Reconsidering my approach

Mar 212012
 

I’ve been mixing and making music for a long time (it feels strange to say that, since it feels like I started yesterday). So I’ve developed quite an array of bad (or possibly good) habits. But I do try to make a point to completely rework the way I do music. I’ve done it twice already.

Once when I did our third album, and once when I moved from Samplitude (pro) to Reaper. Yes, I use Reaper. I find it amusing that I moved from the most expensive to DAW in to the (more or less) cheapest one on the market.

I like the crazy routing options in the Reaper, so I am somewhat unwilling to move away from that.

Anyway, I think it’s become a time to change the way I work. Again. Basically I’ve been looking at new and old plugins that I own, and new free ones. I’m trying to find alternatives to the ones I’ve been using for few years now.

I’ve had a reasonable success, although it hasn’t been without expenses. However, I will finish working on “Seed” with my current setup. Once that’s done, I’ll more or less try my best to approach mixing completely anew. Well, given certain values of “anew”.

However, I will have to move out of my apartment for three weeks soon, so there’s most likely will be a slight delay before I can really get down to business.

But, I have plenty of ideas, so there will be more music coming out soon.

No More Cocaine: Midnight EP Released

Mar 182012
 

So, this is an EP only if you’re very charitable. It has two songs and is about twelve minutes and some odd scraps long. One song is more “Dark Jazz” if you’re charitable, and the other is just pure Desolate/Dark Ambient. You can download it for free if you’re up to it, or you can pay anything you like if you feel like contributing something. But first, here’s a listen:

No More Cocaine: Midnight EP

Mar 182012
 

I’ve been working on some dark ambient for No More Cocaine. The Dark Jazz is pretty much nonexistent right now, it’s pure Dark Ambient. No rhythmic elements either. Those will arrive, but I want to concentrate on the more Dark Ambient stuff right now. It’s pretty fun to go back to the old ambient stuff.

I haven’t done any proper ambient for years. I have few songs that barely scrape under the line to be included in the genre. But even that is like on the First and Second album of King Fear. That’s a long time ago.

I’ll probably next try to make something semi Dark Jazz slash Dark Ambient so people won’t forget that No More Cocaine isn’t just a pure ambient project.

New Song, and a new project in horizon

Mar 172012
 

So, I have four more songs to finish and I’m done with the “Seed” album. I like it, but I think I’ve more or less explored all there is for me to explore of that particular style of making songs.

In other words, I’m itching to start working on new projects.

I’m working on some debut stuff for “No More Cocaine”. Probably an EP or “single” with just few songs on it to establish what kind of sound I am going for. Basically my version of “Kilimanjaro Dark Jazz Ensemble”. More or less. Less IDM, no vocals, more Dark Ambient and weird soundscapes. More upright bass.

Also, I’m considering as the next project to work under my own name to be a refined and better approach to “Project Mayhem” that I worked for King Fear. Actually, I don’t remember if it was under my own name or not. Probably under mine.

Anyway, it was the attempt – more or less serious – to make “Techno Metal”, or “Electronic Metal”. It’s hard to put it in words. Basically, take the structures of rock and metal, add the attitude, the “heaviness”, distortion, riffs, drumming, but don’t use any natural instruments. Just synths and drum machines.

It’s an interesting problem.

For starters, should you use always the same “guitar”, or whatever synth sound you have representing the guitar in the song? Furthermore, should it try to sound like a guitar or something completely different? Should every song approach the concept fresh, or keep cohesion?

How many instruments? Normal metal has two guitars and a bass? Does that mean three synths, or no limits? Where do you draw the line?

Just some of my musings.

Things I Like: Breach: Valid

Mar 122012
 

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Along with Refused one of the pioneers of swedish Hardcore scene. They have incredibly rough and rattling trademark sound. Noisy as fuck. I read somewhere once that the band was described that they sound like an V8 doing 200mph without oil.

A Little Breather

Mar 112012
 

I haven’t made any new music for my solo album this weekend. I took a little breather.

Which means that in this case that I mostly worked on my another project which I’ve named “No More Cocaine”. Basically mostly dark ambient with some dark jazz influences. This means that it’s closer to “The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Esemble” than “Bohren & Der Club of Gore” in approach. However sonically it’s closer to “Atrium Carceri” or Dark Ambient in general.

However once I get my Saxophone it will definitely have a lot of influences from Bohren. But, I don’t think I will quite reach the Dark Jazz style. I like beats way too much, and they always creep in to the music. However, it will be nowhere near the full on “five drum machines” sound that I am so fond of when working under my own name.

Things I Like: The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Esemble

Mar 102012
 

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Halfway!

Mar 062012
 

So, I did get the song done. It’s called “stuttering minutes” and it embraces the name, which was actually more or less serendipity since I wrote the names out first and it just ended up naturally sounding like it does.

Now, I also decided to give all pre-orderers HALF of the album when they do so, just because I am really getting bored of waiting until I can play you this stuff. So here, I’m embedding the player for the “whole” album here. You can listen to all six tracks through this player. I also shuffled the tracks around a little. The final order of the tracks will be determined probably just few minutes before the final release, if I know myself.

Here, the whole album as a one convenient player:

Miskatonic

Mar 062012
 

So, I did the fifth song of the album yesterday. Well, it was mostly done already, but I just needed to finish it.

Today, I have in plans to make the sixth song for the album, or at least make parts of it. I have time, since Tuesdays and Thursdays are my “not-at-the-gym-until-evening” days. It’s weird having this schedule, though. I feel always rather odd coming home from different direction and different time than I “usually” do. It used to be that this was the “usual”, but I definitely train enough that this is the rarer occurence to me these days.

So, anyway, back to album.

All this talk means that I am soon halfway through the album, and there’s months to go. I might move the “release date” to sooner just because I am bored. But we’ll see. I’m starting to suspect that the King Fear “rock” EP is coming out sooner than mine, since I put the release date so late. Yea, I’ll have time to start working on a new album before I have released the old one. Which would be slightly amusing.

I also have a good idea what kind of music it would be. Dark Jazz.

Basically taking a clue from “Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble” and “Bohren & Der Club of Gore”. More from from Kilimanjaro than Bohren, really. Bohren is pretty straight up Dark Jazz. Drums, organ, saxophone. There’s some other instruments but they come and go depending on the album and song. Whereas Kilimanjaro is pretty out there. They have plenty of pure ambient, glitch, noise, electronic stuff and so forth.

I’m thinking of something like taking Trip-Hop, Dark Jazz and Ambient. Saxophone, subdued drums, some smooth synths and a drum machine. Sounds great to me. I’ll have to see if I still feel like doing it once I am done with this album.

King Fear, new EP in the horizon

Mar 052012
 

Hello there,

I didn’t get much music done on the weekend. I did work on my album a bit, but got sidetracked. I spent two days in the idyllic middle-of-nowhere with El working on some new King Fear material. Basically we’re going to do a new release, a small one to start with. It’s probably going to be about five to six songs. It’s not going to be hardcore death metal, though.

Sorry about that, if you were looking for more Industrial Death Metal.

However, it will be rockin’. It’s going to be more or less straight up rock, instrumental but not complex. Simple, possibly a little punk’ish rock with minor electronic elements. Maybe few traces of a drum machine and a synth per song. But it’s not going to be anything near the level of my solo release. Just some minor elements and spices here and there.

No vocals, most likely. Wouldn’t know where to record them to start with, and this kind of music would require a decent vocalist.

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