talking wounded solitude

It might be necessary to read the post about “and longing are the endless waves” for some context. In it I talked about how these 3 albums (and longing, greyness of a young despondency, and wounded solitude) were officially released on bandcamp on the same day. I also talked about how the original recordings suffered from some unusually unlistenable production. In september 2019 I remastered this whole album and you can hear it on my youtube chanel. I was actually going to release it on streaming services , and I’m still halfway uploading the audio to routenote, but then I heard “midwinter night” and all of the playing mistakes kind of bothered me so I stopped wanting to release it. But then I think that’s kind of silly. You might be wondering why I would leave mistakes in the recordings, or why would I upload something that probably sounds “unlistenable” as I say. I think unlistenable is kind of an exaggeration, but I eventually realized that I didn’t really like how it sounded when I finally was able to listen to all these old albums on “proper” mediums. I remember listening to wounded solitude on my TV, the thin and bodiless speakers of my TV, and thinking it sounded awesome. If right now I don’t care about “good” production, I cared even less at this time, because clearly I didn’t even noticed that something might have sounded strange.I genuinely didn’t hear anything wrong with anything when I would record and mix with my headphones and then casually listen to my music by connecting my laptop to my TV. maybe my ears weren’t sufficiently developed yet. Or maybe I just sincerely could not care less. The music sounds undeniably interesting and unique and I love it. When I “remaster” old songs I don’t really change anything about the production, I just make it a bit louder and take away some frequencies that sound annoying. The mistakes that are left in the recording are because, just like all of my music, everything is recorded by improvisation and impulse. I never actually come up with any parts before recording them, so there’s no practicing the takes ( I talk about this more in depth in earlier posts). Also when I’m making music I’m typically so distracted by my trance-like state that I don’t even notice when I make a mistake. “Perfection” in my music in my opinion is not achieved through professional recording and tedious practicing of a tediously composed “perfect” arrangement, but rather the perfect and most pure honest expression I could display. The less I care about or even think about these tedious aspects of music making the more perfect the music becomes. These songs are exactly what they need to be, simply because they come straight from my mind and my heart with absolutely no filter whatsoever. Caring about “clean production” is a filter that changes the pure essence of an honest idea. “Perfecting” a song by overthinking the arrangement, especially by spending long amount of time coming back to something that was created ages ago takes away from the purity of the song. I only truly care about pure things. Pure things are the only ones that satisfy me and interest me. I cannot be bothered by impurities and tediousity. This is why not only is my music so pure and careless, but it’s the only way I could even possibly make music. I do not have any capacity to try and “perfect” my ideas through these mundane efforts. If it can’t be done in a streamline manner then my brain rejects the process completely. All of my music follows this philosophy , and this is why there are often some minor mistakes left in the music , because I’m not focusing at all on that. I’m simply focusing on the purest aspec of the music. I;m just expressing. I’m just having fun. How boring and frustrating would it be to have to practice the drum parts or have to rerecord them a million times? I don’t have the patience for that. Obviously, egregious mistakes are never left in my music, and I often do have to redo takes that weren’t good enough, but if its something as minor as the mistakes you’ll hear on the album then they are unimportant and slip by me.

“December night… memory…

we were away in the distance

a place so desolate

but i had you

i had your hand to hold

aria cries…. it shivered this time

early december, where snow embraces something so delacate at the sunset’s fall we elope to that beautiful place

only us…

we hold

we dance

we kiss

we smile

we laugh

we cry

……. we love

and everything feels so perfect

solemn pain and fear, but we have eachother

and that’s all that really matters…”

There;s a certain way I wrote these lyrics in my notebook that added a dimension to the page. I can’t recreate that on a text document. In fact those extra words not even be on here. There’s a huge amount of context I could give about this song but it’s genuinely something really personal and sacred. The only person who knows and will ever know the true details about this song is my girlfriend, and when I explained the theme of song to her I probably spent like 2 hours talking about it. c I don’t know when exactly I made this song, it MIGHT have been from december 2014, but I really think that most of this album was made in january 2015. I can’t say for sure unless I check my computer files, which I can’t right now. Out of my own curiosity I will investigate when I can. I think the subtle ambient textures you hear are absolutely perfect and perfectly evocative. The intro and outro alone tell enough the entire story

