hellofs has been drumming for Hooverphonic since November 2010. I can’t find much more information than that. You see plenty of band videos on youtube and he’s always in them, but … Even in London he was standing in the back corner and the only band member I did not speak with.
Luka Cruysberghs
lead singer
Luka Cruysberghs
lead singer
Luka won The Voice of Flanders 2018 at just seventeen. Her coach was Alex and they also sang Mad About You together in the finals to clinch the competition.<
Luka also wanted to work with Alex for her first solo album so he sent her ten songs including a new number he wrote for Hooverphonic. It was the new song that Luka picked and to test how that sounded they arranged a session before a small audience in De Grote Post in Ostend where Luka impressed them so much that the band knew they had found their new singer.
The only negative comments were from die-hard Geike fans that could not see life past that band phase. Luka hit the ground running and was a member for three years until Eurovision 2020 when she was replaced and Geike was reunited with the band.
Noémie Wolfs
former lead singer
Noémie Wolfs
former lead singer
When Noémie Wolfs became front woman for Hooverphonic it was four years since the band had had a lead singer and more significantly four years since Geike Arnaert. There is no escaping that Geike left a huge shadow to follow, some believe impossible to replace, and this is the situation Noémie found herself in.
She was lead singer for five years, exactly half of Geike’s tenure. Yet she made her mark. Of course any new singer has to learn the backlog of songs and some of these she mastered arguably better than the originals, Salt & Vinegar, The World is Mine, and Club Montepulciano which was in part due to the full orchestra which they had at their disposal and helped to accentuate Noémie’s precise tones.
As is the case with Hooverphonic’s continuous production, a new singer soon finds themselves beginning a new album. For Noémie this was The Night Before and two more albums would follow. She was a success, but unfortunately circumstances led to her departure and what we have for posterity is Hooverphonic with Noémie Wolfs, pure magic.
Geike Arnaert
former lead singer
Geike Arnaert
former lead singer
What really can you say about a woman of such immense talent that has left such a phenomenal footprint in the band’s chronology. Aged just nine, Geike Arnaert entered a talent show in her village, Westouter. By seventeen she was fronting Hooverphonic and continued to do so for ten years. Many of the band’s defining records were sang by Geike and her influence on the band and their fans is still felt strongly today.
The departure of a lead vocalist at the height of the band’s success is the greatest disruption to any band. Inevitably the rising curve will begin moving downwards but the show must go on. Great songs and great vocalists will follow but for many fans there is always a comparison made, and for those, life has never been the same after Geike.
Since leaving Hooverphonic at the end of 2008 Geike followed a solo career and teamed up with other artists like Erik de Jong from Spinvis and the group BLØF. In 2010 Geike and Spinvis collaborated under the band name Dorléac to record theme music for the film ‘Adem’ (AKA Breath or Oxygen) and there followed several gigs and an album together. She released her first solo album ‘For The Beauty of Confusion’ backed by extensive touring. Then in 2018 she collaborated with Dutch group BLØF with the song Zoutelande that reached No1 in the Netherlands and Flanders.
Liesje Sadonius
former lead singer
Liesje Sadonius
former lead singer
Liesje Sadonius was the first lead singer when the band was called Hoover in 1995. She recorded the debut album A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular in 1996. International renown came from the track 2Wicky that was featured on the soundtrack of Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1996 film Stealing Beauty. Shortly after the release of the album she left the band.
She ventured into film in 2009 appearing as the queen in the film Reike and launched a solo career under the name ‘Suzanina’ releasing her debut album ‘Heavenly Juice’ in 2010. As for her future music, instead she started a Spiritual Life Coaching business around holistic healing and spirituality which as far as I know she is still running today.
Kimberly Dhondt
front singer
Kimberly Dhondt
front singer
Kimberly Dhondt started her singing career in Andalusia, where she was active in various flamenco fusion groups. She was involved with Hooverphonic over the period between Noémie Wolfs’ departure and Luka Cruysberghs’ arrival, when the band was experimenting and inviting various artists to perform certain songs for the most eclectic album to date.
The last album In Wonderland was a pot pourri of past and present ideas, not written for a particular voice other than each was better suited to a male or female voice. Kimberly’s involvement has been mainly performing on stage alongside Peter Piersman and Nina Sampermans. Whether she is singing Heartbroken and Gravity solo, or Badaboum and Hiding In A Song with the others, she enabled the eclectic band of that era to perform its repertoire seemlessly.
Her brother Sean is also a Dutch musician and radio and TV presenter. Kimberly is involved with three other women in busking/group Birds On A Wire – But mainly her focus is with her new band, Evil Empire Orchestra, involving seven other musicians, that describe themselves as playing psychedelic, dirty soul, jazz and garage music. If Kimberly seems sedate in Hooverphonic, she is positively wild when performing with EEO.
