New album published: 3 7 4 11 2 5

My newest album is already available for free listening and download on Jamendo: 3 7 4 11 2 5 features six tracks, all entirely instrumental, with a radically more electronic and abstract sound than my previous releases. The title of the album is a numeric pattern used to determine most -- but not all! -- of the rhythmic aspects of the music in different scales, from within each individual measure, to the album as a whole. All of the melodies, harmonies, instrument choices and everything else were NOT generated algorithmically, however.

Stuff that happened since the last time I posted here

Yes, it's been a long time, I know.

Basically, three things are worth mentioning here:

1. Highways has been released, and like every other album I've made, is available for free download. I am pretty satisfied with the results, and I can safely say that, finally, I made justice to those old, old songs.
2. I've also released another album, called Eleven Gifts. It's not properly an "album", but a cycle of eleven very simple, very short pieces for solo piano. It was made in just three days in December, and the piece has a personal significance, but it's not that important. Some of those pieces are VERY old ideas that were finally worked into something complete and satisfactory.
3. I have reopened my album reviews's website! This is an old project of mine that I used to have, but it went offline due to a misfortune and I never had the opportunity to put it back online... until now! The reviews shall be added slowly and gradually, and there are very few so far. But it will grow -- I intend to put back all my old reviews, properly re-edited and rewritten as needed. It'll be fun! I'll stop putting review stuff here: all my new opinions will be published there. So check it out!

"Highways" -- progress!

I found I'm having a quite satisfactory progress with my current project. As I've stated in the past, I am working on a new album, which is actually the "definitive" issue of a little collection of blobs of sound I once used to call an "album" named Musics for Highways (sic), back from 2002 or something like that. I'm happy with how it's coming along; right now I'm in the stage of tinkering and recording the instruments, without much worry about mixing. For people who never heard the old songs, it'll be quite a shock to compare these songs with my previous albums.

Maybe by the middle of the year I'll have it done, or at least pretty much done. And I've already got a project on the queue. Things look great.

Last time I talked about this project, I was anxiously waiting for Autechre's Oversteps. Guess what? The album's excellent.

Update on my next album: Of How a World Is Built

Hold your horses: the thing still has a LONG way ahead before it can be considered finished. Still, I feel confident enough to give some info on how it's coming along.

This album has been a real headache. I'll be honest. Big Robot, Little Robot was challenging, tricky, somewhat time-consuming and sometimes frustrating to make. This bastard, though, is just time-consuming beyond all imagination. But then again, whose fault is it other than mine? I can't complain. The problem, basically, is that the songs are LONG, the arrangements are THICK, and the requirements I've set to myself are way beyond what I did on the previous album: brass, woodwind and string ensembles in nearly every song? Check; complicated and carefully balanced quiet/loud and slow/fast dynamics? Check; breakcore section with dozens of different drum sounds? Check; pseudo-neo-classical collages and juxtaposition of parts? Check. Yeah, all that and a bit more

Good news, though: the album IS progressing. My initial plans were to first write the album ENTIRELY, and only then start the recording. I felt that mixing those two processes was slowing me down and sidetracking me, so I decided to keep the recording details for later, until I had all the melodies, arrangements and instrument parts worked out. The result is that the songs are all in a pretty advanced state. Here's a rundown:

1. roughly 12 minutes long. Nearly finished. Only a few parts left to write and details to fix.


2. about 9 minutes long. Almost finished. A couple of parts left to write.


3. about 8 minutes long. Very advanced. A couple of difficult parts left to work out and closing portions left to write.


4. about 14 minutes long. Pretty much finished. Probably nothing left to write.


5. about 16 minutes long. Advanced. Several difficult parts left to work out, but might be more simple than I estimate.

As you can see, the whole thing will be about 60 minutes long. I had planned another 40 minute album or so, but the songs turned out to need more than that.

Anyway, I have now broken the plan to keep the recording stage for later. I'm already setting down the recordings for the first track, and let me tell you: I'm quite impressed. I had never imagined that I'd ever be able to make my MIDI works sound so vigorous, dynamic and convincing. I'm trying pretty hard to keep myself away from making it sound "realistic", because that was never my goal. The sounds, however, are very alive. The drums are amazingly dynamic and responsible; the guitars sound pretty thick, without falling headfirst into Uncanny Valley (at least it seems to ME); there are sampled MELLOTRONS, produced by a freeware VSTi called Tapeworm, by Tweakbench. Seriously, I'm really excited by it.

As for the title, I have settled with Of How a World Is Built (Music Without Emotion) several months ago. The primary title is justified by its "concept" (hint: it sort of follows the trend of the previous album), and the secondary title is something I've been carrying for a pretty long time, and I think this album is just the right one to put it in. The thing will be explained later on. The main point of this post is to inform that, yes, I'm STILL working. Maybe way slower than I wish, since college and work take away much of my time, and this album is littered with "dead ends" that I have to beat. But I'm doing it. Maybe by the end of the year I'll have a finished product, or something very, very close to it.

And, if my mood is good enough, I might put up the first track for a sneak preview once it's finished.