This piece was born in March 2017, while I was staying at a friend's house in the valley of Rodalquilar, Andalusia (Spain).

I was there for a month while my friend was on holidays. I took care of Max, his dog, and cleaned-up the garden.

This was one of the highlights of my life, enjoying the recharging solitude, not having to worry about a thing, getting sunlight every single day, and being so close to the beach in such a dreamy place.

That's when I created the Rodalquilar Sessions EP that came out in Fall that same year, as the first release on the Swiss label Diffract Records.

For that collaborative project I had Belgian artist Pierre Citron come over for a week, then when he left I did some other jams on my own, also using the guitar I had at hand, plus the usual setup with Ableton Live and my samples library.

'How So Gambia' was the second jam, and the most interesting one.

Following the groove of the main rhythmic loop, I layered many samples of my own, recorded with my Pocketrak Yamaha PR7.

Slices of life, as I like to call them.

The most prominent sample is the laugh of my younger niece. The recording was made when she was 5, going nut by herself repeating to me, like a protest : "Tombe sur ton ordinateur! Tombe sur ton ordinateur!" which means "Fall on your computer! Fall on your computer!"

She got hiccups in the mean time, and just kept laughing.

I also used recordings of a big dog eating a big bone, a mother in the train realising her child made too much pictures with her smartphone.

The very last things I added were bits of vocal messages from three different girls. I just love their voice and could be listening to them all day.

One of them is a friend I'd like to date till the end of my life and spend most of my time making her laugh, which isn't possible in the present and maybe will never be. Though I see future self listening back to this song and recollecting the relaxing memories of her and running an alternative life's scenario in which we did end up together, going through so many great adventures.

I never met the other girl. She's a good friend of a girl I know who was featuring in my previous music video as an actor. I reached out to ask questions about escape games, as she works in that field. That was an excuse to talk to her cause I think she's cute, even though I was interested about escape games and had real questions to ask. At that time she just left for months of travel in South America and I moved from Geneva then, so I didn't follow up with the conversation.

I finished a first version in the Summer of 2017 but wasn't satisfied. There was something missing to make it a proper tune. I just let it rest for sometime, and eventually resolved it by the end of 2019.

*

There's a story about the title as well. I was waiting for my train at the station of Agrigento in Sicily, during the Summer of 2016. There was this African youth waiting as well, and we started to chat, I showed him a music video I've just made and I asked him to write something in my notebook. Just anything.

So he wrote HOW SO GAMBIA, which to me doesn't mean anything.

I think it sounds great though.

I guess he's from Gambia and he was thinking about his homeland.

→ costals.net/how-so-gambia