Tunes, Tracks, Beats & Mixes

Description : Ambient soundscape mixed with parts of transmissions of several Apollo-missions. Originally made in 2010. I remixed it in May 2015, adding an ‘incoming’ radio message from earth, a quote from Plato by Nicole Eiting (University of Utah).

Description : The slowed down voice of Jimi Hendrix, lifted from a home recording improvisation for Voodoo Chile (Cherokee Mist-album). All guitars and musical layers added and mixed by DjoeGio.

Description : This is a track to help you fall asleep. In aeroplanes, trains, the metro. It's a trance-inducing vibe. Relax.

Description : An ambient/cinematic version of the instrumental track 'The Falling Man' released by Dutch rock band Bastardi Di Blues in 2011

This original music video was accepted into the 9/11 Memorial Virtual Museum'

In 2014 Bastardi Di Blues-bandmembers Johan van de Beek and René Vlems decided to do a slowed down version of this ballad in a more subdued, cinematic style. First demos were recorded in 2015. Final mix recorded in 2016 with a new percussion track played by Vlems. Music and video were mixed and combined in the weeks preceding the 15th anniversary of 9/11 in September 2016.

This is a non-commercial project.

This music video is a tribute to the people who jumped or fell from the WTC Towers on September 11, 2001.
The project was inspired by a picture, taken by press photographer Richard Drew (AP) on that fateful morning. This image was the subject of a famous essay that journalist Tom Junod wrote in 2003 about 'The Falling Man'.
This iconic image went around the world and....disappeared. Nobody wanted to see it anymore.
The falling man in the picture became, wrote Junod, ‘the Unknown Soldier in a war whose end we have not yet seen’.

You can see the video on YouTube.

Description : Short but sweet soulful ballad feat. Farisha from Looperman.

Description : Recorded on february 20th 2016 in one setting in remembrance of Denise Matthews a.k.a. Vanity (1959-2016). Thanks to Michiel555 from Looperman for his wonderful 'When it all ends'.

Description : In dreams, water is oftentimes symbolic of emotion. If you dream that you are underwater and have the ability to breathe, this often symbolizes a retreat back into the womb (Dream Symbols & Their Meanings). Some sounds and dialogue from old Hollywood-movies about submarines were used. Sonar: www.maritime.org. Flutesolo: Música Zen - Camino al Despertar.

Description : Track originally inspired by Madonna's 'Bittersweet'. I wanted to do something with the mysterious sound of the sitar and Far East ambient atmospheres. When I found Kayar Silkenwood reading the poem 'Love' by Pablo Neruda it all came together. The track, that had been lying around for months, was finished and mixed in the last two days of 2015.

Description : The a capella 'No more, my Lawd' was recorded by John Avery Lomax inside Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman in 1946/47. Parchman was an infamous prison plantation. Convicts were forced to work, and the labor conditions inside the prison were largely indistinguishable from slavery. In order to pace their work, the inmates would sing. Lomax: "I had to face that here were the people that everyone else regarded as the dregs of society, dangerous human beings, brutalized and from them came the music which I thought was the finest thing I’d ever hear coming out of my country." 'No More, My Lawd' was recorded while the artist (Jimpson) was chopping wood. I cut out the sound of the axe to beatmatch the song to the piano-motive. From there on, this track wrote itself.

Description : Slow intro with small samples of Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 8, RV 315, "L'estate" (Summer, from The Four Seasons/Le quattro stagioni, by Antonio Vivaldi) morphs into (part) of Feeling Good by Nina Simone whose wonderful voice is the bridge to the Ibiza-style house track.

Description : Track build on and inspired by Pathways of the Mind, vocals by Kara Square. Specifically recorded for the ‘Music for Healing’-project, a collaboration between ccMixter.org and the University of Utah, the Lassonde Entrepenur Institute and the Marriott Library – to facilitate the creation of a new collection of music that focuses on healing. Additional vocals: Mhyst (We all breathe) from Looperman. Sitar by Jaspreet Sing. Some parts of Lacrimosa written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart were sampled for this track.

Description : Two dreamy soundscapes, one downtempo, one uptempo, melted together. Inspired by 'Resurrection (at the river)', a guided meditation by Susan Joseph (SackJo22) on ccMixter. Some parts of her meditation were used in this track. Thanks to Morpheusd & Chris Neal from LooperMan.

Description : Nighttrain in a far away metropolis speeding towards an unknown destination, passing trough tunnels of neonlight. Cinematic track, partly inspired by Celine Ramoni's long exposure shots taken from the New Transit Yurikamome in Tokyo, Japan. Fragments of field recordings made by Xserra, DJGriffin and Volivieri (uploaded to freesound.org) were used for texture.

