10 Mar 2024
It’s funny how sometimes you’ll have a spark of an idea, to create something small like a sketch, or a little art project, or a small video series, or an EP, or a web app. Something not too big, yet large enough to convey a message, to craft a little world, to tell a story with changing themes, to hold and express sentiment like a roller-coaster at sunset with a glistening bay in view, going up and down as the light dims revealing another world.
And then the output of the spark that ignited the creation spirals out of control and the original work no longer suffices, so you place the first creations on the side while you work on a different set of related ideas, elevated to a higher level, and then - months later - you rediscover the original work and it not only holds sentimental value but you see how you can bring it back into the narrative, so you reintegrate them, and work on them anew, yet after more months of work you find that they are too distinct, as if two bodies of work loosely connected by an idea, but instead of separating them into two separate projects you start drawing bridges, and you try to connect the work together with more work, shorter work, like commas in a long unruly sentence.
And suddenly the small project has turned out to be an expedition lasting close to a couple of years, and the work reaching an end no longer looks like the spark of the original idea, yet you are sure there is some merit, as it is its own world now, and you have to set it free, but you are unsure if it will meet expectations.
And then you remember: There are no expectations.
And thus I’ve been working on FRUTAL for a while; an album I started working with my friend Pyrathee before I set off to Ireland. We decided to hang out for a series of 4-5 sessions to work on some material, where he’d play drums and I’d compose, play guitar and sing. The result was 4 songs related to fruits in one way or another, some based on real stories, and some fantasy. The intention was to craft them with a heavy grungy sound, hence the name of the album would be a wordplay on “Brutal”.
Yet 4 songs weren’t enough, so I paid a few voice actors and narrators on Fiverr to read out fruit names and definitions, and then these had to be woven into little musical worlds or motifs. But now we had 6 bridges and 4 songs, not enough songs for an album, but wait, this wasn’t supposed to be an album! Yet there I was, writing more songs, now in a different style, and then I had to construct more bridges, toppling some of the older ones down in the process, and more songs were crafted, about plums, about apples, about mangoes.
And the “Cantaloupes” barbershop quartet no longer matched the theme and had to be re-written thrice. And then I was satisfied, knowing the work consisted of three themes, that reference each other, that play together, that flow, that come back in one way or another throughout the album, a few themes to carry different feelings, different weights, some frutal, some brutal. In a way it resembles my personality, and life changes over the past few years, a story. Rock, indie, electronic, and bridges in between.
The work is nearly done, I hope you enjoy it and that it generates the feeling of going on a journey in you, one full of fruits with a touch of madness. Follow the blog, or subscribe to the newsletter to be notified when it drops.
And remember: Eat your Daily Mangoes.
12 Jan 2024
As the weeks pass by after finishing this book, I realise more and more how perturbing the experience was. It’s like a lingering nightmare from nights gone by which looms every night, threatening to return while you sleep, to terrorise your dreams with a complex distorted reality of cold, coats, toads, rabbits, cows and “the other side”.
The Discomfort of Evening, known in Dutch as De Avond is Ongemak written by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, is a whirlwind to say the least.
It is an easy read which is a pro, full of ample descriptions of this world which is described which is so visual yet so drab and gray, I can imagine the featureless landscape, as I write this looking out the gray skies of Belgium on a winter morning. I can picture the mud, the fields, the cows, as when I run long distances I often stumble upon many farms, with the cows grazing, often looking up at me as I run by and then returning to their rumination. I always wondered what kind of people live in these farms, how do they live their lives, and this book gives a portrayal of a glimpse into this life, albeit heavily distorted by the family’s circumstances.
Speaking of rumination, I still can’t digest this book. It is an endurance run of pain or a marathon of grimness, every page gray and drab, a bitter or metallic taste in the mouth, like blood. This is not to say it is badly written, as the language and the story carry beautifully from page to page, similar to how the monotonous voice of Charlie (aka MoistCr1TiKaL) on his YouTube channel delivers his videos, starkly honestly without a facade, direct, blunt, piercing. In this same light the book reads like an honest down-to-earth journal, narrating the smallest yet nastiest intricacies of the daily life of a troubled family in a run-down town in the middle of nowhere in the Netherlands.
I have mixed feelings after reading this book. Marieke crafted a world so unique that if it wasn’t for the mention of a few real world characters I swear it could have been about a run-down farm in Russia or Thailand, or Mars for all I care. It transports you to this place and puts you in those muddy boots and featureless landscape, and it drags you through terrible situation after terrible situation, screaming and kicking.
At times I’d be reading on the train, bus, or plane, hiding the pages from people, afraid they’d catch a glimpse of the perturbing sentences, page after page. It was a diarrhea of all possible intrusive thoughts, everything weird you might have thought of doing, to yourself, or to others, growing up and exploring the world, wondering “why not?”. All of those crazy disgusting weird thoughts, turned into a reality.
