talking and longing are the endless waves

This is the first sadness album where I actually made the cover. For a long time I used to just borrow images I would find on the internet that inspired me or somewhat matched what I imagined for the cover, so much more closely than anything I would ever have the capacity to make. The photo I took on some beach somewhere, likely wisconsin but could have been michigan. I’m pretty sure it was that one time in june 2013 I went to this lake in wisconsin. The photo is pretty heavily edited, even stretched out and mirrored at the top with the sky, in such a way that kind of looks like actual water waves. This probably wasn’t intentional. I do really love how it turned out, and how being removed from anything you’d see in reality it adds this magical dimension towards something only I can see. I released this on march 6 2015. if you were around at the time youll remember that on that same day I released two other sadness albums. As always, I’m constantly working on many different projects at once, and they happened to be finished and ready at around the same time, but I know that I am also very particular about numbers and colors, and the order in wh ich albums are released needs to be very special. And longing are the endless waves is blue, in the color of the music as well as the color of the cover, and the number 4 is blue (it’s more dark blue, but the light blue works). The other two albums I released needed to be 5 and then 6, so it’s likely that I had already finished those albums before march 6th but needed to release and longing are the endless waves first to satisfy the order. I dont remember how it went, but I know that the order of the first 8 sadness albums was entirely intentional. I remastered this album, and what you hear on bandcamp and spotify is the remastered version. The original version genuinely is kind of unlistenable. I love badly recorded music, but the way some of the old materal is “badly recorded” is plainly unlistenable, mainly with the high frequencies and piercing frequency spikes in the reverb that I didn’t hear at the time, and lack of mastering and volume/dynamic corrections. What i mean is that even the loudest parts of the track aren’t all that loud, the quiet parts are way too quiet, and the only time the volume hits 0db on the master output is during short spikes which completely steal all of the headroom from the rest of the song. I would bounce these songs from garageband and “normalize” the audio, but that just means that the absolute loudest part was 0db , but that could easily have been an untintentionally loud moment, leaving everything else extremely quiet. My music from 2013/early 2014 before its remastering suffered from this terribly. Everything I know about recording and producing music is trial and error, and all of my old music (even current music) are basically like demos and test subjects while I learned how to make things sound more the way I want. I truly love the way these songs sound, but the high frequencies I didn’t like so much, which is why I remastered the album (as well as actually limiting the audio volume so it could be consistent and as loud as other albums you hear). The remastered version probably sounds muffled but that’s because in general I really dont like high frenqcuencies. The high frequencies on these albums also came mostly from the cymbals on my drums (which were pretty badly recorded, for some reaosn the drums on this album sounded way more harsh than other material from that time, which is odd because I placed the microphone in the same places). I love lo if music, but not all lofi recordings are the same. Clearly. Abandoning the idea that music needs to sonud well produced opens up the possibility of infinitely more soundscapes and atmospheres. Not everything I’m going to like. I feel like the original recording of this album didn’t exactly hit the kind of lofi I enjoy, and really that was just because of thehigh frequencies that were extremely harsh, and they were mostly harsh because of the reverb too. It was like clashing metal and distorted amp feedback in a shower with marble tiling. In a way its interesting, but I wasnt the most happy with it. At the time I made the album (17) I dind’t see anything wrong with how it sounded, for one I’ve never truly cared that much for “good” produciton value, but also I didn’t have the ears to hear details in music that I would develop later on. It wouldn’t be until early 2016 that I would actually buy monitors to make music with, so at this time I was literally either using some headphones or the speakers that came straight from the computer, which obviously don’t let you hear accurately what’s going on. In general when I “remaster” old music, I don’t actually change anything intrinsically about it. The atmospheres and details stay the same, I just fix the volume and control frequencies I don’t like. This is why the remaster sounds kind of muffled (most of my music probably does) but I honestly really like the sound of kind of lo-passed music. I absolutely love the absence of high frequencies on tape recordings, especially on really old recordings from like the 20s. I love how hidden and mysterious and warm it feels. It feels so elusive. I typically odn’t like it when details are so crisp and obvious. I like drenching everything about my music in mystery, and this includes the discernemtent of melodies, the sounds, what the drums are doing.. Letting it sound like you have the privilege to hearsomething so reserved. My music is naturally as introverted as I am, so I never had the desire of making it sound “obvious”. It sounds obvious in exactly the way it’s supposed to. I’m actually very happy with how the album sounds after the remaster. There are some playing mistakes but it doesn’t matter that much. This is what happens when all the music recorded by impulse. What you hear on the recordings of any my songs is the first and last time I have ever played those guitar parts, simply because I don’t ever compose anthing before recording it. I’m bound to make mistakes this way, and most of the time I don’t even notice them when I’m playing. This impulsive and improvisational way of recording music makes me able to meditate. Genuinely when I’m making songs (especially these odler songs) I was completely in a trance. I wasn’t thinking about remembering how to play something (because there was nothing to remember). I was so deep in this trance that I don’t even notice nor care if I make a little mistake. The intention behind all the music I play/record isn’t even making something “good” or “perfect”, most of the time it is just to be expressive, to flow, to streamline my emotions and my energy. To have fun. It’s also very tedious to have to practice something a bunch of times to make you you “got it down”. I could never be bothered by such monotonous tasks. I only acted as naturally as I could. My music always seems to follow the natural order of my hyperactivity and disorganization. Really all the songs I ever make are just pastimes.things I do with my time and with the endless dense flow of thoughts and feelings in my head. I’ve never seen my music as tasks, especially not during this time. I’ve always felt the internal pressure of knowing I have unfinished projects and wanted to attend to everything, and I guess in that way my music is sort of an assignment, but the whole reason I do any of this in the first place is because it’s just simply what I tend towards. In everything I do i aspire to become unaware, so music has always been the perfect passtime for me. I don’t need to think about it. And the end result is something so pure and special

