So the inevitable happened: I made a post about me and you're reading it. ;) As I've mentioned a few times (or maybe a bit more often) I was working on a second album. It was supposed to be short and varied, like the previous one I did. Unfortunately I didn't manage to stick to the plan as usual and what I've ended up with is a album of no less then seventeen tracks lasting over fourty minutes. Sorry 'bout that. Roughly speaking the first half is the accoustic, classical'ish part and the second half is the electric and louder part, where you''d find the guitars. Most songs are polished-up versions of songs posted earlier in the hear-here section although some were never uploaded before. The cover is designed by Auke, a friend of mine who also designed the cover of my previous album. This time he didn't stop there, he also lended me his bass-skills on 'mag ik even'. He's a fantastic muscian with a great ear and just a great person overall and I hope I can get him to work with me even more on the next project. 
01 Voor JS
02 Looks Like Thunder
03 Hang 'em High
04 Petrichor
05 Another Lonely Autumn
06 March in the Sand
07 Nihil Sine Origine Nisi Deus Solus
08 I specifically Reminded You
09 The Hey Hey Blues
10 Rock the baroque
11 mostly Harmless
12 Thanks for the education
13 Mag Ik Even?
14 Flight of the Bumblebee
15 Smells Like Sorrow
16 Smile
17 When the train comes in
You can download the entire album (a whopping 90mb!) in high-quality MP3 files at my brand-spankingly-new website: http://www.sleutelbos.com
You can also listen to it streaming in poorer quality at http://www.soundclick.com/sleutelbos
Anyway, even though it was all basically done in two months I've spend a really silly ammount of time on this, and to tell the truth I'm secretly quite proud of it. It's quite scary though, this simply is the best I can do right now and I have no excuses to hide behind. :shock: All-in-all I think I can say I did learn quite a lot and I think I improved on my last project. I really hope that people truly enjoy listening to this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Any comments, suggestions and general feedback very, very much appreciated. :D
You don't post threads about yourself. It's just our perception that colors the way we view meaningless binary code over the vast series of networks that is the internet that lends to that interpretation.
Used to be, was a part of me felt like hiding.. but now it comes through. Comes through to you.
I can't listen music on soundclick in this crap piece of computer that I have but as soon as i get a new one, it will be the first thing I'll listen to. wll maybe second...
pearl: you can download the entire album from my site, in higher quality then SoundClick allows.
I'll try that....
I'll give it a listen this afternoon.
I'd love to give it a listen, but it would take forever to download at the university, and I don't have internet at home. When I goes out to my parents house in a few weeks I'll definitely download it though. Can't wait to hear it!
Paul
Vacate is the word...Vengance has no place on me or her...Cannot find a comfort in this world.
I am seriously impressed. As you know.. I think Voor JS is my favorite.
Jim
“The hardest thing in life is to know which bridge to cross and which to burn” - David Russell (Scottish classical Guitarist. b.1942)
Thanks Jim, glad you liked it. :)
For those who haven't yet downloaded it I uploaded it to rapidshare. By clicking on the cover on my site you'll now get download speeds up to 2mb/sec. 8)
still doesn't happen. mine says error: please enable javascript.
Coming down the pipe as I type.
I'll give it a spin on the weekend.
Congrats!
:D
Don
He first tried to pick up the piano by the age of three but his slender body couldn't carry the full weight of the grand and any further attempts where postponed. His interest in the instrument was revived when he learned Rachmaninov's third piano concert on a rainy afternoon, mostly because there was nothing on the television that was really worth watching. Except maybe for Beavis & butt-Head but that was a repeat of a repeat of a repeat. Really pisses me off that we have a billion channels and absolutely none of them broadcasts anything even remotely worth the time. Anyway, from that day on he continued to play the piano every sunday it rained. He never really won any related awards, although he has been McDonalds Employee of the Month twice. Arjan joined Sleutelbos on december 2005.
lmao. Ah, that Rachmaninov is always good when you're bored on a rainy afternoon.
Downloading it now Arjen.
Edit:
Great album Arjen. There's some wonderful compsing here, everything is very original. It's even more diverse than the White Album :lol:
Really liked Another Lonely Autumn, March in the Sand, great stuff.
I loved the drums on Thanks For the Education, but I felt they were a LITTLE too loud in the mix. Cool song though, experimental indeed!
Great playing on Mag Ik Even...whatever that means eh? That song rocks though, literally.
Smile is a little...hard to listen to. That's a pretty grating sort of sound you've created there Dr. Frankenstein. :wink:
I really liked the album over all. I'd say Lonley Autumn and March are my two favourites. How do YOU write songs Arjen? Do you just sit at a keyboard, or your guitar, and sort of fiddle until you come across something you like? Or do you hear it in your head first? Did you have those UFO sorta sounds goin in your head for Lonley Autumn?
Bud, you're an incredible guitar player, really wish you'd write some more guitar oriented songs, don't think some of the new comers to GN know the chops you've got.
I'll be anxiously awaiting the next Sleutelbos production :)
Thanks for sharing
Taso
Pearl: sorry about that. Javascript is kinda an internet standard, I'm not at all an expert and have no idea why it doesn't work. Sorry. :(
Boxboy: Thanks. :) Looking forward to hear your initial response.
Neztok: sorry, I seem to have overlooked your post. Thanks. :D I don't think I snubbed you, although I'm not really sure what a snub is exactly.
Taso: Thanks. :D 'mag ik even' roughly translates to 'may I', it's kinda hard to explain it without you knowing the lyrics. I'm not quite sure how I write songs precisely, I know there's a structure but I haven't been able to properly turn it into some kind of math. If you'd appreciate it you could write a little melody and send me the notation and I'll give some different takes on it and roughly explain why I did what. Let me know if you'd find that anything but boring.
That synth sound for ALA was somewhat in my head. I don't really think in exact tones, it's more 'I need a fat stinging blues lead' then 'I need a bassman with pumped mids and some compression' for example. The synth does play a pretty big part in the composition: the piano itself doesn't change much. When the entire part is transposed the synth remains on the same note and it's that which changes the mood in the final run. I need a hazy sounding synth for it and just strolled to the hundreds of presets I've got by now and work from a decent sounding one.
As for guitar, I'd love to do that but guitar songs really need vocals IMHO. Solos are cool but a song does need some kind of lyrical context. I'm working on it and hope to do some accoustic guitar stuff for the next one but it really depends on how my voice develops. Right now it's really stretching it and a clean accoustic song with poor vocals is really not cool.
'Smile' was done with guitar rig and played on my strat. It's got an amazing natural sustain of roughly one second but I added such bizarre levels of gain and compression that you could play by blowing at the strings. Sustained for tens of seconds. It's not pretty but I kinda like the rough, almost unforgiving, sound. If you hadn't seen it already you can watch the clip here.
I'm downloading it now :D I'll give it a listen over the next few days.
Finally got around to listening to this properly, great stuff! Really well put together too, nice flow from one song to the next throughout.
I gave it a "Good, I really enjoyed that!"... gotta leave you inspired to keep on pushing your limits :wink:
