Frido Ter Beek - Urban Tales Of Loneliness And Despair (2022) [Hi-Res]

I’d been spending two months in the Netherlands when the quarantine started in March 2020. Back in Argentina I ended up in an apartment in Almagro, Buenos Aires, where I had to remain isolated for two weeks due to the new sanitary measures. In fact, these two weeks turned into several months, during which the only contact with the outside world was in a virtual way.

To keep myself entertained, I started to write bits of music every day. I worked my ideas out on my laptop and after some time I decided to develop these tiny songs I had composed by adding audio tracks that I could record myself.

I had my saxophones, a flute and a keyboard. I also used all kinds of kitchen utensils to play and record the percussion tracks.

For the instruments I don't play myself, I asked several musician friends in the Netherlands (bassist Jasper Somsen, trumpeter Bert Lochs, and guitarist Andre Orsel) to contribute remotely to my new compositions. Also my daughter Luna sang on some tunes.

This project slowly but surely turned into a set of songs which, in my opinion, could be initially suitable for a new album.

I asked Sebastian Valsecchi if he would like to play some guitar parts. Fortunately he liked my music and since he is a sound engineer as well, he suggested transferring everything I had recorded up to that point to his home studio, where he had access to better material than mine. This led the to re-recording of all the tracks that I'd already recorded.

The next step in this process was looking for a drummer to record some tracks (so i could send the drumsamples that I had used to the realm of eternal noise). I had already played with Tomas Babjaczuk sometimes before and his playing was exactly what I wanted to hear in my music! So we went to a 'real' studio, where Sebastian took care of the technical part and Tomas provided some beautiful and energetic drum tracks. We were already in March 2021. After that, a (long) period of selecting tracks, editing, mixing, recording, replacing, deleting, etc. began. Until the day when Sebastian and me thought “This is it!” (already in May 2022). So now the final step would be the mastering process. Sebastián had had good experiences with mastering engineer Daniel Ovie who did the job.

Each tune on 'Urban Tales of Loneliness and Despair' expresses in its own way the various emotions I experienced during such a long period of isolation. This album is completely different from my previous album, which consists of a number of spontaneous improvisations. Urban Tales is actually quite the opposite. Improvisations on 'Urban Tales' are short and encapsulated in a composed and arranged environment.

I am very happy with it and I hope you’ll enjoy it!