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Nicolas Makelberge – Confessions

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“Confessions” is the sixth album by Swedish born composer and multi-instrumentalist Nicolas Makelberge. He is, accroding to Fader Magazine, “probably the planet’s most underrated producer“.

Nicolas grew up in Sweden to a Belgian father and Finnish mother. He went to college in Providence, RI, and graduated with a PhD in Computer Music from a Catholic University in Porto, Portugal. He currently lives in Prague, Czech Republic. Music that inspires him includes Vangelis, Mike Oldfield. Enya, Judee Sill and Andreas Wollenweider – among others.

About music creation Nicolas says:

“Choosing instruments for a song is like casting actors for a movie. Many are typecasted, and rarely transcend genres well. People associate certain actors, or musical instruments with certain genres, and like it that way.

There’s even instruments that no composer or movie director wants to be associated with. I find for instance that ‘slap-bass’ to be very hard to cast in my songs. Probably like Burt Reynolds was in the 90s before he did Boogie Nights. Some actors, as well as sounds had their heyday in certain era and didn’t fare so well as time changed. Some got associated with rally third rate art, and have a hard time ever recovering from their poor choices or incompetent use by directors / composers.”

“The sign of a great composer however (as well as movie director) is that he can revive the career of an disgraced instrument. An instrument that in the eyes of mainstream has ‘for a good reason’ fallen by the wayside. I’m thinking Tarantino casting John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. González Iñárritu casting Michael Keaton in Birdman. There are probably numerous other examples where an director has casted an ‘hasbeen’.”

“The same goes for music. If the script is good enough, it’s great even when played through (what many consider) ‘disgraced’ instruments such as harp, saxophone and transverse flute. After all, there’s nothing innately wrong with these instruments. They were just handled incompetently.

The moment I first saw John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, and said to myself ‘is that who I really think it is?’ is something I love in art. To me, it speaks greatness. Charcoal, pencil, pen, or oil on canvas doesn’t matter to the master.”

You may purchase “Confessions” on iTunes.