Silence, it is lengthy and prevalent. Sorry about that. I am still doing a lot of music for myself, but King Fear seems to be a bit on the quiet side lately. To fix this, I'm posting this song here, and linking to another one I made. If it's silent here, you might want to follow my blog at www.straechav.com and check what I am up to. Not saying I am posting every day a new song, or anything, but it's definitely a little more active than here.
I am also going to publish our Fourth album without vocals as an instrumental album. It's a little repetitive because there's parts that were meant for vocals - but it's better than nothing and will give you some good industrial glitch metal to listen to, even if it's a little barren on the vocals.
But, here's my latest song, it even has an (gasp) guitar in it.
You can download it at my blog, if you're so inclined.
In search of more cowbell, I submit this song. (just listen to it, you'll figure it out)
So, I am flooding this place with more new stuff in effort to win back your love, and to apologize for the lack of activity. This song is a part of "Project Mayhem", I have one half-finished song in the works that I didn't feel like finishing called "Accelerate", so this really isn't the fourth song in the series, but the fifth. But we'll make do despite this massive issue. I tried another bass synth, left the guitars and the drums alone. Also tried another synth here, no Razor to be heard anywhere.
I also rather like the hook of the song, it's funny, not to mention the cowbell. But I have a strange sense of humor, so your mileage may vary. Also, this song displays my unhealthy fascination with ride, since you could argue 50% of the appeal of the song is the ride pattern.
Nevertheless, I like it, and I hope you will as well. I can't argue it progressed my exploration of metal & techno in perfect marriage, but it was just something fun I did in few hours and as a fun song it works quite well. As a serious exploration of a concept, er, not so well.
I've been struck with extreme lethargy, and I have not done literally anything for a month. I haven't talked to my friends, I haven't painted anything, I haven't updated a damn thing. So, King Fear has been on a pause, I haven't talked to El since we did the last song Quetzacoatl. So, anyway, I'm back now, getting in to the business of updating the blog and posting some more songs. Still few in the pipeline, so there should be stuff -- even if El & I don't have time to get together and make some noise.
This is pretty new song, it's basically the genesis of "The Fifth sun". It's a little odd song, really. It has no synths. All the things that sound like they're from a synth, are actually from El's guitar. We started this song with the idea of using really weird effects on his guitars and see what comes out. Well, weirdness. Sometimes it's quite hard to tell when the effect is doing something, or El is doing something.
I'm not going to reveal the secret how we did that yet, but I might at some point. It's not a huge revelation and you can probably figure it out if you meditate on it, but it does generate some quite interesting blend of electronic effect madness and natural guitar playing. I also tried to drum a little different than I usually do. I have this odd habit from programming drum machines that I visualize all the drums in a grid in my mind, and I am somehow "obsessed" with what I call "symmetrical drum patterns". I'll explain that later, as well.
But, in short, I tried to avoid those "symmetrical drum patterns" and we also tried to be as "low-key mad" on the guitar as possible. I hope you like the song.
So! We're back, and with a new song to boot. In fact, this is the latest song we've made. That's right, what you're hearing here is something we made last wednesday. Yup, hot from the press. It's also a start of new "album", so to speak. The album will be called "The Fifth Sun", both in reference to Quetzalcoatl and Aztecs in general, but also to the fact that it'd be our fifth album. Now, there's a little "but" here somewhere... yes, the fourth album which still isn't released.
Well, there's some talk about recording vocals to it, Alex has in fact offered to do so, but it'd require fairly significant investment of time from all parties involved. We'll see how that pans out. But, whatever the fate of that album might be in the future, this blog needs to be updated.
Hence, we are releasing this song.
It's a perfect example how I am, and my experiments are, still part of the band. The Project Mayhem, despite being released under the King Fear moniker is still just my own little playground of ideas. I have made four songs, of which three are released, and the fourth is a little overshadowed by this song. So, what I am getting here is that Project Mayhem bled in to this song, heavily. This could be a Project Mayhem release. But the riffs are by El and he plays the guitar (yes, it's a real guitar), and we did the song together. I did work on the drums by myself, naturally, but it's indeed a proper King Fear release. It could be a Project Mayhem release, but it just lacks the final little "techno" from it. And it's way too organic.
But instead of that, there's a fuck-ton of weirdness with the guitar, I hope you like it, and I hope you don't mind dissonance. We've got some for you. We've been saving it since "The Inexhaustible" was done...
Anyway, I consider this trippy piece of heavy-ass metal a damn fine start for a new series of songs. We already have two older songs ready to be published in this series, so expect more of freaky-ass guitars and odd moods.
Aha! Hello there my helpless victim. Since you are not one of my band members who can run away at willy-nilly and ignore my phonecalls, move without telling me, or refuse to speak to me -- I will bore you with some tech talk!
See, I don't get to talk shop with my band members too much. They don't care, or know, or whatever. I'm the tech guy. If our band needs to manage to do something, guess who has to figure it out? Yup, that's me. So I've got a pretty decent practical knowledge of many technical issues.
Mostly on the software land, though. We don't have endless amounts of cash, since we're non-profit band, and experimenting with hardware is costly business. I've yet to see the shopkeeper who lets me "demo" their microphone for thirty days, nevermind me going through the whole catalog of Shure when trying to pick a mic.
That said, I've gotten to test enough pieces that I have decent knowledge. But I don't profess to be an expert. On the software side, however... well, I've got some practical knowledge. I've tested just about everything I can possibly get a demo of, and few that you can't (cough), and over the years there's a select pieces of software that I've determined is "good and proper" and I've invested our limited money in. But enough about that, that's for later.
So, what I am going to talk now is about the Project Mayhem, but a little more about the technical aspects of it.