Description : ‘Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame’ is about resilience and hope. The track is based on (parts of) a saxophone-solo played by Sandro Marinoni in 2009 for the album Borderline (Stefano Carolo added electronic effects). Starting in january of 2014, I build a track around Marinoni’s solo. ‘Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame’ refers to the poetry-album by Charles Bukowski. The title was suggested by Dutch journalist Peter Pijls whose voice you can hear floating in and out the track. This music was inspired by an interview I did with Pijls (1965), a man who lost everything dear to him because of alcoholism and psychiatric disorders: wife, son and job. Smoking cost him both legs. He is on his way back now (check him out on FB and Twitter). Final mix was done during the dog days of july 2014 (MH17).

Description : 'Grinnin' In Your Face' is my second track featuring the voice of Son House (1902-1988). Just as 'John The Revelator' this re-mix was inspired by watching the rockumentary 'It Might Get Loud' with Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White. The pivotal moment comes when Jack White plays his favorite a capella track by Son House (www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTlSka5iqPY). This made a big impression on me. I wondered how House's incredible voice would sound when transposed to a housebeat. Thus unusual combo of two genres (blues/gospel and house) worked out fine, I think, in 'John The Revelator'. For the new track I sought a hard edge approach. Instead of the lyrical sax by STAX, I used electric guitars for solo and rythmic elements, going for the very rough sound Jack White demonstrates in the rockumentary by playing, slightly out of key, one-string slide-guitar. 'Grinnin' In Your Face' is part of a Son House Project I'm working on, paying hommage to the old blues in a new musical environment.

Description : The idea to do something with the powerful voice of Delta blues musician Son House (1902-1988) came after I watched the documentary ‘It Might Get Loud’. Jack White (The White Stripes) played a record called ‘People grinning in your face’ by Son House. An a cappella song with handclapping; ’one man against the world’. You can find this magnificent fragment of the documentary on YouTube. Please watch it. Be awed. After that I listened to a lot of a cappella by Son House and was overwhelmed by ‘John the Revelator’. Even if you are not religious (like me) or familiar with the Bible (I am), this traditional gospel blues in a call and response-style is everything the blues is about. I realised it was almost ‘sacrilegious’ to put a drumbeat under this vocal track, but it gave me goosebumps the first time I tried it. So I composed a dramatic housetrack together with STAX (Hans Clevers) on sax. I took almost a month or two to split the original voicetrack in enough pieces to re-align them with the basic beat without losing the original feel. Where possible, I eliminated the handclapping because it was mostly out of sync. After I got the basetrack right, STAX played his solo. Afterward the grand piano, choirs and strings where added plus the noise-percussion. The project and mixing took approx. five months.
‘John The Revelator’ (this is from Wikipedia) has been called ‘one of the most powerful songs in all of pre-war acoustic music ... [which] has been hugely influential to blues performers’. The song's title refers to the Apostle John as the author of the Book of Revelation. A portion of that book focuses on the opening of seven seals and the resulting apocalyptic events. In its various versions, the song quotes several passages from the Bible in the tradition of American spirituals. Son House recorded several a cappella versions of this song in the 1960s. His lyrics for a 1965 recording explicitly reference three theologically important events: the Fall Of Man, The Passion of the Christ and Resurrection. This is the version used here.

Description : Melancholic ambient about the passing of time. It was inspired by this fragment from Roger Ebert's book 'Two Weeks in the Midday Sun'. Ebert is interviewing Tony Curtis about this thing called life and Curtis says this to him: ''Let me tell you a story, sort of a parable. One day in 1948 I went to Hollywood. My name was Bernie Schwartz. I signed a contract at Universal, and I bought a house in the hills. It had a swimming pool. Unheated, but it had water in it. One night I came home late, I jumped in the pool, I swam a few laps, I got out, I dried myself off, I put on my clothes, and I walked directly into this room and sat down and started to talk to you. Do you see what I'm saying?''

A short piece of a loop by Looperman-member was used in the second half of this track

Description : DjoeGio feat. STAX (Stax Groovesax, a.k.a. Hans Clevers) & the voice of KCentric. This is the first collaboration of DjoeGio and STAX. Stay tuned for more.

