I've managed to kind of accidentally make a new album. Which is nice, since I haven't released anything substantial in years.
It's only 35 minutes long, it's full of fat drones and mangled steel tongue drum, drowned in glitches, reverb and delay, everything has been patched together somewhat randomly with even more randomness, yet it feels, I don't know, wholesome?
Maybe I'll hate it tomorrow. Not sure when I'll release it. For now, here's the cover art.
Agonizing over whether I should mix all tracks to make them fade into each other, or keep them all separated by silence.
A full mix would make sense, we're clearly in ambient territory with long drones, and silences feel like interruptions. It would in fact be the same process I followed to make the tracks, but at a higher level.
The only reason I wouldn't do this is that I never did it before, and it may be harder than I think, but it's in fact one more reason to do it, right?
Time to stop messing around with my various tracks and attempt that full album mix. I think I'll just approach the whole thing as a bigger track made of long samples. Technically, it's nothing more than that... I just hope the process won't show me the tracks with a different perspective and make me hate them.
My new album is almost ready, but I can't decide if the Bandcamp featured track should be the first one, which is nice but very short and followed by a long experimental piece, or the fifth one, which is probably more representative of the whole album, but is also, well, in the middle.
I mean, I'm not sure if I want people to jump straight to the second half of the album, it doesn't really make sense. I'm probably overthinking this...
So, here comes my new album.
It's a blend of heavily processed live RAV Vast recordings. I'd say it's quite experimental, mostly #ambient, though it flirts with #drone while also having a few rhythmic parts.
I made it for myself, on a sudden impulse, with no other goal than to have fun. And maybe a little introspection. It's a mess, but a mess I'm happy with.
Boosting this for other timezones. I feel weird boosting my own posts, but apparently people seem to like my stuff, so... 😅
@ice i feel like a full mix is the nicer experience, and if you have the energy and time to do it, it's probably worth
some people might like to have the individual tracks for their playlists though, so offering the unmixed tracks as an alternate download could be cool if it's not too much hassle
@gaeel That's a good idea, thanks :) I could host a non-mixed version on my website and keep the "main" mixed version on Bandcamp.
@ice *now playing*
sounds great! 
@sejo Thanks, glad you like it :)
@ice evocative and moody. I love it. Am really enjoying network of the dead.
@minimaldotclick Thanks! It's one of my favorite tracks. At first, it was very short, but I felt it needed more space, so kept extending it... then I realized it had become the longest, haha.
@ice oh wow! Great album 👍
@woozong Thanks, glad you like it :)
@ice nice work! i enjoyed listening.
@palomakop Thanks, I’m glad you enjoyed it :)
@ice I'm liking this a lot. awesome work!
@slisne Thank you so much :)
@ice strong work
@anandra Thanks :)
@ice it's a good one!
@ice this is dope
@milofultz Thanks a lot :)
@ice Finally have time to listen to it, really nice! It was my work soundtrack in the morning ;)
@bd Thanks a lot! Great to hear it makes a good work soundtrack, it means it does its ambient job :)
@bd Oh and thanks for the support, it's very nice :)
@ice kulupu ni pi kalama musi li pona mute tawa mi.
@athan sina pona a! tenpo kama, la me wile pali e kalama musi sama.
@ice This is some nice ambient. I like the steel pan-like sound on the first tracks.
Is it me or is there some clipping on the first track? or maybe my PC audio is worse than I realised
@frox Thanks :) I've used loads of noise and lo-fi effects to create accidental textures, not to mention the original recordings use different parameters, so it's quite possible what you're hearing is intended. Or maybe that's some Bandcamp hiccup. In any case, it's not supposed to sound like harsh clipping, it's more like subtle grain and small glitches.
@ice Oh it's definitely a small thing and I'm nitpicking 😁
So is it due in part to the original recording and in part to all the effects layered on top of each other?
It somehow reminded me of this track https://oneohtrixpointnever.bandcamp.com/track/love-in-the-time-of-lexapro
Where you can hear some clipping on the bass drum roughly between 0:50 - 1:10
@frox Oh yeah, Oneohtrix Point Ever is among my favorite artists, though it's been a few years since I've last checked out his work. I didn't know this one, I'll have to dig deeper in the newer releases :)
In my case it's a blend of several things: long samples of me playing the steel tongue drum, layered with variations of the same tracks (or others), most often slowed or pitched down, with added random/glitch effects, and slowly evolving global parameters, like volume or FX intensity.
@ice Definitely try it, I'd say!
I tried this for my first album – rendered the tracks as audio and started mixing them together in a new project. It was hard to blend them right… but I ended up producing more music directly in the mix to help glue it all together.
@slisne Yeah, this should be fun, I was thinking I’d probably end up making short additional transitions as well :) I don’t mind if it takes more time, I like the idea!
Plot twist: I don't like a couple of tracks, and I have more ideas for more tracks. So, maybe releasing this album will take a bit more time than expected. But it's freaking great that the juice keeps flowing!
#theWorkshop