"Sometimes you find what you are not looking for and that is especially true for the music on this album. The music on After Silence crossed my path, by meeting people or visiting places, events taking place or just materializing in my mind, but the one unifying factor for all 11 compositions is that they appeared after a moment of silence.
Silence is the most important part of my music making.
Silence is there, foregoing every first note I play.
Silence being the place for inspiration.
Silence which lets me start each piece of music as a child hearing it for the first time.
Silence keeping me from automatically following the beaten path."...... Andre Heuvelman
Inspired by the famous essay collection by Aldous Huxley: Music at night, Andre Heuvelman collected and arranged 11 beautiful pieces of music that convey the ''sound'' of After Silence.....
Andre Heuvelman is one of the worlds leading trumpet players. On this recording he plays together with The Live! Orchestra. An orchestra consisting of some of the finest musicians available in Europe.
After Silence was recorded with the musicians playing together in the same room, without headphones.The reason being that in our opinion that creates a number of musical and technical benefits....... The musicians interact much more as they would do in a concert situation...and as they are not ''separated'' by headphones the musicians are forced to create a musical balance...the need for compression to control levels is no longer necessary...we can use a minimalist microphone setup and there by reduce phase problems...since everybody is in the same room, the boxed sound which is so common in many modern recordings is absent...the sound of the room helps ''glue'' the sound of the recording. That sounds like an easy solution but bear in mind that in order for this to work:e studio has to have a good sound.....the musicians have to be very good and well prepared as it is very difficult to repair mistakes because of the ''cross talk'' between the instruments....we have to be very precise when choosing and placingthe microphones...and the puzzle of placing the musicians at the right distance to the main stereo microphone pair and at the right distance to each other is very time consuming.
Recorded at Studio Eleven (Hilversum) on April 16, 2013.
This recording is made for and with lovers of high-end audio recordings.
This is a TRUE Studio Master file. It's a one to one copy of the master file (88.2kHz/24bit).
No conversion of any kind has taken place.
What you are getting is what we, the technicians and the musicians,has created in close collaboration.You are in other words hearing exactly what we are hearing here in the studio.
Used equipment:
Microphones:
Main system:
Schoeps MK5 AB
Spot mic's: Neumann KM84, Neumann TLM170, Neumann U47, Van Medevoort C1000
Micpre's: RME Micstacy (Analog > MADI)
Microphone cables: Grimm Audio TPR
Master clock: Grimm Audio CC1
Mixing headphones: Sennheiser HD800
Mixing speakers: Grimm Audio LS1
Recording and mixing - Frans de Rond
Assistant engineer - Peter Bjørnild
Recording producer - Niek Wijns
Photo cover - Milan Bjørnild
Thanks to Rhapsody Hilversum for giving us the possibility to audition the mix on different audiophile speakers (TAD, Magico) and for their advise and eternal patience.