DE HEMELBESTORMER (EP, 2022)

Back in 2015 I wrote an EP that would never see the light of day. At the time, I was working on the publication of my first EP Als je slaapt and went through all kinds of emotions on the road up to releasing it. For years I had been dealing with perfectionism and this time, again, it got the better of me. At a certain point the stress and tension just became too much and I quit the project.

Ironically the EP I was writing at the time was all about perfectionism and striving to be the best. The title De Hemelbestormer can roughly be translated as “one who reaches for the heavens”. The Hemelbestormer EP had to become my best work yet pushing me in new artistic directions musically. And so I worked tirelessly on a EP of seven songs with returning musical motives and symbolism which could be played one after the other. The inspiration for this work were the symphonies of classical composers. In the end it all just was way too much for me at the time. I ended up not just quitting this project, but also the other EP never got published. Perfectionism and fear of failure got the better of me.

Through the years I used to listen to the rough recordings that I had of these songs which I had recorded on my mobile phone. In one you could hear an air alarm, on another the recording was so soft you could barely hear it. Over time I started to see the beauty in the pureness of it all: a project about perfectionism, never finished.

That’s why I decided to publish the EP years later accompanied with an artwork by my great friend and artist Hans Schuttenbeld. This time, not with the intention to reach for the stars, but to finally, after all those years, come back home.