Biography

1966-1989 : fascinated by the possibilities of the synthesizer

Akikaze, Japanese for autumn wind, is the electronic exploration of Pepijn Courant. Pepijn Courant was born in Amsterdam on 30 January 1966.
In 1977 he took piano lessons. He mainly studied classical music by composers such as Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, but also modern music such as by Béla Bartók. This seven year training was to have a big influence on his way of composing.

In 1978 Pepijn Courant started to play drums accompanying his elder brother Arnoul, who performed hits from the sixties and seventies by, among others, The Kinks en The Beatles as a guitarist and singer, both at home and in several schoolbands.

In the meantime he composed numerous pieces, from classical to pop, but soon realized the piano could not offer him the sounds he needed for his music. Since 1982 Pepijn had been fascinated by the possibilities of the synthesizer, but it took him three years to save up the money to buy one. Till that time he collected all electronic music he could find. The library of Groningen, where he studied, had a huge collection of Tangerine dream, Gandalf, Neuronium, Vangelis etc., though.

Pepijn found out that this kind of music, which he had played himself on the piano for so long, was popular among a large number of people, because records sold well even though they lacked attention by the media.
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1989 : started his musical career

He decided to release his own music which he had been ashamed of before. He joined the association KLEM (Kontakt Liefhebbers Electronische Muziek), which committed itself to promoting amateur musicians. Pepijn sets himself apart from most other fellow electronic musicians in that he did not started his musical career as a listener, but as a musician. In 1989 Pepijn Courant owned enough equipment to release his first compact cassette, “Music from misty marshes”. The music was initially inspired by bird sounds from outside his apartment in Groningen.

As he had no sampler, he had to imitate all nature sounds with his synthesizers, which yielded, according to a Belgian reviewer, a surprising result among all the new age releases with their realistic nature sound samples. He sent the cassette to the BRT 2 radio show “Maneuvers in het donker”, presented by Flor Berkenbosch, who enthusiastically dedicated a large part of his show to this cassette.
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1990 : debut concert was a big success

In 1990 Pepijn Courant released his second compact cassette “Aquarius”. The music was inspired by the events that took place in the twentieth century, in particular in Eastern Europe, where communism had collapsed at the end of the eighties. The visionary poems by William Blake had a significant influence on this cassette, which showed an optimistic view on the world. This cassette was also well received on “Maneuvers in het donker”. Through this programme the music became known to the renowned musician Ron Boots, at the time co-organizer of the annual KLEM festival, in the last years of its existence the biggest electronic music festival in the world.

Two months before the festival one of the bands to perform split, so Ron Boots asked Pepijn to do a concert instead. Until then, Pepijn’s only concert experience had been as a drummer. Despite the fact he was about to finish his studies at university, he hesitated no single moment to accept and composed a new piece specially for the festival, appropriately titled “Leap in the dark”. For this piece he managed to lay hands on a Korg M-1, allowing him to take his music to a more professional level. Though expectations were low, the debut concert was a big success. Back

Picture 1: People waiting to buy Akikaze's music after his first solo concert./ Picture 02: Pepijn Courant's concert on the Alfa Centauri festival Huizen, March 1996.

1991 : more concerts followed

The first two cassettes as well as the third, “Leap in the dark”, were released on the Synteam label by Ron Boots and Bas Broekhuis. More concerts in Den Haag and Eindhoven followed. In 1991 a sampler CD, “Land, sea and sky”, was released by Synteam, intending to make a few unknown artists known to the public. Pepijn Courant delivered the piece “The master and the apprentice”, combining bombastic classical with frivolous rhythmic electronic music. In the same year he delivered for the sampler cassette “Synbiosis” on the Spheric music label of his German friend and talented fellow musician Lambert Ringlage the piece “A new beginning”, with Edward Wüstenhoff on guitar.
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1992-1993 : released his first CD

In March 1992 Pepijn was asked by Bas Broekhuis to release his first CD. Bas Broekhuis, co-founder of Synteam, had started his own label Audio Works. A disease almost fatal to Pepijn delayed the release of the first CD on the label, “In high places” - the title refers to Hoogoord, the name of the building in south-east Amsterdam were he then lived - until 9 January 1993 at Akikaze’s new year concert in Eindhoven. This CD, as all music by Akikaze, was recorded at home and was mainly inspired by mankind’s great achievements such as the conquest of the moon and the climb of the Mount Everest. The guitar parts were performed by guitarist Dirk Zeeman, a blues musician, who appeared on a CD for the first time. The cover photograph was taken by Bart Wich, after a design by Pepijn, breaking the tradition of drawing his own covers.
“In high places” sold well, certainly by today’s standards.
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1996-1998 : own label Criminal Records

In this period Pepijn worked on the prestigious project “Fantasmagora”, using many of his oldest compositions. The music had a classical, symphonic rather than cosmic touch. Musical inspirers were, among others, Pink Floyd and Mike Oldfield and the music was based on acoustic instrument samples with a leading part for Pepijn’s first instrument, the piano. Pepijn decided to release the CD himself on his own label Criminal Records. Thanks to his grandfather, who had also co-financed his piano training, Pepijn was able to finance the record and invest in new recording equipment. The CD cover was designed Pepijn Courant and painted by the painter Lex Heilker whose “sous-realistic” style perfectly matched Pepijn’s ideas. “Fantasmagora” was released October 1996.

