Deal

Late 2010 award winning Dutch film director Eddy Terstall asked me to do the film score for a thirty minute film based on a script he had written. The movie was about a boy, a girl and two thousand euro’s. Somewhere along the line the whole thing morphed into a full length movie. But he still had a limited budget’ ‘I already had plans to make a record that was slightly bigger than usual. I had landed some good jobs in the past years and had been putting cash aside for a new record. This seemed like a good moment to splash out’ ‘I blew Eddy’s budget in the first three days of the recording session. In the end I was in the studio for over 35 days recording, mixing and mastering. I started working on this music March 2011 and finished it in May 2012. I think it’s one of my best so far’ Finding a balance between the orchestra and the band was very interesting to say the least. With Joost Kroon on my old Westend drum kit, Willem on mellotron, Manuel Hugas on his Honer bass guitar, Carlo’s Hammond and Jesse’s incredible guitar collection I was looking to create and ode to classic European b-movies of the 60’s and the 70’s. But without making it sound like pastiche. And I also wanted it to sound like a jazz album. So there were no charts when we went in to the studio. Like some of my favorite recording sessions I had a bunch of ideas and we worked them out on the spot. After recording the quintet me and arranger Willem Friede sat down with the rough mixes and made the string charts for the orchestra. In February we flew to the Czech Republic and recorded with the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra in their beautiful studio in the centre of town. We then locked ourselves up in Studio 150 in Amsterdam with technician Joeri Saal to put things in to place sonically. There’s loads of material; songs from the movie, extended versions, versions with strings and without, background music from the movie even out takes from Prague and versions of the tunes with a different line up. These 13 tracks are enough for the album though. The Vinyl comes with 6 free downloads and the digital version you can purchase with or without bonus tracks. ARTWORK The special artwork for the release was designed by the Japanese artist Takao Fujioka. The two artists met recently during a performance in Malaysia and there originated the idea for the cooperation. Actually the artwork was already determined, but Benjamin was so impressed with the capabilities of Takao, that he still has everything overturned last minute. As a bonus with the CD & Vinyl is the cover of ' Deal ' on film poster format.