Ahh I've been looking forward to replying all day! Thank youuu!!! For listening. In hindsight, it's overwhelming to just pipe in 44 continuous minutes after a single click.

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[Here's a good idea of the studio setup](redacted!). (c_hawkthorne there's some aurora footage on that channel too... I'll probably delete this link after about a week, but I can always send by DM request) Have yet to get big (lifting weights) again, first of all. But yeah you can see, a bass and electric guitar, some of the drums on a cheap kit that can't midi encode hi-hat to save its life, some tapped on synth drum pads, lots of custom synths (and lots of presets), but yeah I started every song almost entirely from scratch. Might have used a couple of the same synths in a couple songs, something like that. Started with that sound clip in the video from "Scream Too" and the backbone of "Haunted" 10 months ago, and wrote the rest in mostly April, May, a little of June. Spent months tweaking the mixes and finishing up a couple tracks.

Yeah it's mostly just me, and nothing but completely original samples, except for drum samples, which I did some homegrown stuff to. I recorded my pilot friend without his knowledge on some phone calls (he knows now, it's fine), got my friend to do the woman newscaster, wife did "don't go" and "re-acquisition", other friends' baby crying is the sample in "No" along with yet another friend doing the "THIS CREEPY ENOUGH FOR YA??" stuff. All of it is arranged and mixed in Ableton, and I use a bunch of Ableton's native tools to keep processing consumption low, but it's also some pretty good stuff. edit: should probably say... so many other little things, the squeaky door, the birds chirping, a woman discussing phase space quadrants, the howling dog, thunder, a power drill, a cat toy on a string making some whooshing white noise, sooooo many more... all recorded voice memos on my smartphone mic. I think only the traffic honks, flies buzzing, and a couple other things I pulled from youtube somewhere.

I played all of the guitar parts live, but usually one or two bars at a time. Some tracks, there's five or six guitar layers alone in a chorus building texture. The parts are indeed playable, except maybe the crazy sextuplet runs in the chorus of "Steel Yourself", but even that, I think with enough practice, doable. The guitar tab records I have are like 65% complete, lol. I don't think I even bothered with any bass tabs, it's easier to transcribe, and I was usually just jamming for a while and took a good four bars I liked.

Never done vocals before! My wife is always home, and I hate singing around her. So the vocals will get better, but thank you!! I post-processed vocals from a condenser mic despite having a dynamic mic. I don't know why. Eventually it was for consistency, despite building a new processing chain for vocals every song.

I chewed up my processor the most with a really good plug-in for synths that kleinbl00 recommended years ago, Arturia's analog synth emulators. But I'd also build stuff from like... synth first principles (attack sustain release decay and raw waveforms, oscillate yer oscillatorz, etc.) for good wubby stuff. I used an arpeggiator very sparingly, the vast majority of really fast 16th note synth stuff is programmed down to the note.

Honestly a lot of it was throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what I liked. Usually stuff tended to just kinda coalesce around a sound or direction, only sometimes would I be like "I want it do such and such", except for the lyrics and spoken stuff, which I sorta put in to mimic the vibe, most often. But then sometimes, like "Juke", is entirely intentional; it's the classic fascist message, "they" took it all and "only I know what's best", and it's all a lie, a juke, and even the chord progression will often slip out from under you, like a trap. Shit spooks me, man. And the Portland 2020 riots audio... related. "Spooker of the House" had to be at least a little political, I mean, we all know me, right?

best of luck in the ongoing global meltdown

Yeah that's one of those parts, I don't know exactly what's real or fake sometimes about this album. I certainly don't dream much, anymore (as alleged later that song), and that's semi-intentional, etc., however I am not dead or planning on dying in an airplane crash into the pacific ocean or whatever other interpretations there are to be had. And uhh hopefully Mike Johnson, current speaker of the house, is fine. But last few years, a lot of death, around me. Went to a funeral today, in fact. Been thinking about it all.

Thanks again for listening! Was a trip to make. Production was fun until the very end, just about ideal. A planned release date helped. Already working on the next batch of songs, with all the time in the world. :)