So I wanted to make this ongoing blues rhythm thingy around the classic blues key of E.
While looking for another hook to add here, I ended up going from a G to an F# chord, which can be heard in the song a few times. The lead guitar parts are some powerful licks that build up to create this “I'm standing on the edge” feeling.

That's how The Precipice came to be.

Before writing this song, I had a couple of weeks where I felt down and unmotivated to do anything.
Don't you ever have that feeling where you just want to escape from the world and everything?

It reminded me of the time when I was a left-out kid at school. After a hard day, I always went to my bedroom and pretended my stuffed animals were my friends, and that we had all sorts of adventures that seemed real to me.

It's a little sad, really, that even to this day I sometimes want to hide away from everything and wish I could go back to that no-worries imaginary world.

This uptempo blues song has two points of reference in my life.
“Midlane” is actually the English translation of the street name where I grew up.

“Midway,” which is also referenced in the song, reflects the way I was raised. Our family was the kind where we felt it was best not to stand out on either side, doing everything the “normal” way and not drawing attention to ourselves.

This song is about breaking free from those ways of living a regulated life.  At the end, there is an uplifting blues solo.

The first song on the album is written in an A key blues style.
The catchy guitar riff heard at the beginning and the end is how the song first came to life.

The playing in the song is a reference to how a lot of us people just “bust our buns,” meaning we live lives where we work hard day in and day out, often forgetting why we even do things the way we are compelled to.

It's somewhat fascinating to me how some people just work like robots without even knowing why.

Some time ago, before I had my car, I was traveling home from the city by public transport. It was around the same time when high schools were out. On that day, in a packed bus, I was sitting behind two girls who were chatting. I didn’t intend to listen to them, but they were so loud that it was impossible not to hear them.

I think they were barely 17, and their sense of reality was very different from mine. They were judging everything, convinced that their own standards were the best ones, and talking as if they had already made it and knew everything about life.

I was amazed that people who were only just starting their lives could already sound so arrogant. It made me think that some humans may never really learn.

That’s how the idea for this song came to be. The first part of the lyrics is a direct response, while the latter part is written from the perspective of a woman, referencing things she said.

This is what I consider to be the main song of the album. “Spoor Bijster” is a long instrumental lead guitar piece with a big build-up that reaches a huge climactic point. It’s also my best song in terms of technical choices and expression.

“Spoor Bijster” was written with the intention of telling the story of us humans—how we are born into this world, grow old, and eventually die without ever getting answers to certain questions. Throughout our lives, we struggle with problems that are part of ourselves, things we can never really escape, and the uncertainty that comes with them.

This also reflects my own life. The feeling really started for me in the last grade of elementary school, one of the hardest years for me as a child. At the end of that year, our class performed a school play called “Spoor Bijster,” which was a terrible experience for me. Being the lonely child in class, left out by everyone, acting a role that wasn’t really me—it left me with some permanent scars.

These suppressed emotions I could finally put into a song, expressing the feelings I carried with me while growing from that moment into adulthood.

( Spoor Bijster translates to 'to be lost' )

This is just me free soloing.

As a guitarist, it’s important for me to try to get some sort of emotion and spectacle out of it. The song shifts through different modes, not really having one clear progression. Instead, it’s more of a spur-of-the-moment expression. me putting heart and soul into a note that feels like it has to be there.

Maybe it’s some subconscious emotion or feeling that needed to come out.

Written about a relationship from a long time ago.

I met this girl online, and we stayed in contact for a long time. We talked and shared many things. But I never felt that I could be the same person in real life as I was behind my screen.

Because of that, I already knew that at some point it would all be over… but I persisted.

She was never really very straightforward with me; there were always many mysteries. We planned to meet several times, but it never actually happened because she kept delaying it. It became such a complicated situation that even to this day I still don’t really know what was real and what wasn’t.

A slow blues song with different instruments. It’s one of those “3 a.m.” kind of blues songs.

It’s also very personal. The lyrics reflect how I often feel out of place in many social gatherings. In the past, to my disappointment, I have let people down because of the way I act, while they don’t even know what’s going on inside me.

Because I never really talked about my struggles.