The first song “as brooding light” is my favorite. There’s some distant magic that I could always hear whispering to me in the swirling colors of an endless burning sunset, and I feel like everuthing about this song touches that exactly. Especially the second half. I feel like I’m ascending into the sky.

December

The mid autumn warmth

of a distant memory I shared alone

Its beauty

It cries

I cry with

and somehow, I feel so alone

Burning like the dusk that shed all my tears

All my tears that fell so silently

like the loudest things no one knows with me

I want to fly.. the sky calls me

I can’t check the exact day I was making this, but it was likely in december (simply based on the lyrics). It could have been even november. I definitely don’t think it was past december though, this was definitely 2014. But it was definitely during autumn still, no snow had fallen yet. The energy the flows into this song is, the best way i could describe it, damian during late 2014. There are may inexplicable feelings I would feel when I was 17 and the only way I could describe them is through the music itself. This song truly has something magical in it. In the distance I can feel the colors from sounds and spaces that have burned marks in me from many years ago when I listen to this song. I’m not sure what else to say that wouldn’t be oversharing.

The second song “as I long” probably doesn’t have any lyrics. I tried looking for them but there’s nothing in my archives. I probably didn’t scream any lyrics at all, but part of me feels like I did. I don’t know, but in any case if I do have lyrics they are at my house and I’m not at my house to share them. This song was actually recorded on a newer version of garageband than everything else. Literally everything i ever recorded for anything ever was on the old i’m garageband from like 2005. Some of my songs I would record on my desktop computer or my laptop, but then in december of 2014 (probably for christmas, or maybe not idk) I got a newer desktop wich came with the newer garageband version. The newer version had more synth sounds and amp sims. I wouldn’t ever use this new version of garageband , I don’t know why. I think I like the old garageband more anyway, but I think that I recorded “As I long” on the new gargaeband because I liked this one synth that was on there, which is the synth you hear at the beginning of the song. I even used different amp sims for the guitars that came from the new version of garageband. This song feels very slow and repetitive, but I guess I liked how that reminded me of my general longing. It feels like it lasts forever, slowly, and it’s always the same, so repetitive. This wasn’t a conscious decision to connect these ideas for a “bigger picture’. I think I came up with the name “as I long’ because of how longing the music sounds, but I really dont remember much. This song was probably recorded in late december of 2014, I kind of don’t feel ike it was in 2015, but it’s possible it was like late winter 2015? I don’t know. I can’t check but now that I think about it i’m curious to find out