I don’t know whether I’d recommend this book. I’m still perturbed by it, so I guess it did its job. 7/10
04 Jan 2024
I just came back a few days ago from spending a week in Krakow, and what a beautiful city it is. With an amazing historic city centre, and lots to do around the city, it is well worth visiting.
I recorded quite a bit of footage with the intent of making a somewhat experimental video. Instead of being your standard vlog narrating our strolls around the city, food, and landmarks, it takes a different tone, with very little speech. The intent is more of an audio-visual experience, with music matching the tone of the scenes. It will take quite a while to edit and then record the score for it, but that was what I was thinking about while recording the individual scenes over the course of a week. Hopefully it comes out as I intend it to, maybe a few months down the line.
A few things to visit if you happen to be passing by the city for a few days:
- The castle (1-2 hours, I’d go mostly around the castle and not to specific exhibits… great for photos)
- There is a dragon statue that spits fire behind the castle (next to the river)
- The historic city centre (the x-mas market there is amazing, but also the interior of the building with artesanal wares)
- Kazimierz (the region has great bars and an AMAZING ribs restaurant called “RZEZNIA”)
- To the south of Kazimierz you have a few bridges crossing the Wisła river, they have cool lights at night!
- Park Bednarskiego (climb the hills for a nice view!)
- Galeria Krakowska (shopping mall, probably spent too much time here)
- The botanical garden just east of th ecity centre
- Behind the TAURON arena in the east there is a really beautiful (BIG) park; it was snowing when I went making it amazing
There is plenty more to visit, so many cool restaurants and bars, landmarks and epic sightseeing spots, but this is the bare minimum I think you should have on your list if you are visiting for 2-3 days.
Public transport is great and super fast, you can take the train to get to multiple parts of the city which I found sometimes more optimal than buses/taxis/etc.
25 Nov 2023
Note: This book review has minor spoilers (specially towards the end)!
I’m years late to reading this book. I bought it for my sister around 2019, because I thought the title was a bit edgy and maybe had a few glimmers of insight and protocols to deal with life, social situations, stress, anxiety, and the seemingly overwhelming need to perform and put on a face that has become ever-increasing in the era of TikTok.
Yet when it was proposed in our Book Club, even though I knew it was loosely a type of humoristic approach at a self-help book, I kind of thought it would be good to give it a go (mostly because we had just finished a longer and more complicated book, so it feels nice to dive into something that reads easily in between lengthier reads).
The core idea of the book is to set expectations to zero, the baseline is nothing, then you can only go up. If things were to get worse, that is the new baseline. Choose what things to be passionate or care for with frugality: If you care for everything and want to be everything and measure everything in terms of success then everything will cease to be worthwhile.
I think the most important chapters were 1, 6 and 9.
The last chapter was the one that felt the realest and most honest; but i feel like the whole going to a cliff in south africa was a weird way to confront the idea of death, I feel like you can be at peace with the fact we are going to die without having to look at the bottom of a cliff.
Overall I feel it was written in a state of flow, the sentences are fluid, and whilst targetting a specific audience with a bit of an overuse of expletives, it still feels honest and straight-forward. I feel there are a few nuggets of knowledge and it was entertaining to read.
The downside? I feel like it could have been a 20-30 minute video. For this I think I’ll give it a 3.5 out of 5.
16 Oct 2023
Every year on the first of October a band (which gets together with the sole purpose of making a record) meets in a studio and records an album in a day, or 12 hours to be precise.
It has become a bit of a ritual to listen to the album upon release, just out of mere curiosity.
The act of making music or art under constraints has always intrigued me, and music is even harder because you can so easily fall into a flow state where it feels somewhat… wrong… to leave something unfinished. Yet there is the flip-side of this which is that it is uniquely beautiful to hear something as it ended up, a bit bare, something that didn’t undergo the grueling (and often most time-consuming) act of tinkering with a song until perfect.
And the results are always raw, random, and beautiful as-is.
The latest album called “Across the Road” was filmed in Abbey Road Studios, and is absolutely amazing. From the process of creating the album to the final result, year upon year they have improved; it feels like the first years were about “can we do it? rush!” whereas the latest one feels more like “we know the drill, let’s put effort into where it belongs, and do revisions and add the non-essentials towards the end”, and it goes to show… the song structures, the arrangements, the little funny bits here and there, yet grave seriousness of some of the other tracks provides a very nice mixture of textures, themes, genres, and more.
The mere fact they recorded it in Abbey Road (using some of The Beatles’ instruments) was a source of inspiration that transpires through the musical themes of the album.
Hats off to Rob and Andrew as always, and looking forward to next years’ edition!