I’m listening to Every Corner Of The World
(Tweet by Amit Malhotra, creator of ccMixter)

Description : DjoeGio featuring Stephany Kay (Seriously Joking? Mix)

Description : 'In Paris With You' is a poem by James Fenton about breaking up. I found this audio reading of that poem a few years ago on the net (gone since, would like to give credits). I took out the parts of the rendition that fitted the mood of this track. The sensual singing is by Janis71 (merci!), courtesy of LooperMan. I went for an 'early Enigma'-sound combined with a lazy jazz-trumpet and rich ambient violins, giving it the big city-feel I love so much in soundtracks like Last Tango, Taxidriver and work by Lalo Schifrin (the melancholic parts of Rollercoaster). This is also a hommage, certainly, to Serge Gainsbourg.

Description : I wanted to do something in a LL Cool J/Puff Daddy/Faith Evans-style. Sentimental/romantic but from a female perspective. Luckily I found Patricia and Janis and it all fell into place, I used a Ibiza-style housestagger as a basis for this hommage to all the supercommercial hiphop-remakes of the eighties that made a lot of rappers Mercedes Benz-owners.

Description : Nu-Jazz groove featuring LisMarie from LooperMan and her autotuned solo 'Chase'. I put her solo on a chilled plate, adding lots of floating percussion and strings inspired by Claus Ogerman (who did the Bossa Nova album of Frank Sinatra) hoping to create a melancholic atmosphere while still jiving. I especially like this because her singing is like a jazz instrument. Sometimes on, sometimes slightly after of before the beat. I did not try to sync, because I like it better this way. It gives the song a 'live' feeling.

Description : Second track - after 'Costello' - in my 'The Paris Tapes'-project. Nu Jazz/Chillout. This track features a rap by Kcentric on ccMixter. Kcentrix is an electronic music composer and lyricist who carves out a unique niche by fusing Hip Hop, Jazz, Spoken Word, Breakbeat, and Electronic styles. I incorporated (parts) of his rap 'Dream Of You' in this laid back, short groove, highlighted by Miles Davis-inspired muted trumpet-sounds. This, again, is an attempt to create a 'big city vibe'. It's part of a project wich I hope to finish this year, featuring (jazz)artists from all over the world in unusual musical settings, created by me. PS: the beautiful face in the picture is of former adult performer Sasha Grey. The pic is from the the 2009 movie 'The Girlfriend Experience' by Steven Soderbergh, a film that made a big impression on me. It's a drama set in the days leading up to the 2008 Presidential election, and centered on a high-end Manhattan call girl meeting the challenges of her boyfriend, her clients, and her work. As far as 'big city' is concerned, this is the soundtrack-feel I'm looking for.

Description : 'Bosa Marina' is the second song I recorded with Phil B. - leadsinger of the famous Dutch bluesband King Mo - in 2012 (first was 'Rain'). This is probably my most intricate Jimi Hendrix-hommage until now. The lyrics where there first. I wrote them during a stay (2010) on Sardinia, the second largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. I had just re(read) 'Crosstown Traffic', the definite book on Jimi Hendrix by Charles Shaar Murray. With me I had 'Hendrix, setting the record straight' by John McDermott & Eddie Kramer and 'Room Full of Mirrors' by Charles R. Cross. From these three books I could distill some of Jimi's interests (other than music). I learned that he was fond of science fiction, the idea of time travel, ancient civilisations, native Americans (his grandmother was fullblood Cherokee), reincarnation and voodoo. I tried to combine these elements in lyrics I wrote in a place called Bosa Marina on Sardinia, actually feeling the past and the future melting together under a blistering sun on the beach. The music came a year later when I stumbled on the very beautiful loop 'piano pad combo' by Looperman-member ShortBusMusic. This was the exact, laid back, jazzy mood I was looking for. The loop was the fundament I build the track on. After Phil B. recorded the lyrics, I filled in the structure with sounds 'answering' the lyrics or announcing them, hoping to give it a really space-out feeling. I'm very grateful to Phil who did an excellent job on this. All in all 'Bosa Marina' took two years to finish.

Description : This track is heavily inspired by the the French noir movie Le Samourai (1967, Jean-Pierre Melville) starring Alain Delon as a lone wolf gun for hire in Paris. I wanted a melancholic, moody, big city-ambience, referring tot the solitude of the main character in the film. I could not get the track right untill I found the saxophone-solo's by Italian jazzplayer Sandro Marinoni who gave me permission to embed his fenomenal melodies in a rythmic, multi-layered structure. I am very grateful to Sandro and I expect to collaborate more often with him in 2013. The voice you hear in the beginning of the track is Alain Delon, citing (in an interview for French televison at the time of the premiere) the Book of Bushido, the code of honor for the Samourai. The English translation is: There is no greater solitude than that of the samourai unless it is that of the tiger in the jungle... Perhaps.