I walk outside my room to check with the other guys. The cars are gone,
and everything looks deserted. Yesterday feels like a month away and
everything feels like a dream. Maybe they just brought me here, dropped me
off in the jungle and flew back home. Finally getting rid of this
irritating half German.

I decide to start working since I woke up with a melody in my head. I
start humming the choir I was hearing, record it and start building chords
around my basic idea with the Juno. So happy we brought that synth. A
first idea is born.

I don’t know what exactly is wrong with me, but I’m having such a good
flow that I just keep on going. Hours are passing fast and the idea
dropping keeps me going. These amazing moments rarely happen, but when
they happen, you’ve got to go on. It happens when a bit of pressure
combines with a lot of fun and confidence. It’s about being less focused
on small production details, getting rid of pre-programmed style ideas and
just finish things. This is all about having trust in your intuition, your
first ideas and thoughts, working very intuitive.

But it’s so hard. In Berlin I can work whole weeks on one of my own
tracks. Songs are floating around my hard disk for ages before I finally
finish them. Most of them never will be finished. But when these intuitive
writing days happen, you feel invincible. You dance in your room and feel
you can conquer the whole world. It’s the best feeling in the world.

I experienced this feeling earlier on a couple of so-called ‘song camps’ I
did. You get invited and work six days in a row, every day a different
artist from a different label, everyday a different style, and everyday
you’ve got from 10:00 o’clock till 20:00 to finish something with quality.
When I write for other people, I can take distance way easier. When I
write my own album it’s harder, since it’s personal and you have certain
ideas and rules setup for yourself. Getting rid of these rules are the key
to a great record. Here in South America I feel this, AND I’m even writing
songs I could even use for my own album.

When I look at the time, it’s 16:00 in the afternoon. I finished around
three sketches and one ‘almost-done’ song. The guys had come home from
grocery shopping and Kai was taking his time to organize his set up and
setting up the drums for recording with Pimba. All the analog gear Kai
brought was so necessary to achieve the sound we wanted. I love the way he
works, very very precise. He knows exactly what he wants and has a great
knowledge of sound combined with great vision about production. Very
forward thinking. We are both very much into more progressive pop-music
and because he’s such an great producer we make a good team.

In the night we listen through the ideas I made and pick a few to start
with. Tomorrow me and Kai will work them out together. For now we even
start to record drums; they sound pretty well. It’s around 3:00 in the
morning when we stop working (five hours later at home),…. the jetlag is
killing me. I’m almost falling out of my chair so I need to sleep again.
Let us see what tomorrow brings…

I wake up full of sweat. I can’t really tell where I am. The warmth
feels so thick and wet that it’s almost hard to breathe. What time is
it? My computer tells me it’s 6:30 but somehow it feels later…
Unrecognizable bird noises are coming from outside and I open the
blinds in front of the window to see what’s going on. Colors overwhelm
me; I look straight into a wild green jungle. Slowly it all comes
back.

How did I end up here? I met Kai Hugo from Palmbomen yesterday evening
in his home in Amsterdam. After catching up we shared our visions with
each other. Although we barely work with other people for our own
music, and we pretty much know what we want, we both had the feeling
our visions collide really well, and it’s going to be an interesting
time. We were psyched about this record. We shared obscure music till
deep in the night and collected all Kai’s analogue gear we needed for
the ‘studio’. After a powernap of two hours we drove to the airport
with way too much crap, hoping we would get through the check-in…

The last three weeks I’ve been traveling through Europe, writing for
different artists but also trying to find the right team to work with
for my own album. I barely slept and it feels like ages ago I took a
good nap. It looks like the years working in my room started to pay
off when things started to move for me in Berlin around a year ago. A
lot happened since. Finding a good management had been really helpful
and it feels like I’ve been transforming to a new life. A life I
worked for, a life I wanted to have so much.

It’s afternoon when The IACW crew arrives at the airport of
Paramaribo, Surinam. The warmth and humidity hits me hard when I step
out of the plane. The 10-hour flight was long, but very do-able. There
are people from the Dutch embassy waiting with three cars that we can
drive to the recording location. At this point we are all a bit trippy
from the flight and sitting in the car looking outside feels unreal.
Me and Kai are both convincing each other from the beauty of this
country, soaking up the explosion of colors, the green jungle, the
tall trees with big fruits, the colorful people.
We arrive at a riverside (at the Surinam-river who leads you into the
jungle) surrounded by forest. The house we stay in is pretty big and
even has an Internet connection. There’s no time to relax. A big truck
full of rented studio gear is waiting to be unloaded. We load off the
truck, and start making the setups. Damn, it feels like 4 in the
morning and although I really feel the tiredness, I want a fresh start
tomorrow so let’s get this over with. I set up my small setup in the
room where I sleep and help the other guys with carrying. The next ten
days I will be writing and producing in this room. It’s going to be
good.
But first, I need to sleep, sleep, sleep....

Thomas Azier