Hey all,
after what feels like way too long, I finally finished my new album, “Loser”, more than a year after R U There? came out. It’s available on my own Faircamp instance, and for purchase on both Bandcamp and Mirlo.
It in part borrows the conceptual approach of “R U There?”, as where that album was a collection of emotions starting with the letter ‘R’, in “Loser” all songs start with an ‘L’ instead: the ‘L’ of “Loser”. If you buy the album on Bandcamp, there will be a bonus track too, called “Luck of the Draw”. A pathetic attempt to try and boost sales, I know 
I’ll probably share that song somehow for everyone to hear in the future, but for the moment it made sense to do it that way.
When it comes to the production of the album, as I explained when sharing Luminaires as a single (which is is part of this album too), a lot changed in my workflow since my latest album, which ended up changing a lot not only in how I composed/recorded/mixed everything, but also in how the album sounded.
Guitars and basses are now played using a second-hand Kemper I bought from a friend last year, which took a while to accustomize to. I think I still don’t understand much of it, but I like the flexibility it gave me, and the change in how I thought of guitar processing. I think the bass in particular benefited from the change, as it didn’t really have much space in the last album unfortunately.
Drums were another big change. Historically, how drums sounded was always something people critiqued about my work, which made sense. After some time of research and many experiments, I landed on the Tchimera kit by Michael Willis, which I think was an amazing choice. Again, it took some time to figure out how to use it properly, but I think it ended up sounding great in an album that crosses so many different genres. And, considering I’m also using Dragonfly Reverb and based my orchestral Ardour template on his, I’m starting to think Michael’s work is probably the most important in my music workflow!
Last but not least, though, the biggest change was in the orchestral libraries. I talked a lot in the past about the orchestral workflow I used so far, which saw its “summa” in “R U There?” with a blend of Virtual Playing Orchestra and BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover. That sounded fine, IMHO, but as I said in my FOSDEM presentation, I really wanted to give Musescore 4, and Muse Sounds in particular, a try too. And the moment I did, well, I have no problem saying I was actually blown away. It sounded orders of magnitude better than anything I had managed to do until then. It stirred creative juices inside me, and after I started digging more in four-part harmony, I started getting results I liked a lot. “Luminaires” was the first of those experiments, and I’m still excited about how it came out.
Long story short, all those changes had a big impact on the process of working on the album. It of course meant more time to actually work on it, since there were many roadblocks due to those many changes that impacted my usual composition “routine”. It also meant the album ended up becoming way more orchestral than I had originally planned, with guitars often getting in the background, or not there at all. It’s a more melancholic album, and less heavy than anything I’ve shared so far: I think there’s maybe only one “metal” song. The rest are much more in the vein of progressive rock, symphonic rock, or basically orchestral/world music. That said, guitars are very much there: maybe less virtuoso than usual, but I’m happy with the solos I added there.
It’s also the first album where I played more than just guitars or bass. One track in particular has me playing the chromatic harmonica, which came out way better than I thought. I wanted to play the flute too, as I’ve been taling lessons, but admittedly I’m still not to the point where I can do it convincingly: so the solo flute parts you’ll head are actully from Muse Sounds too.
One thing that didn’t change, of course, is Ardour! I used Ardour 9 for mixing and mastering.
I think that’s all. I honestly hope you’ll enjoy this album: there’s a few songs I can’t wait to hear your feedback about, as they’re dear and close to my hard. As usual, please do let me know your feedback about it, both good and bad: with so many things changing from the past, I want to know what worked and what didn’t, and if the songs came out as nicely as I hoped.