“Some kind of helplessness

It’s all broken now…

Beyond what is all but fade and brittle cold

Paintings that bend

Photographs, burning

The solace of the calmest waves

Burying my sorrow to sleep

Only for a while…”

The title for this song comes from a lyric in warning’s “watching from a distance”. This song desperately needed the remaster. I don’t know why sometimes in my music the drums have a completely different sound than other times even though I don’t change anything about the recording set up. Maybe even just hanging the microphone a couple of inches lower from the ceiling is enough to make it sound as flat as it does on this song. Even the guitars on this sound sounded strange. I don’t know. I also don’t care. When i fixed up the mix on the 2019 remaster I can now say the song sounds great. There are some mistakes in the performance but that’s not a big deal. Like I mentioned before, I made up everything on the spot and I wasn’t going to be bothered by practicing the music before recording it. There’s an extra line from the lyrics that I didn’t share because it would be seriously oversharing, but this song is basically about the general way I was feeling at the time. Helpless, lost, lonely, grey. Part of me thinks that I recorded some of this song in october or november of 2014? Even december? I don’t know. I would have to check. I do vaguely remember working on it on my desktop which was placed on that desk in my basement and I only put it there for a short while in late 2014. I don’t know. When i think of wounded solitude I think of january 2015. It’s likely this song is from then, at least it was definitely finished around then, maybe february. When I think of january 2015 I think of cold grey lonely winter, and that’s exactly how this album feels, and this song as well. I once saw a video online of this gummy bear singing “I’m so happy cause I’m a gummy bare” and then getting caught in a beartrap and screaming violently. I sampled that scream somewhere in this song

“Fallen snow”

This is a piano improvistaion from that time. I remember playing my keyboard in my basement one night and feeling like I was outside on a snowy night. This was definitely recorded sometime when it already began to snow, but Itruly cant remember when

“Midwinter night”

I really love this song, but I honestly think I could have done a better job recording it. I made so many stupid mistakes in the second half with the drums. It’s kind of a shame because the idea is so good. I love the repetitive riff. This whole song feels and sounds EXACTLY like what january/february 2015 nights were like. Absolutely freezing weather, tons of snow on the ground, utter silence and a world only illuminated by the streetlights. When I recorded the guitars for this song I genuinely felt transported to this particular space I imagined in my head of being outside on a silent winter night and only seeing subtle light from the streetposts. It might be obvious but the repetitive riff during hte second half was hugely inspired by hypothermia. If only I hadn’t done sucha terrible job recording the drums. Clearly I was so distracted by what I was doing I couldn’t even notice how bad I was fucking up. Like i said before, I’m really in a trancelike state when I’m recording. If I had been in my 5 senses I would have paused the recording and tried again. Whatever. At least the ideas are really good. Like i mentioned in the intro listening to this song over when I was about to upload the album to spotify is what made me not want to upload it at all. I even just considered leaving it out all together. Idk. i’m listening to it now and I love the way all the instruments sound.

“Withering light shades upon fallen snow as the flame of a night

a night, tears silently reach for the embrace

coldness and my heart…

Wind caresses.. so softly painfully..

Shivering emotion.. black fallen in love

my hands, open, alone…”

I don’t really remember when I made this song but clearly in like january or february of 2015. I was definitely very inspired by all of my nighttime walks outside in winter, and through the forest

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“Desolace”

This song doesn’t have lyrics apparently, which means that I was just screaming during the whole song. This song perfectly captures a lonely winter night. The way things look, the utter silence and loneliness. There’s something so magical about winter nights, particularly the fact that absolutely no one is outside (except for me). This song is hugely inspired by my loneliness, winter, winter nights, and my desire to be loved