"Reminisce" song story
The song's origins and background. From waiting room melody to Berlin club hit.
I remember writing "Reminisce" shortly after the release of the first album in 2015. It is to this day one of the very few songs I did not write on guitar. In a waiting room there was an old upright piano that caught my attention. Since I needed to kill some time - and I was the only one in the room - I started improvising a bit. Out of the blue I played the three chords you can hear throughout the song.
Funnily enough I could not play the piano well at the time and had never played these chords before and had no idea what I was doing - the best songs are written subconsciously. Immediately I heard a higher melody to it, just three notes, constantly repeating together with the chord progression. Because it was hard to memorize the chords, I always played the song in a hesitant way and it had - for me at that time - a rather strange timing. To this day I still struggle to play these three chords in the right tempo. I always want to play it faster, however, playing it deliberately slower intensifies the repetitive melody.
Anyway, I kept playing the chords and melody in loop and recorded it with my phone. Actually, I had forgotten about the song, but a few months later I was scrolling through my phone and heard the recording again. At that time, I was listening to Mogwai's "Les Revenants" soundtrack a lot. It is one of my all-time favourite tv series. I can definitely recommend the original French version. The American remake on the other hand is - how do I say this in a polite way? - “not good”.
The closing track "Wizard Motor" intrigued me. The mysterious atmosphere and the distinctive sound of the synth heard in the intro continued to charm me. I had just bought a Juno JU-06 and tried to come up with the same sounds and added some crunchy chorus frequencies. I remembered the chord progression I had written a few months earlier and that's how the basis of "Reminisce" was born. I instantly recorded a 6-minute loop in one take (=focus!) and this is also the original take you can hear on the album version. Afterwards, I transformed the high repetitive piano melody into a string part. I first recorded it with cheap computer strings and afterwards my wonderful violinist Beatrijs De Klerck and cellist Tine Anthonis recorded it in the studio for real. Later, I added some additional arrangements: grand piano to accentuate the chords (performed by Wouter Dewit) and trumpet to make it sound ‘bigger’ (performed by Dirk Timmermans).
What I remember most about this song is that everything came about very organically. When the album was mixed at the Sigur Rós Sundlaugin Studio (cfr. mixing desk picture above) we hardly had to edit the recordings. The whole thing felt right. Therefore it was the best possible closing track of the second Illuminine album.
During the release shows of the second album, back in 2017, we only played the song live a few times. It is only recently that the song has taken on a 'second life' and a new meaning for me. First and foremost because of the fantastic rework by the Italian electronic dark wave band JoyCut. I had been a fan of their music for a while and when I was working out the new Illuminine remix EP they obviously were at the top of my list. I never imagined that the riddle I played in the waiting room on a false-sounding piano would grow into an intense dark electronic track played in underground Berlin nightclubs.
This wonderful rework put the song back on my radar. Therefore I really wanted to play it again during the album #4 release shows. I wanted to stay as close to the song's origins as possible. The song starts very quietly, on the same little Juno synth I recorded it with and then gradually grows with the piano and string layers. Unlike the album version, you will hear a new piano loop melody. It is, on the one hand, a reference to John Murphy's song "In The House - In A Heartbeat" from the 28 Days Later soundtrack which has a similar Les Revenants vibe and, on the other, a way to have some kind of rhythm or tempo indication live on stage. You can watch and listen to this version, recorded in November 2023 (it’s the premiere of the video btw!):