Furthermore Pepijn sampled an enormous number of sounds and he made music for a video of the one month trip he had taken to Indonesia in 1995. The title piece with its Indonesian drive and the accompanying video shots were well received on the Alfa Centauri festival in Huizen. An other piece was partly released on a promo CD by the British magazine Sequences. In Huizen Pepijn also played the specially for the occasion composed “Out of the dark”, a musical sequel to “Leap in the dark”, returning to the Berlin School with cassical influences, as the die hard fans like it best.
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1999 : concept of spiritual balance

In the studio version of 'Out of the dark' the Voder (Voice Operated Demonstrator), an effect algorithm developed for the Ensoniq ASR-10 sampler by the American Bill Mauchly, simulating speech sounds in a simple and flexible way, is commercially used for the first time. The piece was released on the CDR “Conflicting emotions” by Quantum Records in 1999. This CD is again based on a concept, this time the concept of spiritual balance and voice sounds are being used predominantly.
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2000 : a new age concert

In 2000 Pepijn was asked to do a new age concert in the woody environment of Garderen for a group of stressed account managers of a pharmaceutical company, who could use some relaxing synthesizer sounds after a tough day’s training. He improvised a twenty minute piece on the background of stereotype nature sounds using one synthesizer, to the satisfaction of both employer and audience.
In the same year he recorded a few dance songs still waiting to be released, albeit not under the name of Akikaze.
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2001 : remastered his three cassette albums

In 2001 Pepijn digitally remastered his three cassette albums without altering the original versions too much, being able to do so as he still owned the original instruments at the time. The album “Leap in the Dark” was released on CDR by Quantum Records this year at the Alfa Centauri Festival, again on March the 16th, where he played a specially composed piece as well as parts from “Leap in the dark”, melodic and rhythmic music, influenced by the Berlin School and by classical and oriental music. Unfortunately, the concert was once interrupted by the piano sounds, produced by a computer music demonstrator, who played in the entrance hall. This location appeared to be a bad choice, because there was no stage. People were even able to touch the equipment, as Pepijn played and some of them showed more interest in the instruments than in the music.
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Close to the audience

2003 : return of acoustic percussion sounds

In December 2003 Courant was finally able to buy a digital audio workstation, that allowed him to combine multitrack audio and midi recording, digital mixing and mastering without the need of the ghastly personal computer. The machine not only speeded up the creative process, but also was responsible for the return of acoustic percussion sounds to the music of Akikaze.
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2004 : new instruments

In spring 2004 Quantum Records re-released “Aquarius” on CD. A bonus track, “Dimona blues”, Pepijn had composed the year before, was added. It featured some new instruments. The flute sounds were made with physical modelling. This technology uses computer models rather than digital oscillators. The sound resulting is most expressive and realistic. “Dimona blues” fitted in musically as well as thematically. It was dedicated to the victims, both humans and animals of Dimona, Israel's secret nuclear plant. The Jew who revealed the existence of Israel's nuclear activities to the world, was obducted in Italy by his own government, but remained mentally unbroken after twenty years in prison, after which he still was not free to go.

On 21 November Pepijn performed his song “Flame of hope” live on a single instrument in the Nicolas church in Utrecht, that celebrated its 800th anniversary. The acoustics of a church and the presence of a different audience than usual were a new and nice experience, not to be ruined by the parking fine, after he had performed his free gig.

In autumn 2004 Quantum Records released “To the sky and beyond the stars”, a tribute to the American electronic musician Michael Garrison, who had died in early spring at the age of 47. Garrison has inspired a lot of his contemporaries, including Pepijn Courant, whose Garrison influenced track “The Iceland error” from 1994 made it to the compilation. The title came from the one zero too many in the number of copies Michael Garrison had sold in Iceland according to the Dutch electronic music magazine KLEM.
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2005 : Akikaze completed a new album project

Finally Akikaze lived up to his oriental name. He recorded a Chinese piece “Qiu feng”, Chinese for Akikaze, and the Indonesian piece “Guna guna”, the first version of which had appeared on the Indonesia video in 1995. These two pieces are part of a bigger world music project. There will be more pieces from other musical cultures and the album will show yet another musical territory, but still recognisable as Akikaze’s.

Pepijn is busy recording both old and new pieces. Now he has completed a new album project. It contains, in contrast with the sampling based sounds on “Fantasmagora” some of the most melodic pieces ever made by him and focuses on analogue synthesizer sounds and sequences. The music marks the return of acoustic percussion to the music of Akikaze and explores the possibilities of arpeggiators. The music has been commented on by close friends and relatives. The last version has been presented to the record company and their first reaction was quite positive!
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2007: studio relocated

During autumn 2006 and winter 2007 Pepijn Courant relocated his studio to a smaller but more comfortable room. The studio now has enough space for his new instruments and for another digital mixer. Only the sitar is still in the old room. Under studio equipment you will find new equipment or items we forgot to include last time in red. The Yamaha CS-6x has cleverly been swapped for an EX-5 and VL-7 and the Roland AX-7 has been sold. The Minimoog, Korg Sigma and Mono/Poly have been repaired by Saint Eric. The latter synth has been provided with voltage controlled effects switching and a much faster envelopes facility. A new studio desk has been added to house the mixers and the 19 inch devices.

