Artist description SPIRITUM!

Artist History Once upon a time in the town of Liverpool, 4 young music prodigy's formed a band .. No just joking, it all started in our school (European School II in Woluwe) actually. Carlos and Jasper where 2 years away from finishing high school (september 2000), when Robin joined their class. He had a band with Ward, and asked if Carlos and Jasper wanted to join them. Filled with excitement and high expectations, we started practicing together. Only several weeks as after getting together, we had a playlist of about 40 coversongs, and were asked to play our first gig at a halloween party of a friend. Reactions were postive over all, we made some money (eventhough we didn't ask any).. so Spiritum was happy! That schoolyear, somewhere around march 2001, we joined a competition between bands in Leuven, called 'Kunstebende'. It's a regional contest organised all over Belgium. As we performed in Leuven, we joined the contest for the region of Vlaams-Brabant. The winners of each region in Vlaanderen would end up in the semi-finals, and the winner of that would be given the chance to perform in Flanders Expo in Ghent. I guess we just had bad luck because Robin couldn't join us that very day, and since we didn't have any songs of our own, we covered the acoustic version of 'Hotel California' by The Eagles. Covering songs was against the rules, which we, as a naïve young band ofcourse didn't know. So we decided to play for fun anyway, and got some nice reactions from the audience, which is always nice to get. The next challenge was writing a song of our own. Carlos had written some lyrics after breaking up with his ex Nancy, which was more a poem than lyrics to a song. Some time after the Kunstbende-contest, he had written a series of chords, which on itself isn't such a big deal, but for a naïve young rockstar-wannabe it is. So he kept strumming those chords like a maniac for hours and days, and experimented with some variations which eventually lead to the acoustic guitar on 'That'll Do'. Then he remembered writing this poem-like text about his ex, and combined it with guitar... which sounded like poo! So what to do? Having played the guitarpart of the song so much, he had formed a melody in his head, and just wrote down the lyrics for 'That'll Do' matching the rhythm and sound of the melody in his head. Finishing that, all excited and orgasmic he went Jasper showing him the song. After fifteen minutes, Jasper had found a soothing riff to go with Carlos' acoustic guitar. So all spasmic and extatic they rushed into Robin's basement (that's the practiceroom by the way) to finish of 'That'll Do'. Soon after finishing their first song, Spiritum performed at 'Battle of the Bands 2001', at their school. Along with 'Sultans of Swing','Rockin' in the Free World','Paranoid', and other songs, Spiritum played 'That'll Do'. Reactions were extremely good, we made at least 3 girls cry with the song (including Carlos' ex Nancy =) ). Crowd happy, Spiritum happy. As it turned out, Spiritum won the 'Battle of the Bands 2001' together with a Finish girl called Maria, and got to play on the schooldisco the night of their victory. These two concerts (Battle of the Bands and Disco) were recorded and provided the first registered Spiritum songs. In the course of the next months, 2 new songs were made, 'Silent Hearts' by Carlos, and 'The Way' by Jasper, and arranged with the whole of Spiritum. This lead to the idea of recording a demo. So in the month of January 2002, Spiritum recorded their first cd (or rather demo) at Jelle's homestudio (see links), who was introduced to us by Jasper's father. We had exams at the time of the recording, so we wanted to do things quick. The result was a demo with 7 songs (the 3 Spiritum songs and 4 coversongs, see discography). We were pretty satisfied, but didn't really do much with the cd except for selling it to some relatives and friends. Some concerts were given in the meantime, but the most important ones are once again the Kunstbende competition and the KieselRocK concert. Once again, we had troubles with our band, because our bassplayer Ward had gone to the U.S.A for a year. So we needed a replacement fast, and hooked up with Thomas, a friend of Martijn (who's a friend of Spiritum and also designed the Spiritumlogo). Thomas played the bass and agreed on joining us for the Kunstbende performance. Since we've all been busy around that time, we didn't find the time to rehears with all members present (sometimes it was Carlos, Jasper and Robin; other times it was Thomas,Jasper and Robin etc..). So the Kunstbende performance was the first time that all of the bandmembers played together. The jury at the contest was Jan Hautekiet, ex-radiochief of Studio Brussel. We played 'Silent Hearts' and 'That'll Do', and apparently he enjoyed the songs, since he gave us second place out of 20 bands, which is quite an achievement we think. We're