I still have lots of musical ideas on old audiocassettes that I recorded before I could actually start making music thanks to software instruments (I couldn’t afford hardware ones, and I started using VSTs only in 2004).
Toys, then barely-above-toy instruments and, later, very (or rather, too) cheap instruments were all I had to turn the notes in my head into sounds. The results were always terrible, but the love and passion I put into those attempts were limitless, so much so that I still have probably between 800 and 1000 of those draft recordings to give a proper shape to.
Listening to them again is always a very emotional experience and actually recording them is thrilling and a bit scary, too. My present self expressing and filtering the emotions and experiences of my past self... yes, that stirred lots of thoughts and feelings inside of me.
It’s a good thing this time I had this photo by uncle Sem – the perfect cover for this project - to help me focus on the task at hand without getting overwhelmed by memories (thank you, I’ll never be able to return your generosity, let alone everything else...).
These tracks were composed between 1988 and 1994, and I finally arranged and recorded them in 2019. “Give it your best shot” first appeared with a different recording on my 2008 album “A safe haven”. I felt it would be good to have it here, too, with a better sound. This album is dedicated to RG who – first and only – always encouraged me back when I recorded those audiocassettes, and to all the developers of free VSTs, without whom I could have never made music.