And I'm back with another song. I did this a few days ago, but I don't want to publish all my songs instantly, or you'd have long periods with no activity, and short periods of high activity. What's the point of a this way of publishing music, if it's not constant?
Anyway, I'm again exploring some more electronic music with "metal" attitude in mind. This time I reworked the Project Mayhem template quite radically. I preserved the bass sound, that's about it. Basically you could argue this song is all about the drums, and I did some cool things with them. They're still a bit rough on this song, but it's getting there.
I also like the atonal/dissonant sounds you can get out of the "rhythm guitar" synth. A dissonant chord and it squeals like a demon. Nevermind the lead guitar synth. I didn't use a lot of it in this song, but you can bet your ass that I did explore those sounds on my own time.
So what's next? Well, I'll refine the drums. Then I'll have to see where exactly I am heading to. I don't honestly really know.
Not so happy how the song isn't as heavy as I'd like it to be. Also, blastbeat is basically just mud with this drum mix. I'll have think about that. I do love the drums, though. Boom, baby, boom.
What happens when you take a slow melancholic rock, and give it to me? Well, first things first, I'll put fast drums on it. Probably with hilarious (to me) little highlights here and there. Second, I'll put on a dance beat on it. Third, I'll add an epic synth to it.
It's all about the noise, baby.
So, yeah, this is a bit older song. About same age as Corrupter, and definitely part of the same "remix" phase I had. I remixed a bunch of our more traditional slow songs in to fast "dance" songs. I am not happy with the mix, but I can't fix it right now. Well, I could, but it would take too much work. It's "good enough", to keep you people happy with steady activity.
I feel like I should apologize for the bass, though.
I do like to play my bass with dirtiest distortion on it, but that's a little too much. I'm not quite sure what I was thinking, except maybe "where's the mud knob?" when I was toning my amp.
I am not, however, apologizing for the hilarious (only to me, I suspect) ride on the song. I do live making stupid little beats with ride. After we did Sounds... where I made an arbitrary decision for myself and stripped my drumkit of a ride. Instead opting for just three crashes (no splash either, if I remember right...). So, since then I've been riding a ride high... ergh, that pun sucks.
Anyway, I love putting a ride anywhere, and this was one of the victims of that. Along with my sense of humor and you get this funny little tinkle there on your right ear.
Well, in any case, the song is pretty damn good. It still works even if the mix is a little muddy for my tastes. Do enjoy, I'll be posting more "Project Mayhem" stuff later on. I've been working on it.
My holidays have started, and as usual I am swamped by a multitude of projects. If you were not aware, I have a burning need to create things -- and I don't care of the medium. Music, Art, Programming, Writing, whatever. I will of course be making more music with the band, and we'll probably have some new kick-ass songs to show you all.
I do have a whole bunch of older material ready for publishing, but I need to fix some mixes and such. But, summer holidays are here, so I finally have time to work on the songs. I can't promise instant publications, but you can expect a fairly steady trickle of songs.
In my own personal projects, I've been thinking and planning "Project Mayhem" a lot. I have some pretty wild ideas, but I am not exactly sure of the direction to take. The fake guitar ended up working too well, and I rather like playing with those synths (yes, it's generated by multiple instances). I have some ideas for percussion, as well. And I'm thinking of using some creative sampling with the bass to fake some string rattle to the bass (which sounds pretty good otherwise).
If you know my bass playing, you know that I adore string rattle. The rattier and uglier the bass sounds, the more I love it. So my greatest disappointment with my fake "real" bass sound on the Project Mayhem is that it has no string rattle and as far as my personal bass sounds go, it's pretty civilized.
Right now I am going to take few days off to spend with the family and girlfriend, so don't expect more new music until next week. I might post some older songs in a day or so.
And I'm already back with another song. I did this yesterday, I listened to it today and confirmed that the mix is good enough for this purpose. Here's, in my opinion, a little more interesting take on the metal with electronic instruments concept.
Basically, I took the drums from previous try, and the fake guitars (but tweaked) and everything else was subject to change. In this song I used a lot of the new synths from Native Instruments: Razor. I really like it, it's pretty simple, but generates a lot of the kind of "very" electronic sounds that I happen to like. The demo sounds of the synth are geared toward Dubstep crowd (shameless populism), but it bends to a lot of other things.
Most importantly, doing nasty metallic grinding things with it is easy.
I didn't do much of that, just some bass and such. Oh, be careful with your speakers, there's quite significant bass in this song.
I especially like in this song how big of a role the synths have. In the previous try, all I had was basically the lead synth, the rest were doing an imitation of real life. In this, I think I managed to be more "techno for the metal crowd" style, or something. It sounds electronic, but sure as hell doesn't sound like dance music.
So, this song is the first exploration in the Project Mayhem. I took the cheap way out, this is essentially just me trying to build a "template" that I can work with. I did the drum mix, mostly stolen from the fourth album with some changes, and I played around with Native Instruments Reaktor and managed to create a fairly decent fake guitar.
This was just an idle idea of mine, that I didn't think was worth putting in to the song, but ended up there anyway. So, yes, there's no real guitars or bass. I just figured that as a starting point in exploring metal with synths I'd try to fake "real" instruments -- instead of reaching three feet to the left and picking up my guitar or bass.
Now, it's worth mentioning that I don't WANT to make people believe there's a real guitar in the song, nor I do want them to sound like typical fake guitars. So this is not ideal. I have some ideas (and I've already implemented some of them in the next song) to take these fake guitars to more interesting and dynamic soundscapes.
The lead sound is a blatant nod towards OBUM, except that it's a different synth (it even has octaver effect on it) but ended up sounding just like it anyway. Heh.
So, the song is fun and everything, but I think it falls flat on just about everything I wanted to go for. So, there will be plenty of other explorations of this idea. The next song already has improved on these ideas quite a bit.