ALL ABOUT ALAMO RACE TRACK OF BIRDS AND MEN Ralph Mulder is a bird watcher from Oost Groningen in the Netherlands. Thank God for that, because if he hadn't been, he would not have wandered the Nieuwstaterzijl on board the Dollard, looking for The Blue Throat, The Brown Harrier and The Curlew...and then we, Amigos de Musica, would have been denied the larger part of 'Birds At Home'.Alamo Race Track's debut album. It was in the flat, deserted countryside of Groningen that Mulder found the inspiration for most of the album's songs. At times 'Birds At Home' resonates with albums such as 'Harvest' and the first of Sparklehorse, but it is not a country album..it just has too much of a big city buzz. After all, the city is where Ralph's ideas blossomed..thanks to his band members and co-writers David Corel, Len Lucieer and Guy Bours. All four have been playing in bands forever, or in Ralph's case when his old friend Diederik Nomden said that besides playing good soccer he might also sing well. Despite the laidback and rural feeling of the record, the foursome Mulder/Corel/Lucieer/Bours also sound very 'urban'. Alamo fuses the best of both worlds without sounding forced or constructed. The band's sound is simply too organic and unique for that. 'Birds At Home' was a long time in the making. This was not because recording maestro Frans Hagenaars had trouble getting the lot on tape, but because the band simply couldn't stop getting better. In the studio they were creating increasingly sublime songs. Hopefully this process will continue. In any case, 'phase one' led to this magnificent result. The album will be released September 2003, in a beautiful cover, on old-fashioned vinyl and accompanied by exciting performances. In other words: let Autumn begin, its soundtrack is ready!