2016 + new album

Happy New Year!
Hope you are having a wonderful and healthy 2016.
Indeed surrounded with a lot of great music.


A very large part of last year I dedicated to activities with and around Free Arts Lab. On which I will definitely spend a lot more hours in 2016. But more about this later.

New studio album
Last summer I also recorded the material for what will become my tenth* studio album. Actually my first new solo release since 2011's "i-Dentity".

* Despite the fact "i-Dentity" partially consists of live recordings, you might consider 2009's "EoD" as my last solo album. And if you don't count this re-interpretation from my debut album "Exhibition of Dreams" - so not 100% new material - as a new solo album, it must be guaranteed "This Is Not The End", from 2008.
So it took me somewhere in between 5 and 8 years to come up with a new long player.
I am excited to finally have something completely new to share with you, very soon!

In the past five years I worked on a couple of other projects with for example Synth.nl, My Breath My Music, Ron Boots, Planet of the Arps and Free Arts Lab, and did some performances. Also a concert registration, "The Great Church Trilogy", was released on cd in 2011, and download only compilations "Archives 1" and "Archives 2" saw the light in 2015. And then there are even some projects on which I have also been working in the background. Which might have been the main explanation of the fact that the announcement of a new solo album took so long.

Besides, there was a need to come up with something slightly different from my recent albums. This simply needed time.

About the upcoming release
The new project is called "Fears".

One of the emotions that intrigues me is 'fear'. Just like all other emotions, it is part of human life. And there are moments that emotions affect our lives more than we want.
The impact differing for each situation. Some emotions - and so fears too - can be controlled. Some can't.

You can fear losing someone dear, fear failing a test or losing your job, fear stupidity or power, or you can have a phobia for creepy crawling creatures. Fears might be there when you encounter certain confrontations or when you enter a plane.

With our activity on the internet and the power of various media, more negativity than ever is being spread. Sometimes creating a lot of unneccessary fears. Today, terrorism, racism, hate, attacks and war are getting much closer than we want and than we are used to, by means of for example the large amounts of refugees, confrontations with extremism. But also in mind comes the increasing extreme weather. Just to name a few. 

In the end we should keep in mind that - especially in current times - fears should never get the upper hand of our regular lives! And that is not always that easy.

Airplay
The first excerpts from the new album can already be heard during upcoming radio shows:

- January 10th: House of Prog, REMY-special and interview (recorded in September, last year) by Iris Hidding:
https://www.facebook.com/events/981384411920205/

- January 16th: The Hawke Chill Out Sessions @ Harborough FM, live interview by Terry Hawke:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1641507272770596/

More details about the album, artwork, release, etc. will follow within the coming months.
There has not been set a release date yet.