Melancholie, und die Hoffnung des Horizonts

Ich blicke…

Alle die Sterne des Horizonts erscheinen in meine Traurigkeit

Und das Abendrot verbrennt

Alleine mit den Blumen

Im Dunkeln scheint ihre Farben

Und meine Seele… In ihrer Sehnsucht

Die Wehmut…

If you actually speak german this might sound pretty underwhelming. When I was 16 and 17 I was utterly in love with german. I spent a lot of energy learning it, and I became pretty good at understanding it after a while. There were a few songs I would actually write lyrics to in german but I don’t believe they were that good, probably weren’t even grammatically correct. If you speak german let me know how this sounds. Despite being extremely limited in my capacity to express myself using german, I still really wanted to write things in german just bcause I loved it so much

The song title means “melancholy, and the hope of the horizon” something like that

“I look

All the horizonstars appear in my sadness

And the autumn red burns

Alone with the flowers

Their colors shine in the darkness (i should have written scheinen)

And my soul… in her longing

The melancholy”

When I recorded the music I was very nostalgic about the sound of my recordings back in 2012, when even the guitars were recorded on a rock band microphone. I tried to emulate that sound by recording the guitars in the same way , but for some reason it sounded nothing like it used to. In fact it sounded way worse. The guitars sounded strange, but when I remastered the album I kind of let all the instruments marry more, and muffled the unpleasant harsh frequencies in the guitars. In the end i think it sounds interesting, and something I really like about recording music in such a crude way is that you can guarantee that no other musican will make anything that sounds like it, ever, not even myself. When music is crisp clear production it’s very easy to emulate another artists sound, but in order to make another album that sounds like “and lonigng are the endless waves” you not only would have to have my ear and intentions towards capturing certain feelings, you would literally have to record the instruments in exactly the poor and unprofessional way that I did, in exactly the same space too. This song had some clean vocals on the original recording, but when I remastered the album I couldn’t find the clean vocals so i just left them out. They werne’t that noticeable. I don’t remember when I made this exactly, I think it might have been around late october? Or sometime in november. I definitely finished it by the time it was nearing the release date. I’ll have to check later

"ever mendless memory, aflame

I’m not really going to talk about this song. I do remember making this in october of 2014, around the same time as “something hurts”. In face the garageband session was originally titled “octover” but there was never any intention for that to be the official title

On the remastered version of the album that you hear on spotify and even as bonus tracks on bandcamp there are two extra tracks

“Fade away”

This is a song that I was making at the same time as the others, sometime in october. I remember because I tend to move my things around all the time and I remember my computer being in that one specific corner of my basement that I recorded the vocals for “la poca esperanza”. I think I thought this song was cool but never actually got around to finishing it, most likely i would have imagined adding vocals or someting, even rerecording the drums which sounded kinda rough. But many many years later when I decided to remaster the album I realized I kinda like the song as it is, and why would i try to touch something from 2014 in 2019?I could never recreate that time and space, so I left the song as is. “Fade away” was the file name for the garageband session (in reality it was more like “Fadwq aywaay” or something like that because I could never be bothered to type anything patiently everm, not even these patreon posts, most of the errors get autocrrected by the laptop keyboard I’m using)

“Cry…”

This song did appear on the original release, but only as a bonus track on the CD version. Again, to make the physical release more special and unique. The original recording of this song sounds really, really bad. If you own an original CD of this album you’ll understand. The remaster fixes things up a bit though, but you’ll hear a lot of little mistakes, again that I rally don’t care about that much. This song doesnt have any lyrics, I just sat in my basement and screamed and cried like a baby. The song is simply about crying and being sad, something I was very good at