Last week my CD 'Stranger' was released on the Creative Sources Recordings label. It consists of the electronic composition Stranger and an instrumental version of the radioplay No Man’s Land.

The CD is for sale at Creative Sources and Fridgesound.

Track listing:

1 Stranger

No Man's Land soundtrack
2 Boise City, No Man's Land
3 A hard place to love
4 The first black duster
5 The skies that brought no rain, only dirt
6 Killing animals
7 Ruth Nell
8 Black sunday
9 Hope

10 Stranger (ambient)

No Man's Land deals with the Dust Bowl period in the USA, particularly with the people who lived and stayed in the Oklahoma Panhandle. The film portrays the story of Hazel Lucas, who migrated to Boise City in Cimarron County as a child and lived through the worst hard times during this ecological and economical disaster. The story is adapted from the book 'The worst hard time' by Timothy Egan. Most of the sounds on the soundtrack are produced in the CEM studio at WORM Rotterdam with the ARP 2500 and Korg MS-20 synthesizers and a Synton stereo EQ.

Stranger is inspired by Albert Camus' L’Étranger, Philip K. Dick's Do androids dream of electric sheep, the film Bladerunner and as always by L.E.J. Brouwer. Utilizing a formalized process, the sounds were taken from one single source, processed at EMS Stockholm and put together at STEIM Amsterdam and Culture Lab Newcastle.

My partner is about to give birth. (So poetical in English, 'giving birth', while the Dutch word, 'bevallen', sounds like 'to fall'). Due date: May 27. It feels like being in limbo, floating in space. Waiting on the unevitable but also the unimaginable. No urge to be creative, to think of the next composition or work on my live set, just reading, listening to music, waiting, being. I guess waiting until the ultimate creation exchanges the inside for the outside. Waiting until life changes, into something I have absolutely no conception of. It feels light, feels like I'm at ease.

Reading 'A wild sheep chase' by Murakami again, now in English (which feels like its original language, which it is not of course). Noticing different things from last time (which must have been more than 5 years ago): the girl with the beautiful ears is the reincarnation of the girl the story starts with. And: the main character tells the story and tries to make you believe it's about other people (the deceased girl, the girl with the beautiful ears, The Rat) but it is actually about himself. Might it be one big metafor? About his incapability to make decisions, to have an opinion about anything? Reminds me of the main character in Camus' L'Étranger.