This is a Covid Safe Ticket concert! What do you need?

Admiral Freebee – you know him from the classics Rags ’n Run or Oh Darkness, and from all the times he knocked your socks off live – is back; but not as we know him. On his seventh studio-album, The Gardener, he presents a brand new sound in which widely spread keyboard parts, deep bass, and exciting vocals dominate. The result of experiments with all sorts of electronica in a period when a nasty arm injury prevented him from playing guitar. With the assistance of producer Jo Francken and a double(!) band line-up, there came an album that moved to the shelf in the course of 2020 due to you-know-what. But, even in times of pandemic, Van Laere didn’t sit still and so now there is The Gardener. Partly consisting of those pre-corona sessions, and partly of songs recorded in the heat of the pandemic – in isolation at home, while Van Laere led a small army of Belgian guest musicians from a distance. Luuk Cox received the collected digital files and signed on to mix that new work. Yet the 15 tracks on The Gardener form an entirely natural whole, sheathed in warm synth sounds, interspersed with some typical Van Laere guitar solos and his equally characteristic philosophical musings. First single Coming Of The Light is super-fresh and slightly best-of-Robert Palmer-ish. In a just world, one of the first great corona pop classics. ‘I forgot how much light existed in the world,’ sings Van Laere – a naturally seeking person who, even when reduced to his own resources, knows how to master the art of the ‘relaxed yet tightly swinging’ like no other. Make the most of it!