Nina Sampermans
front singer
Nina Sampermans
front singer
Nina Sampermans was one of the trio alongside Pieter and Kimberly performing mainly on the In Wonderland tour. Her youtube renown with Hooverphonic is with the song ‘You’ and on stage she leads ‘Eden’ and the rest of the repertoire she performs with equal mastery alongside her cohorts.
When the Flemish broadcaster VRT announced who would be representing Belgium in Baku for the Eurovision Song Contest 2012, they joined with the singer Iris and record company Sonic Angel to find a song writer. Iris was the youngest ever Eurovision Song Contest candidate for Belgium, at just seventeen, and so the song choice was carefully selected and it came down to two choices of which Flemish TV viewers selected ‘Would You‘ , a ballad co-composed and co-written by Nina Sampermans. Unfortunately Belgium did not get further than 17th place in the first semi final.
For around a year (2014) Nina, AKA known as Ravvel, collaborated with Norwegian duo ‘broiler’ a keyboard player and a guitarist, to record ‘Wild Eyes‘ . The song topped the chart in Norway and reached 4th spot in Flanders and was a nominee for the Spellemann Award for Hit of the Year. Her current single as Ravvel is ‘Pick Your Poison’.
Émilie Satt
session singer
Émilie Satt
session singer
Émilie Satt is a French singer forming the duo with her husband Jean-Karl Lucas in the group Madame Monsieur, formed in 2013. They represented France in Eurovision 2018 with the song Mercy inspired by the birth of a little girl aboard the freedom ship L’Aquarius, and which has since been adapted into a children’s book.
For Hooverphonic she sings Badaboum with Litlo Tinz, a mixture of French and English vocals, track 03 on the In Wonderland album, an eclectic album involving no lead singer and many contributing artists.
Janie Price
session singer
Janie Price
session singer
Janie is one of the five artists to have contributed two songs on the In Wonderland album. In her singing career she goes by the name ‘Bird’. She is an English/Irish singer/song writer and musician. For her album ‘Figments of Our Imagination’ she played every instrument herself; but she’s more famed for being a celloist.
Having started as a drummer in an all-girl punk band, she quickly moved on at eighteen years old to composing for a UK rap band and playing the cello and singing for various artists. In 2010 she appeared in a TV series called Art of Survival, a six part programme produced by Sky Arts, which filmed her playing her music across Europe, of which she wrote a book about that experience titled ‘A Real Journey’.
At 26 years old released her first album ‘The Insides’ in 2004. Her second, ‘Girl And A Cello’ (2009), was recorded entirely using only vocals and a cello. More recently she has developed her career writing songs for other artists and in 2016 she wrote and sang ‘I Like The Way I Dance ’ for Hooverphonic. For In Wonderland she performs tracks 1 & 2; title track In Wonderland and I Like The Way I Dance. She continues to write songs and is a much-in-demand jazz vocalist on London’s club circuit.
Christa Jérôme
session singer
Christa Jérôme
session singer
Christa Jérôme started her career on a music TV contest in 2001 after which she collaborated with Belgian jazz musician Marc Moulin creating several albums until his untimely death in 2008. She continued collaborations with other Belgian artists; rappers Starflam from Liège, and Manou Gallo who herself toured for many years with Zap Mama the Belgian group of Afro-Pop music, and of course – Hooverphonic.
She is Belgian with Haitian roots and her style of music comes from soul, funk, and jazz. In early 2017 she released debut album ‘Jérôme Is A Woman’s Name’ and her current album La Jérôme is available directly from her website as well as the other usual sources.
For the In Wonderland album, Christa sings tracks 5 & 6; Deep Forest and Thin Line.
Tjeerd Bomhof
session singer
Tjeerd Bomhof
session singer
Tjeerd Bomhof was born in Amsterdam and was in his first band aged ten and in 2001 aged twelve he started the band Voicst, releasing a debut album ’11-11′ in 2004. The single Whatever You Want From Life was a hit and used in Heineken advertising and in the computer game 2006 FIFA World Cup.
After that he went solo under the name Dazzled Kid later Dazzle Sticks, producing his first solo album Fire Needs Air in January 2011.
For Hooverphonic he sings tracks 7 & 8; Hiding In A Song and Praise Be, for the album In Wonderland.
Felix Howard
session singer
Felix Howard
session singer
For Hooverphonic, Felix Howard plays the final two songs on the In Wonderland album, tracks 9 & 10; God’s Gift and Moving.