monopoli

The first track I had lyrics and vocal for and the track that set the tone and the direction for the rest of the album for me. The lyrics were directly inspired by the situation in Syria and in general my disgust for authoritarians on the march these days (from all sides) Musically it came together…read more

This song doesn’t really go anywhere but that maybe fits the lyrics. There are some nice guitarparts. I added a guitar, percussion and changed the drums in march for the new version.

Lyrically it’s about this dream to live another kind of life as in Tim Ferriss’ book. The last three years I had managed to live on working in a bar in the weekends, being a guinea pig for medical tests, travelling the world as an On Board Courier and working on my “career” as a painter. Now…read more

I set this up to be like a Madchester/early 90’s-track. When I took out the drums in the verse (as an experiment) it suddenly reminded me of the German 60’s hit Marmor, stein und Eisen bricht. Those lyrics go like “Marble, stone and iron break, but our love won’t” so that led me to “Marble, stone…read more

I had programmed a drumtrack based on Can’s Vitamin C at the end of january in preparation for RPM. Last week I read that the drummer Jaki Liebzeit died the 22th of january. The other idea was to stay on one chord for a long time and use reverb to create space like in Cocteau Twins’ Pandora…read more

Midlife crisis? I’m not going to reflect too much on these lyrics. It might be interesting to myself to hear again 5 or 10 years from now. I used a guitarnoise with a EH Graphic Fuzz and Hardwire RV-7 with a reverse reverb (I used this too in 3,4, and 5; in 5 with the Tremolator)

The lyrics are pretty bad and I had to record the second guitar through an ampsim late in the evening of the 28th. So I rerecorded that part in march and changed the drums slightly. This is where the record starts to fall apart a bit.

I had a vague idea to write a lyric about Julian Assange’s daily life in the Ecuadorian Embassy; no sun, being confined to a small office-space… I didn’t get round to it so I added some lame Mellotron (IK Sampletron) parts and called it finished.

Another unintentional instrumental. I quite like this as a track though it doesn’t really go anywhere.

The idea of this was to combine Otis Redding’s Sitting on the Dock of Bay with the perspective of a refugee (or of myself as a refugee) sitting in some port trying to flee to a better life. Though not all lines are perfect I’m quite happy with how this turned out and it ties the record nicely…read more

I was in Beijing for two weeks and I had seen a documentary called Beijing Bubbles shortly before. When I heard a band rehearse in a bar near my hotel I walked in and saw it was the guy from the doc.

These four songs were written for the RPM Challenge 2013 (which I didn’t finish, I finished these songs for RPM 2015) My idea for lyrics of the record was not to use the words You an I. So that’s where this came from.

The lyrics are pretty self-explanatory; work it out for yourself! :-)

Made for the 2015 RPM Challenge

Made for the 2015 RPM Challenge

Made for the 2015 RPM Challenge

Made for the 2015 RPM Challenge

Made for the 2015 RPM Challenge

Made for the 2015 RPM Challenge

Made for the 2015 RPM Challenge

Made for the 2015 RPM Challenge

Technically it’s OK; I like the guitar and basslines. The lyrics and vocals I’m not so fond of. I hoped to have enough time to replace this one later in february with a better one but alas, it was not to be…

‘m doing a course in Mandarin Chinese and mamahuhu is one of my favourite words. It means so-so (literally horsehorsetigertiger); “not so good”. In this lyric I just allowed myself to whine about my situation; get it over with. I like the harmony in the chorus and the synths at the end. The drumloop…read more

There is a Dutch expression Luchtfietsen/Luchtfietserij which I transated as Skycycling. It’s a term for unrealistic plans/dreams. Another recent Dutch expression is Linkse Hobby (leftist hobby/leftwing hobby) which was coined by rightwingers to label basically all arts and culture. One of the…read more

