On the Hills of Despair

 

By Yoshitaka Amano. That guy is a genius.

Despite what I told about my upcoming solo record in the last post, I'm not going to release a new ambient album just yet. It will come out sooner or later that's a promise, but my focus shifted on some other musical manners and I just couldn't resist my urges.

You see, some months ago I applied for a sound engineering academy in Turku to learn more the ways of studio wizardry. While I recognize the fact it is rather difficult and unlikely to provide a steady income while working in the music business, I'm doing this mostly to myself to maintain my mental health and have a much needed break from my regular job. Well, I don't know if I'm going to be accepted in to the school or not just yet, but still.

Anyway one of the pre-assignments was to present a song of your own and a cover/remix from one of four predetermined songs. I started to work on a track which was originally meant to be a new song for Gambanteinn (see the previous post), but after Aleksi told me in rather biting manner the composition reminded him of an anime series theme, I decided to drop the song off. Even though there are some really great and catchy anime songs out there, I feel that 30-year-old Sailor Moon-cosplayer dudes living in their parents' basements are not my primary target audience. Said the guy who pasted a Final Fantasy artwork on his blog post.

After bashing my head into an imaginary wall for days and getting nothing but the main theme melody done, I abandoned the song for good and actually forgot the whole school thing for a couple of weeks. By some dumb luck I checked out my email's spam folder to notice a mail informing the deadline for the pre-assignment which was coming in five days. After panicking and cursing the idea of re-educating myself to the grave, my wife told me to snap out of it while reminding me that quitting now would make me waste another year making me even more frustrated and miserable than before. I knew she was quite right about the situation so I regained my focus to invest all of my time, will and energy to write the best song I could. And then, sitting in front of my trusted Arturia keyboard, I found out my well of inspiration was frighteningly dry...

Even though I could write an effortless and meaningless radio friendly pop song within a couple of hours, my sense of ambition and self-esteem would never let me do that. At least I'd feel back-stabbed by my own hands if I'd do that. Luckily I never get rid off any songs or drafts I've bothered to record 'cause "you never know", right? While frantically searching through my files and folders I stumbled upon a song, titled Hills of Despair, which was supposed to be featured on an electronic (no, not synthwave, fuck that genre) album I never finished due motivational problems. Considering the musical aspects of the track it was already a strong effort while the production needed some tweaking. To cut it short I managed to wrap up the thing within a day, getting back on the wagon and feeling I actually could finish the damn assignment. End the panic mode.

Now, originally I had very different plans considering the cover song, Beethoven's Für Elise, modifying it into a dark ambient track. After rehearsing the song with the piano for an hour or two, I estimated the dark ambient version would take too much time to be produced in a satisfying manner due the song's musical nature. Ambient isn't that musical genre, you know. I decided to put Elise into the same frames Despair was in, heavily emphasizing the drum patterns. I was really unsure and doubtful with the outcome but after having some positive feedback from my test listeners, I regained a good amount of confidence knowing I'd had a real chance to get in to the school.

"This remix is lit as fuck!"

With that prolonged prologue out of the way I can finally get into the main point of this babbling. So, the new record! While working on the pre-assignment songs I got a healthy dose of motivation to work on the electronic album and finish it once and for all. I revisited and evaluated the song drafts I had done precisely for the occasion, ditched one and reshaped two to meet my requirements. The first is a short, high-octane burst of melodies while the second is a fusion of industrial and doom metal. Talking about variety, am I right. Speaking of doom metal, I recorded another cover song I've had in mind since I got the gear to record on my own. But I don't want spoil too much information just yet, since I'm still in the middle of the mixing process and I'm still without a cover art for the album. Maybe I can reveal some more stuff in the next post!

P.S. I wonder if any of you got the point of Amano's painting on top the post?