The year 1994: I am 16 years old and want to become a famous dark electro artist. I start my first project: Mildreda. My brother who is two years older than me wants to become a writer and a poet. He’s actually doing a very good job, so I ask him to translate some of his poems for me to use as ‘lyrics’ for my songs.
We’re still 1994: After a disastrous first demotape I make my first ‘real’ cool sequence. At that time I didn’t have my own keyboard yet, so I use the Yamaha PSR 400 that belongs to my friend. Not knowing anything about programming I still play everything in ‘real time’ straight into the sequencer and (imagine this) I haven’t discovered the quantise function yet. So yes: hi hats, beats, snares and bass line live a life of their own. But still: I feel this is the beginning of a great adventure. My brother comes up with very cool lyrics, and that’s how the first version of “The Parting” was born. It’s pretty much the blueprint of all other songs I will compose later on.
1996: I make a new version featured on my first professional-like demotape ‘De Laffe Denker’. Johan Van Roy tells me he likes it and I am the proudest kid on the planet.
1999: Heyaeb releases a cover version of “The Parting” on their debut maxi ‘Aperi ventes’.
Somewhere at the end of the previous century: The friend who lent me his keyboard back in the days is also still working on lots of music and projects worth writing a book about it. Under his new Foochow-flag, his final and most successful project, he also makes a cover version of “The Parting” but it remains unreleased on a minidisc somewhere in his attic now.
Summer 2009: Mildreda is dead. Heyaeb is dead. But the melody of “The parting” is still haunting my head. There is something mythical about the track: I still think the lyrics are absolutely übercool and all my friends who were there at the beginning can sing along with the melody even today.
So I guess I simply have no choice but to revisit the song again and make a most definitive and ultimate version of the track. Stay with us as I would like to share the making of the track with you on these pages by dropping videos and demos now and then.