just too damn good if you ask me! We really needed a bassplayer at that time, and Thomas was just a temporairy replacer. So our so called "manager" Alexaner Hof dediced to join our band, bought a bass and amp, and is now a definite member of Spiritum. Jelle, the man who helped us record our first studio demo, offered us to play on a small festival in Meensel-Kiesegem called 'Kieselrock'. The concert itself was ok i suppose, it was one of our first concerts that's wasn't at school or at parties and contests. However, as at almost every Spiritum-concert (it's become some kind of tradition) something went wrong. We showed up with no drum, and no amps. It was all due to a misunderstanding between us and the organisers of the festival. Lucky enough, we managed to go home and get just back on time with our drum and amps to perform. During the concert some huge camera popped in front of us, which we soon forget when it disappeared again. Apparently it was the regional tv station doing a newsreport on Kieselrock, and the next week we saw ourselves on ROB-Tv. I guess you could've called that our fifteen minutes of fame, but forget mr. Warhol, Spiritum is still gonna get all the fame of the world! Next concert : Battle of the Bands 2002. We rocked the place, we definately did. At that time Jasper had written 2 new songs, 'She Is...' and 'Wandering', however they would be seriously transformed later on. Robin also wrote 'Funnyman' by then. So we really had some good songs of our own, along with some covers, and the audiance told us they enjoyed it. BUT! because of some crappy German judge who thinks Metal is the only good music around, ofcourse voted for the heavier bands (some who couldn't even sing) and took us for granted. Nothing to do about it, so we just left pretty pissed off. But hey, something always goes wrong at a Spiritum-concert right? C'est la vie. Then there was an unstable period for the band, we were all busy with our finals and applying to universities that we kind of left the band aside. We did play a goodbye concert for our class at Jasper's place, with Ward playing the bass for the occasion and old times sake, since he just got back from the U.S.A. During the summerholidays of 2002 we all thought Spiritum was history, we'd be studying in different countries, and starting new lives. Will they survive? Doe they still rock your world today? Or have they grown apart and started new bands? Stay tune and you'll soon find out @ Spiritumbio... We survived ! Sometime in september we got back together to play, and it was grand. We got together more often (also to spend precious nights ripped of our tits in Okeaz near the practice basement). Carlos made some new material such as 'Small Romance','Brainwashed','Let's Be Friends','Tonight', to which Jasper has written the lyrics, and added some riffs to 'Wandering'. Jasper then threw his material in the band such as 'Dream With Me' and 'Intermezzo'. Together with the whole band these songs were developped during the next months and we're proud to be their godfather. So what would you do if you had written some new extracool foxyshaggamegalistic songs? That's right, record that shit! So in december 2002 we recorded what is now called 'Eleven women & One outsider', again with Jelle. This time we took our time and didn't wanna rush in to fast. So we took about a week to record it, and another weekend to do a remix and correct some mistakes. It was again Jelle who helped us record, we're very grateful towards him. During the recordings we experimented a bit with the songs and came up with some backing vocals for 'Wandering','Tonight','Brainwashed' and 'She Is...', and Carlos improvised the whole song of 'Intermezzo' with his guitar and fx. A new experience were the female backing vocals you can hear on 'Let's Be Friends'. This is Nancy Roberts(the ex Carlos wrote 'That'll Do' about). Carlos was convinced that a sweet innocent female voice should be heard during the song, and immediately thought of Nancy. So thanks again Nancy for joining us. That's about all for now, we're planning some concerts, we're working on the cd-layout, and are trying to get a record deal of some kind. New material is coming soon, we're all full of ideas. You'll hear about that soon on the site.. So make sure you look out for some concerts!

Group Members musicians:Carlos Zorita (guitar/vocals), Jasper Witteveen (guitar/vocals), Robin Hilbrink (drums), Alexander Hof (bass) manager: Alexander Hof (HOFproductions)

Instruments 2vocals, 2 guitars, 1 bass and 1 drum

Albums SPIRITUM live!, SPIRITUM!, Eleven Women & One Outsider

Additional Info SPIRITUM Live! is recorded at the Battle of the Bands 2001. SPIRITUM! is the first studio album (contains 3 own-written songs and 4 covers). Eleven Women & One Outsider is the first full album with 12 own-written songs

Location Brussels, Brussels - Belgium

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