recital Frederik Croene
video Karl Van Welden

Six piano pieces by Frederik Croene and accompanying video work by Karl Van Welden serve as an in memoriam for six fearless aviation pioneers who ultimately lost their lives in plane crashes. 

Kosmonaut, in memoriam Yuri Gagarin (†27.03.1968)
Died, aged 34, during a routine training flight, after his MiG-15 jet fighter crashed near Novosyolovo. He was the first cosmonaut, the first human to journey into outer space. The concert starts with the original recording of the radio communications between Yuri Gagarin and ground control during the space ship launch. It remained his only spaceflight, yet he served as the backup crew member to Soyuz 1, which also ended in a fatal crash, claiming the life of his friend and fellow cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov.

Queen Bess, in memoriam Bessie Coleman (†30.04.1926)
Died, aged 34, after falling from an open cockpit during a practice flight. First Black and Native American woman to earn a pilot’s license, training in France after being denied entry to U.S. flight schools. She rose to fame as a stunt pilot, inspiring others by breaking through barriers of race and gender. As she uses aircraft pioneering as a metaphor for liberation, she inspired the concept of this album: the deaths of six historical aircraft characters as metaphors for the stories told in the music.

Sky King, in memoriam Richard Russell (†10.08.2018)
Died, aged 28, after crashing an aircraft he stole from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. With no formal flight training beyond video games and simulators he managed an unauthorized takeoff. He successfully executed a barrel roll before purposely crashing the aircraft on a small island with the intent to commit suicide. A recording of his communication with ground control is mixed with the piano music.

Kamikaze, in memoriam Yukio Seki (†25.10.1944)
Died, aged 23, when crash-diving his plane deliberately into USS St. Lo’s flight deck while leading a unit of five bomb-armed Mitsubishi Zero fighters, thus leading the first official kamikaze attack to sink an enemy ship. He was a Japanese naval aviator of the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II. All album sleeves have an extra stamp, placed at the War Memorial Museum in Tokyo on the Memorial Ceremony of the war dead on 15th August 2025, exactly 80 years after the declaration of the end of war by the Japanese Government. The stamp is an image of the airplane type used for kamikaze attacks.

Vol de nuit, in memoriam A. de Saint-Exupéry (†31.07.1944)
Died, aged 44, in a crash during a reconnaissance mission over Corsica. Trained as a commercial pilot in the early 1920s, he flew airmail routes across Europe, Africa and South America. In 1931 he wrote Vol de nuit, a novel reflecting his experiences as a mail pilot and director of Argentinian postal services. The novel was an inspiration for turning the album sleeve into mail art, flying all empty sleeves to Japan and returning them by airmail.

C'est Kiki, In memoriam Daniel Kinet (†15.07.1910)
Died, aged 26, when his plane crashed in a potato field during the Ghent Festival. He became the first aviation fatality on Belgian soil and the twelfth worldwide. During the filming of the then quarantined prison boat Reno at the port of Ghent for Solastalgia (LP, 2022), Karl Van Welden discovered, half a mile away, a forgotten memorial stone erected in 1912 in remembrance of Daniel Kinet. It instigated the concept of linking this album to the early aircraft pioneers. There is still a folk song about him, resounding in the outskirts of the city of Ghent.

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sans retour is also an edition of 300 vinyls.