By Keith Walsh
As a legal scholar might tell you, interpretation is nine tenths of truth. When I reviewed the new album by Belgian singer songwriter Gilles Snowcat, It was proven once again that my American brain is not immune to the seduction or deception by foreign agents. Like an art critic wearing tinted sunglasses to the Louvre, I apparently saw something that wasn’t there when reviewing ‘Don’t Leave Your Mistakes Unattended.’ This is an example of why surrealism can be dangerous but also valuable, allowing us to say what we want to say while saying something completely different. As fortune would have it, Snowcat is willing to testify on his behalf and set the record straight.
Popular Culture Beat: The album is relaxed and content. The theme seems to be about coming to terms with one’s mistakes. This can’t be a coincidence. If you want to get personal ok. How does this all coincide with the idea that in life one must face themselves and be realistic?
Gilles Snowcat: No, the theme goes more around cocktails, smoky bars, casinos, Chinatown, elegant people, all that stuff, driving a vintage car… The title has nothing to do with any kind of philosophy or self-reflection, it’s something that came naturally to me, a bit like an airport announcement.
Popular Culture Beat: How is Napoleon regarded in Belgium or France? Here in the U.S. grade school he was taught as kind of a ridiculous figure, who held his hand over his stomach because he had a bleeding ulcer from bad French dietary habits.
Gilles Snowcat: In school manuals, he’s just an historical figure, without any negative nor positive judgement, as far as I remember. Some people like him nowadays for his strategist’s abilities that can be transposed in business.
Popular Culture Beat: How does ‘Something New In Waterloo’ equate with personal failure?
Gilles Snowcat: It doesn’t. Waterloo is just a beautiful place near Brussels, just 30 minutes by the highway.
Popular Culture Beat: Tell me about how and when you acquired the Texas Instruments 8 bit computer. (I had a Commodore 64 mid 80s and wish I still did).
Gilles Snowcat: I bought it in high school, in the 80’s. It’s still working, including the small TV.
Popular Culture Beat: How fun is that? It’s the arpeggios in one of the last two tracks, I noticed it.
Gilles Snowcat: It plays some synths pads and arpeggios in “Coast Avenue Drive”, and voice synthesizer in “Monaco 1972”.
Popular Culture Beat: How difficult was that to program?
Gilles Snowcat: Quite easy, just a bit time-consuming. The difficult part was to synchronize it with the other tracks since the timing isn’t that precise.
Popular Culture Beat: Would you ever consider doing an entire 8 bit album? Have you found any other uses for the computer and do you have any other plans for it?
Gilles Snowcat: Not really, and surely not a full album. Other uses are very electronic percussion sounds that can add a nice colour to some arrangements.
Popular Culture Beat: How did you manage to keep relationships with all of the many players on the album? Are there actually clones of you handling some of the duties? Seriously, do you have helpers?
The new album by Gilles Snowcat, “Don’t Leave Your Mistakes Unattended,” involves dozens of players and took four years of planning and production.
Gilles Snowcat: The players on the album are mostly professionals who can deal with each other without getting at each other’s throat, so everything was smooth. There’s no clones, no mysterious helpers, just a true album made with inspired musicians and a lot of agak-agak. (‘agak-agak’ is a Malaysian word to describe ‘dose with feeling rather than formulas’ used in local cuisine.)
Popular Culture Beat: There’s not a bad note on the album. Tell me more about the concept, about the entire vibe and scene around this production. How long did it take, and how many hours a day?
Gilles Snowcat: Let’s say there was a long preparation, from end of 2021 until early 2025, with lots of changes, some songs dropped, some others released as singles (like “Staff Wanted”). Then the real recording went rather fast, from May to early July 2025. The vibe is the groove.
Popular Culture Beat: Where might you go next, musically? What concepts might you play out, or are you keeping that a secret?
Gilles Snowcat: There will be a single or two in 2026, related to the album, with some of the same musicians. Then later I’d like to do a live-in-studio album, like “Nama Time” 10 years ago, but this time with a full band.
ADDENDUM A: THE COURT MANDATES THAT GILLES SNOWCAT RESPONDS TO THE MATERIAL ALLEGATIONS IN MY REVIEW AT POPULAR CULTURE BEAT:
FROM MY REVIEW at Popular Culture Beat: ‘Something New In Waterloo’ Takes the name of Napoleon’s great failure as a metaphor for the losses that naturally coincide with being a person living in the world and making mistakes.
GS: I didn’t think that deeply. J I just love going to Waterloo, enjoy some great Japanese food, shop a little, have a drink, walk in the nature, see the beautiful plains, have a drive under the autumn leaves and say hello to the stone Lion.
Popular Culture Beat:Don’t Leave Your Mistakes Unattended resonates with love and repentance, and the joy that comes with repentance.
GS: I’d rather say it resonates with the feeling of winning at the casino with a glass of vodka martini (shaken, not stirred). 🙂
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