The lyrics started out as being about talking to someone and somehow you never get on the same wavelenght. You say something and the other person goes: “Yeah, I know what you mean like this…etc…” and goes on about something you didn’t mean at all. Some people are just living in a universe…read more

The lyrics are pretty selfexplanatory; it’s about so-called magic-pill-solutions. The doubletracked “guitarsolos” could have been better but I only recorded them on the last day and thought it might be OK a little rough and off. I did them really quickly. I think this is still my preferred track…read more

I had to write a lyric for this one on the last day and really had no good ideas. So, as the title says… A bit of a shame as I kinda liked the vocal melody and bassline. It’s one of the lesser tracks now (together with the first one)

Serene Dominic wanted an 80’s synth-tune for his RPM-project so I reworked one of his songs. I used a Korg Poly800 a Roland Juno and a Vermona Lancet (analogue synths) to try and get an authentic sound. I also used a brilliant VST called SQ8L that’s instant 80’s. I did my own vocals for my record…read more

Hey, Christians have gospelmusic. Godless heathens like me sometime have to let off steam too. One of my best songs I think. Drumloops from http://realmusicmedia.net/samples.html (I used them in track 5 too)

For the lyrics I tried to “paint a picture” rather than tell a story or make a clear point. I was thinking of Caroline No by the Beach Boys about a girl who suddenly lost the glow of youth. The lyric is not quite succesfull but… it will have to do. I really like how the synth in the second…read more

Another instrumental; some nice sounds and additional keyboard by Peter Dematté

The lyrics were meant to be kinda stupid and obnoxious to set the bar really low for myself in an attempt to get over my chronic lyric-writing block.

One of my better tunes this year I think. Lyrics were meant to be an anti-“My Way”. Instead of looking back on life all proud and selfassured, this is from the viewpoint of someone who has just realized he has been living his life on other peoples terms and out of frustration he’s killed his…read more

I came up with lyrics for the backing track that ended up as Reset Your Head Again, but since I had grown to dislike that backingtrack I decided to just play the song with guitar and voice.

This tune was sounding so dramafree and happy-go-lucky that I decided to write some (uncharacteristically) dramafree and happy-go-lucky lyrics. The sound at the beginning is from my Nokia-phone which I also use as my alarmclock. I was then reminded of the Beatles-tune Good Morning; there are…read more

Is this years’ fillertrack. I had started this backingtrack to fit with a lyricidea I had but I decided against the lyric and turned it into an instrumental. I needed an extra tune since two other tunes I put quite a lot of time in were going nowhere. Features melodica and MFB 522 drummachine!

See track 4. I decided to kill this this off completely by adding some analogue synthwankery. Features Doepfer Dark Energy, Akai VX90, GPO strings and bongo’s!

There’s several things I tried out that worked really well here; the popcorn-synthsound from the Dark Energy, the speeding up at the end, the minimalistic hiphopbeat. The lyrics are a bit too bla-di-bla for my taste but whatever…

I wanted to end this years record with a tune I could easily fall asleep to and I asked Peter Dematté to play sax over two alternating guitarchords I recorded. I really love what he came up with and have tried to built it into a stressfree track to make the listener lazily drift to the end of…read more

1.Afsluitdijk
…is a Dutch word and it’s the name of the dam/road going from the province Friesland to North-Holland (and Amsterdam) The lyrics are about a 15-year old boy who feels so trapped in the boring Frisian town he’s living in that he decides to just ride his bicycle out of Friesland…read more

Here the idea was that I was going to write from the viewpoint of someone who is paralyzed from the neck down and can through technology only watch other peoples life but not participate. It turned out a bit more general and ambiguous than that.

The Dutch painter Mondrian was apparantly a fervent dancer to Boogie Woogie and that image stuck because he seems such a stiff guy otherwise. So I thought that would make a funny subject for a dance-tune. Normally I wouldn’t make a song about a painter because it tends to get pretentious quickly…read more

The first casualty of my severe lyric-crisis this year. Could have been a good song. Is an OK-ish instrumental now.

