What started as an idea for a single or EP here ended up as a 10-track album; I suppose ultimately it felt like there was quite a bit that I wanted to express, and when inspiration is flowing I try to capture as much as I can before it inevitably dries up. The impetuses behind this release are too personal to detail in a public space such as this, but broadly it’s about love, trust, hope, connection, openness, interdependence, and acceptance, all underpinned with a futurist motif as usual.
The motivations behind my previous two albums, Metamorph and Internal Reflection, were more about introspection, breaking out of the mold, and attempting to improve upon the technical aspects of production. In contrast, this time I ended up prioritizing intuition and feeling over critical thought as guiding principles. As such I think it ended up closer to my previous work in some ways, but still also incorporating some of the vocabulary I picked up over the last few years in attempts to expand my palette and keep things fresh and interesting. Often I found myself satisfied with relatively simpler beats and slower tempos, or emphasizing a lead melody over unique sound design. Not that those elements aren’t still present, but overall I tried to incorporate them in more of a supportive or secondary role than a primary focus.
About half of these tracks started off as sketches on Elektron hardware (the Digitakt/Syntakt/Digitone combo I posted last year), and really is the first time I’ve brought such sketches to a polished, complete finish in such a workflow. I found the transition from hardware to software presented some new challenges but also new possibilities, and I ended up trying to exploit the latter as much as possible – for example, treating the FX send track as an entirely separate element, sometimes even highlighting it in solo without its contributing sources.
The process of sequencing, designing and mixing these tracks was both therapeutic and rewarding to me. Broadly speaking I wrote this as much from the heart as the mind and I hope that sense is, at least to some degree, conveyed through the album itself.
I’m planning to push the Bandcamp release in a few days on 1/23, followed by Soundcloud, Spotify and the plethora of other streaming services the following Tuesday 1/30. I always seem to forget how much peripheral effort is needed to wrap up a release and push it live; sometimes I miss the old days where all I had to do was zip up a handful of .xm files and ftp them to scene.org, or hand edit an html file and link a 192kbps mp3 on my ISP-hosted website. But I suppose that is the price of convenience and relevance in 2024!
Edit: bandcamp release is now available!
Edit 2: Live on Spotify and Soundcloud!
Josh Barnett 