The Devil's Mill

This composition is based on a cocktail with two main ingredients that you usually do not expect together in one glass: whiskey (Gouden Carolus Single Malt, distilled in the Molenberg) and beer (Lucifer, Het Anker brewery). The recipe is from Andy de Mulder (alias Randall) who developed the cocktail on the occasion of a beer cocktail evening at the Het Anker brewery in Mechelen. The two ingredients seem incompatible, just as the flute and marimba have basically nothing to do with each other. Yet the combination provides a special taste experience that cannot be compared with anything.

In The Devil's Mill the flute and marimba start as two separate elements. They apparently play next to each other and each have their own kind of music. They also each use a different whole-tone scale so they literally have no notes in common. Throughout the work the instruments grow closer to each other, and sometimes even almost step into each other's shoes.
The name of the whisky, the Devil's Mill, translates into a number of rotating musical motifs that regularly recur. The mill that keeps turning is also reflected in the virtuoso character and the sometimes devilish tempo. The devil's musical interval (the tritone or enlarged fourth) is also never far away throughout the work.