Another one without lyrics. The title was my workingtitle. And I just thought it was a funny title (I think Rage Against the Machine is kind of silly) I quite like some of the sounds on this one (it’s a Poly 800 through an Electro Harmonix Big Muff and Q-tron, acoustic guitars and a Siel Orchestra…read more

Trying out a Carol Kaye-inspired bassline here (not completely succesfull; gotta work on my timing some more) and again didn’t manage to come up with lyrics. Espresso Martini is a really nice cocktail with coffee you can get at the club/bar where I work.

This started sounding quite Nick Caveish and at the same time I wanted to do something with Joe Meek; so it’s a murderballad-variation on Johnny Remember me. There’s stylophone and theremin in there. The theremin is quite effective at some points and terribly off at others. I should have done…read more

Another attempt at a Carol Kaye-bassline, slightly more succesfull. I quite like how this turned out although it’s kinda slick and not something I could really use in another context (it just sounds like I didn’t make it myself which I quite like but is always a bit problematic when presenting…read more

My Clique-contribution with some added ambientsound recorded from my window. This is partly the traditional filler-track but I quite like the ambientsound. If I do a record next year (I probably won’t) it will most likely be just 35 minutes of sound from my window (or something totally different;…read more

I started this one at the end of januari in preperation for RPM. I added lyrics and vocals in february. So it’s kind of a bonustrack. Just another throwaway popsong with the awesome stylophone in full effect.

1. Vanilla sex and garlic eyes I tried this method http://www.songmd.com/col_hitlyrics.shtml to get out of my continuing lyricwriting-crisis. At step two of the method you have to write a nonsensical lyric on you melody. In the case of the first three s

1. It’s easier when you don’t care How true! Based on a blogpost-title by my favourite RPMer. I recorded the guitar and bass-parts this year through a Vox Pathfinderamp at relatively neighbourfriendly levels. That worked surprisingly well here I think.

1. Last day at the office Another nonsense lyric, but I quite like: “a portable swimmingpool, cemented in the lawn, some R&B beeyatch with Gucci flipflops on” I quite like how the sound came out (apart from the vocals as always) Even the pitchshifted sec

1. The worlds most miserable song This was partly meant for a challenge someone put out in the RPM-forum to make the most tearjerking/depressing song ever. Because of the flu I didn’t make the deadline, but that only adds to the miserableism of the whole

1. The lost generation As if the last one wasn’t miserable enough. This lyric is about “the lost generation”; the generation that came right after the babyboom-generation and was more or less written of by the babyboomers in the eighties when a lot of th

1. Underachievers Anonymous More nonsense lyrics. I quite like the tune though and the vocals are also acceptable for a change.

1. Lights speeding home The lyrics are kinda cliché. I like the tune itself. I tried to make a song similar to Femme Fatale or I’ll be your Mirror by the Velvet Underground but it’s nothing like that. I though it had a driving-at-night-atmosphere, so I m

1. I only want to procrastinate I started recording this on 28 february and added lyrics and vocals two hours before midnight the 29th. It’s my favourite now though it’s kinda dumb. I started with a drumrythm from a crappy Yamaha Portasound keyboard. Whe

1. One big Eurocity The title is nicked from a line in a Tuxedomoon-song. I wanted to have lyrics for this one about travelling and coming across similarities in different cities in Europe. But, alas, no time left. It’s an instrumental now.

1. Nightflight to the sun I made a lot of guitarbased tunes this year so here I started with synths and stuff. I quickly started to sound like an Italodiscotrack so I added the compulsary cheesy lyrics to go with it. Though, like in Vamos a la Playa, I

1. Mermaid My Casio-tune (for the Casio Challenge) Recorded through a microphone so you can hear me tapping away at the crappy little keys of the SA-3. Since it started to sound very sinister and reminded me also of the sea I wanted to add lyrics about