Guitar

Having used guitar samples for a long time and having seen artists like Madonna and Robbie Williams make arguably successful attempts to play the guitar, Pepijn decided to give it a try. As a child he had one or two times tried to play his elder brother’s guitar, but given up too early. Now these famous artists gave him the illusion he might be able to play the guitar as well. So his brothers gave him an acoustic guitar for his 40th birthday and half an hour practicing every day during three months gave him the basic skills. There’s a long way to go, but he still enjoys playing. He sticks to the acoustic guitar, as it contrasts nicely with the electronics. This year we might even hear the first recording!

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New album still unreleased

The new album still has the guitar samples though. Speaking of which, the album “The age of deception” is still unreleased. The record label, Quantum Records, may have gone bankrupt. We don’t know, because the owner has suddenly stopped giving any signs of life. We only know that his record store is still in business and that he owes a lot of money to his artists and distributors. Since a fine way to distribute Akikaze’s music seems to be lost, all CD’s will be sold through this website from now on, but any other marketing and distributing options are still open.             

Plans for new concerts

There are plans for organizing a small Berlin school festival together with Free System Projekt and maybe other musicians. When plans become reality, we’ll get back to you with details.

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2008: 'The age of deception' released

First two guitar pieces recorded

Pepijn’s two year guitar practice has paid off. In December 2007 he completed the electro-acoustic and acoustic guitar parts of  “Hymn”, the opening piece of his concert in Eindhoven in 1993. After that he continued recording “Silent running”, an even older rhythmic piece, inspired by Jean Michel Jarre and entirely made with analogue instruments. The recording process was sadly delayed by a faulty midi to cv converter and Solina Ensemble.

'The age of deception'

We are happy to announce that the last album “The age of deception” has been released by Lothar and Sabine Lubitz of Syngate Records Germany in cooperation with long time friend Lambert Ringlage of Spheric Music Germany. Please visit their website www.syngate.net to listen to additional sound clips and buy the album as a CDR or download.

This seventh album is, like all Akikaze albums, a concept album. The music of "The age of deception" tells us how negative experiences like death of your loved ones, misfortune, deception and disappointment can make you stronger and better in the end, to say in short: everything that doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. The music was recorded between 1994 and 2005. As previous albums, "The age of deception" shows a great diversity, but this album as a whole brings back acoustic percussion and as many analog synthesizers as possible. This time Akikaze experiments with analog electronic percussion and arpeggiators. Early Neuronium fans or other romantics will again appreciate the acoustic guitar sound based pieces. A must-have for listeners of diverse melodic and rhythmic instrumental music. The cover painting “The temptation of Saint Anthony”, made by Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, was selected by Pepijn Courant and the cover was designed by Lothar Lubitz. 

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NEWS

August 2009

2009: new album 'Music from the Mesozoic' finished

Three pieces re-recorded

Pepijn re-recorded “Autumn solitude” in late autumn 2008 and “Heart to heart” and “A new beginning” during his Christmas holiday, the latter pieces with the Motion TEA-625 electro-acoustic guitar borrowed from his elder brother Arnoul.   

Santoor

 The Indian santoor is a hammered dulcimer. It has 29 rows of three identically tuned strings. Tuning is a tedious job, but worthwhile. The British pound sterling exchange rate being historically good, Pepijn bought one from a London based vendor. It had been on Pepijn’s wish list for about twenty years. The Akai ASQ-10 and Roland MC-500 mark 2 were replaced with a Roland MC-80 with SCSI and internal hard disk. The  Korg Mono/Poly was sold and replaced with a Moog Little Phatty. The sitar was restored and provided with new strings by Arnoul.

Solina Ensemble chorus

After almost a year the Solina Ensemble was repaired by Saint Eric and even better, provided with a bypass switch and two lfo rate voltage control knobs and inputs. It came too late to be used on “Silent running”, where the Korg VC-10 ensemble was used, but in time for a few other pieces on the new album.

New album “Music from the Mesozoic” finished

Early July 2009 the new album “Music from the Mesozoic” was finished. It is a prequel to  debut ‘Music from misty marshes’, which was released in 1989. As 20 years ago, the music was inspired by nature and its sounds, but this time by over 65 million years old sounds! That’s why we call it a prequel.  So we hear dinosaurs, pteranodons, giant dragonflies as well as smaller reptiles and insects in different environments. Also, the cause of the dinosaurs’ sudden extinction is interpreted musically, which should finally solve this scientific puzzle. As “In high places”, this album features real guitar sounds, but this time played by Pepijn himself. Still the guitar plays a modest part compared to the lot of synthesizers and sequencers. Extracts will be put on this site and the album is expected to be released through Syngate in Germany in autumn 2009.

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