Interviews: continued

Your music is this full of tranquility, of peace.
Even in your rhythmic tracks, your music is for the spirit and not for the body.

My criteria to decide if a track is worth putting on an album is that it has to evoke images in your mind, atmospheres, thoughts of whatever, but always of a positive or peaceful kind.
So my music is definitely composed for the mind!
I'm getting mail from fans who are convinced that I must be deeply religious but I rather want to reflect that "peace of mind" thing in my music.
I often find myself in "high-stress" situations when producing an artist so my personal music is my antidote to that.

When do you decide that a track is finished?
Do you listen to your own music?

Writing a track has 3 stages for me.

First there's the composition itself, then there's the arrangement and then there's the recording and mixing.
If I'm happy with the composition (I often compose very basicly on my acoustic piano) than I start arranging the track, this is adding synths, percussion etc. (mostly in Cubase VST).
In this stage very often a composition is trashed, this means that I'm not happy with the way it sounds or feels and I stop working on it.
If the arrangement pleases me I start recording the instruments and start mixing.

This whole process can take from 2 days up to max 8 days.
While working on a new album I constantly listen to the different tracks I've already finished. I guess I do this to be able to make a homogeneous album.
Once the complete album is finished I only listen to it once in awhile.

What other music do you listen to?

There is so much different music I'm listening to, that this is hard to answer.
I think the best answer is "Music was my first love and it'll be my last."

I believe that lately and little by little in the countries of central Europe a new style of electronic music is arising, more melodic, more human.... John Kerr , Eric Snelders, you...
Could you be creating a new "school" without realizing it?

I never thought about it in this way, but hey; let's hope so!
But if this is the case it's realy better that we don't realize this now.
If there's going to be a new melodic "school" there's still plenty of room in it for talented artists.
As opposed to "Berlin School" music, I think it's hard to get some decent melodic electronic music.

Do you compose the exact number of tracks that will be put on your CD's or instead, do you compose more tracks so that you can make a selection later on?

Up till now I've always composed one ore two tracks more than I wanted to put on each album. After all the tracks are finished I usualy check with my wife and some friends wich track we should leave of.

Do you like to play live?

I've done about 150 concerts with 1000 ohm, and in the end I was realy sick of it, the stress before the concert, the travelling, the bad food, the bad PA systems, etc... I didn't want to do it anymore.

Last year I agreed to perform at E-live 2001 and had my own band together but unfortunately the festival was cancelled.
For the moment I'm fully concentrated on my new album so I have no further live perfomances in mind .

If I go live it has to be very well prepared and this means lots of time and money.

Projects?

I'm always working on different projects together, for this year there's my new album, there's the music for a theater play and maybe another movie-soundtrack and for the moment I'm producing a Dutch rockband.

What has Frank Van Bogaert contributed to the electronic music?

Maybe the re-entry of melodies and songstructure in electronic music?
You tell me.
I also hope that while listening to my music, more people get interested in electronic music again.

Thank you Frank, this is all. Do you want to add something more?

No, not really, thanks for the nice interview.