TDW

TDW was formed in 2003 by the then 16-year-old Tom de Wit. The basic idea behind it was that it was meant to be a project in which he could put all of the musical idea's and styles he could not use in the bands he played in. The main musical influences for TDW's music are Symphony X, Dream Theater, Pain of Salvation, Tool, Toto, Frank Zappa, Genesis, Pink Floyd & X-Japan.

I got in touch with Tom and he kindly answered my questions.

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Over to your albums and Eps. Your debut album First Draft was released in 2004. Please tell us more about this album.

First Draft was my first venture into writing a full album myself. I had written many ideas, songs and album concepts beforehand (and most of those were complete and utter crap. Really they were!) But with First Draft I finally started to see what a song needed to become a complete whole. It was after making a lot of basic mistakes that I was able to write a set of songs that actually featured a logical song structure and melodies that were also listenable by other people beside myself, haha!

I also took up the duty of singing and writing lyrics more seriously when creating this record. It was my first real foray into writing about personal stuff that bothered me. Personal things that ended up on the record, where things such as: the death of multiple loved ones around me and the ending of my first relationship.

Writing the music for this record took me two weeks and recording the guitars and vocals took me about two weeks as well. There´s lots of things on this record that I consider to be done wrong or not done properly. However, I do think that if you consider that I was 16 years old, had no musical experience professionally and had never recorded anything decent at all before that, the result is fairly decent. But if I look at it with my current experiences and development I wouldn’t dare to release it worldwide, but that’s development isn’t it?

However after The Haunts (in 2008) I decided to re-record the songs from First Draft in a new shape with better production just for the sake of giving these songs and ideas the chance they deserved. It was during the recording process of Scrapbook (2010) that I finished recording these songs in the new shape. The re-recorded version will be called First Re-Draft and it will be released this year through the new member’s only section of the TDW website. (www.tdwmusic.com)

Wow, you guys really did your research there, haha! Promotorium was an inbetween thing I released in 2005 while working on the Reflection album. (which later became The Haunts.) I wanted to release a disc with a couple of songs from First Draft and some new stuff that would end up on Reflection. I guess you could compare it to a sampler in a certain sense, on which you could find all sorts of TDW tracks. I also used this opportunity to put some little twists and turns on there. The extended version of “Mourning After featuring Mosquitos” in the middle is a good example of this. It also featured a view tracks that never ended up anywhere else. The instrumental track behold a wasteland never was released on any other disc for example.

I think Promotorium had been released to about 20 people in total so those who actually have a copy of this, have a valuable piece of TDW history, haha! I am not sure if there ever will be a Promotorium II or not, but I don´t think I should rule out the possibility. It could perhaps be a good idea to release a disc like that in the future when more TDW albums have been released. There are no direct plans now however, so I guess only time will tell.

Brother was a song I released in the autumn of 2006 (just after finishing Up Close and Personal) which did not fit on any album and was too important to me to not release. The song dealt with a feeling of loss after having said goodbye to a person that was very dear to me. The situation especially hit me because racial and anti-socialist matters where a considerable part of this process. Those two subjects are very important to me.

I have strong political views myself in the socialist sense, but I don’t want to use my songs for that too much. I tend to put little hints of messages here and there but mostly try to make it a global thing. I don’t want to preach to anyone, but this was a message that I wanted to deliver. I still consider it to be one of my most cherished songs in terms of music and lyrics. I think that anyone who can identify with sending someone away unjustified can recognize the emotions portrayed in this song.

Up close and personal was somewhat of an experimental affair. I was working on the official follow-up to First Draft (Then named Reflection) and in the process of writing and recording that album I felt somewhat limited. I had about an hour’s worth of music for Reflection that all fell in the same proggy power metal category. But I also had a lot of music in my head that was more free-form and psychedelic. I felt that it would be a good idea to take a break from the Reflection process to let that weird stuff come out.

So I took the break from the Reflection project and I basically just started with an empty canvas and in two weeks time (Just as with First Draft) I had this full album worth of experimental and strange music. At that moment I started to see the added value of having a decent website as a musical act and I figured that this record was so weird and left-field, that it might be a good idea to offer it for free. This would not just give me a way to release it in a low-cost way but it also gave an extra leash of life to my new website.

So I set out to record the record and had help from a few old guests and new ones and the record took the shape that it has today. I think production-wise this record is much better than First Draft was. I also experimented with new recording techniques and effects and such. However when I listen to it right now I do feel that it was a good learning experience but the full potential of these songs still needs to be shown, just as was the case with First Draft. My plans are to re-record these songs at a certain point as well, but I am not sure when this will happen.

Your third album The Haunts was released in 2008. Please tell us more about this album.

It was in January of 2007 after releasing both Up close and Personal and Brother in 2006 that I had to get back to the Reflection recording process. I was basically working on that record for 3 years straight at this point and had multiple setbacks. Believe it or not, we actually recorded drums, guitars and vocals for the album and none of it was good enough to be used because of technical difficulties and all sorts of mistakes happening. At that point in time I really believed that Murphy loved me or something because his law always was around the corner somewhere.

But the worst thing happened in 2007. I stopped liking the material I wrote myself… and let’s face it, I wrote that stuff 3 years before that. (The first Reflection songs where written after finishing First Draft) It’s not a stretch of the mind to see that I would perhaps grow tired of it at a certain point. But I was confused now, because I did not know what I was supposed to do…

However in March of 2007 all of a sudden it struck me what I was supposed to do. What if I just took all the good parts from the Reflection process and write new material along with it? Wouldn’t that make a decent album? Yes it would! So basically I locked myself away in my studio for a good 3 weeks (once again, short writing periods seemed to be my thing back then) and I came out with a good 50 minutes worth of music that would become The Haunts.

The Haunts was also my first concept record and that was something that evolved instinctively. I don’t want to go into detail too much, but it may be said that the things the main character “Juan Jacobson” goes through are very close to me. I have been through most of it literally. I myself am a highly sensitive person just like Juan, but in my case I have had the guidance and support to face the hardships in life back then. Juan however has no support and the album ends with his inevitable breakdown. In that sense this record and its concept are a sublimation of my own experiences and therefore a form of therapy.

I recorded The Haunts with a core band of musicians that I worked with back then and just as on the records before that I wrote and programmed the drum parts myself. Mr Andersohn was a joke name I wrote down in the booklet for the sake of making it look like the album was drummed by a person for real. Some people actually believed it, which I consider to be a compliment but also really funny, haha!

I think that The Haunts was my first REAL record in terms of production and international release standards. Sure, it cannot compete with records by bands like Dream Theater for example, but I do think that it is quite an achievement considering the amount of equipment and production experience I had back then. The fact that it was received very well by the press also strengthened my self confidence somewhat. I was terrified to hear what people would think of this record (What if they would really hate it!?) but the reactions were very positive. The Haunts was the record that really started my musical adventure worldwide I think.

Your fourth and most recent album Scrapbook was released earlier this year. Please tell us more about this album.