Hi all,
I just published a new full album! At the moment you can find it on my personal Faircamp instance, Bandcamp and Mirlo, but it should soon become available on the usual streaming sites as well (Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, etc.), besides my Bandwagon that I haven’t updated yet. It also contains a slightly remixed version of the Reluctance single I shared a few weeks ago, thanks to the blessed contributions by @slash.
While not a concept album per se, it’s a “conceptual” album, covering different feelings and emotions starting with the letter R, up until the very last song, the title track, which is kind of the “album epic” (clocking at about 19 minutes) that provides “closure”. Musically speaking, it’s partly a departure from my recent and more symphonic metal oriented efforts (like Cleopatra, Musae or my Metal Axemas EP), and kind of a return to more progressive rock roots, like my first albums Delusion’s Master and Rainmaker. That said, it’s a very varied album (maybe too much?), so there’s actually a bit of everything nevertheless as far as genres are concerned.
I also experimented more, this time, as there’s a couple of bigger changes:
- First and foremost, for guitars I didn’t use the Line6 X3 Live that I’ve used basically forever, but I used my newer DNAfx GiT Core multieffects processor. I struggled a bit finding sounds I liked among the presets, but I used a lot of them (even for sounds that you may not realize are actually guitars). Whether or not the end result was an improvement on my tone, I’ll let you decide!
- I made some substantial changes to my orchestral setup as well: where before I’d only use Virtual Playing Orchestra with a bit of KBH Strings, this time I spent a lot of time with Spitfire Audio’s free BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover VST. Eventually, rather than picking one over the other, I decided to simply use them both at the same time, in an attempt to provide richer texture to the different instrument sections. Again, not sure if that actually worked or if it all ended up sounding too messy and/or disjointed, but to my ears it sounded “better” so I stuck with it.
- I also pushed more on a more “cinematic” approach, using movie samples as interludes between songs, which I had only done for “Neon” in the “Rainmaker” album. I tried to find samples that fitted the transition from track to track, basically attempting to tell a “story”, if you will.
- After a long hiatus, I decided to try and get back to singing again: only a few phrases in a handful of songs, as I’m not really a singer, and I obviously tried to stick to that single octave where I can still sound decent
There’s also a few things that didn’t change: drums still suck, for instance; they’ve been an Achilles’ heel in my production for years, and I’m well aware the more “metal” sound of my drumkit of choice doesn’t really fit all the tracks in this album (especially considering how varied it is). I’ve already decided that in the next few months I’ll dig deeper in @GMaq’s AVL drumkits, especially after seeing some recent videos he published on new additions.
It goes without saying that this was all done (recording, mixing, mastering) in Ardour, more precisely Ardour 8.12.0 on my Fedora 41. I created new templates to accomodate the “extended” orchestra, and I love how quickly I can start working on things as soon as I feel the composition part is over!
That said, long story short, I really hope you’ll like this album, as I spent a lot of time working on it and it’s kinda personal as well. I’ve spent so much time on it that I can’t even be very objective about it: sometimes I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever composed and recorded, others all I can hear are its faults and songs I see as fillers. Please do feel free to be completely honest in your feedback, should you decide to listen to it!
If you got this far, thanks, I hope you’ll enjoy this!
