Overpoort Sketches 1994

I've just uploaded a collection of the earliest existing recordings of me and Inge, from 1994, before I'd discovered the saz and she the mandolin (and before we'd come up with the name "Ail Fionn"). We were still playing guitars at this point, improvising around simple themes. This was from the time we were living in the Overpoort cite in Ghent (the Overpoort is a notorious thoroughfare lined on either side with student bars and clubs, a place of banging techno, alcohol abuse and vomit, but we were tucked away behind a gate in a little enclave of tranquility).


The Overpoort cite (Britte visible in background) - photo by Inge
This is as rough sounding as anything in my archive (3rd or 4th generation copies of cassettes recorded on horrible little machines with the worst microphones in existence), and any attempts to enhance the sound digitally were bound to be limited in their success - but I've done my best. The playing, equivalently, is pretty wobbly throughout, but this stuff is very precious to me, as it brings back the magic of discovering improvisation and the making of music with Inge. Whether anyone else will get anything out of it is another matter.

Someone (Kris or Boris?) is playing bass on a couple of pieces, someone else (maybe Alan, probably Eva) a bit of percussion.

Some of the best bits were recorded in a nature reserve in nearby Merelbeke. A chorus of frogs ("kikkers" in Flemish) joined us, to great effect.

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