Beginnings
INTRODUCTION
It all began in the nineties when I purchased a BIG Yamaha workstation, a PSR-SQ 16 which was already out-dated, but impressive to my younger self nonetheless. I spent almost all my money on it, and didn’t do much else than figuring out that glorious machine for the months to follow. Although I led a rather sheltered life then, I also had a big talent of getting myself into trouble, so those keyboard sessions soon became more than an obsession to me: they became a way of finding myself and pulling me out of depression and illness.
Listening to those early recordings is still a strange experience to me. Many of them only survived on tape (the keyboard has some defects by now, and I lack the necessary time and equipment for fresh recordings); they are also flawed by my inexperience, the dependency on a single instrument and its limited array of sounds, as well as by the musical influences of that time. It was the time of Trip Hop and Electronica then, and though I never really got into this style of music (I lost my heart to 70’s progressive rock, but for some strange reason, the music you’re listening to and the music you’re writing yourself don’t tend to get along) it made me tolerant to beats and sounds that seem hardly bearable, or funny at the best, today. Then again, I would never really master percussions and bass lines – but it’s the melodies I want to share, the melodies that still haunt me until today.
DREAD HIP ‘N’ HAPPY DROP
(Early Experiments, ca. 1996-97)
This is the nonsense title of one of the first collections of tracks I envisaged to collect as an album. I tried to imitate that heavy, big-beat sound of hip hop and trip hop I was listening to at that time and got as carried away and confused as the title of the album suggests. These are some of my oldest recordings, just recently resurrected from old tape.
“Départ Sans Regret” is surely flawed by its monotony as well as the silly sound experiments in the middle part; but I must admit I still love the piano theme and that heads-up mood of the saxophone. The track mostly consists of a sequence of C major and g minor chords; I believe James Horner used that sequence in his Star Trek soundtracks a lot, which was my reason for loving those chords.
“A Trip to Arcadia” is probably what you get when listening to too much of psychedelia in your youth; it’s straight-forward, simple and in a way it just came out right. I should try to do a remix of this one day; it’s the artificial sound of the instruments that puts me off most nowadays, while I still like the song itself.
“The City Never Sleeps” has the same strengths and weaknesses as the two songs above; I like the tunes and the overall “happy” atmosphere, but the beats and the artificial sound of the sax are a pain in the ass. When listening again to this after so many years, I was surprised about that odd medieval middle part of the song. I was listening to some medieval tunes at that time – friend of mine just began professionally playing the bag-pipes in a medieval rock band – and somehow that bit must have sneaked in.
“Marvellous, Mrs Peel” is my personal declaration of love to one of the greatest series of TV history ever: the Avengers. You have to suffer through a bad piece of artificial brass at the beginning, but I still believe the end of this song to contain some of my finest moments of step-recorded drums and organ. The finale still makes me want to drive a car at full speed with maximum volume (those foolish desires!)
