more about the ones worth saving
album art for the ones worth saving
I've grown a lot in my music production skills since I started composing these albums around 2018/2019. I've had this idea on the back-burner for awhile: continuing with my recent trend of remastering older tracks, I've done exactly that again and remastered several tracks off my first album. these tracks are the titular ones worth saving (though i like how vaguely poetic the album title is). most of these are off my first solo album, from when i was only beginning to learn reaper as a daw and, unfortunately, that album is unlistenable for me anymore. track 5 (winter mountains) is from my winter solstice album. track 6 (astrophobia) is an unreleased cut from my first album.
I’d wanted to make entirely new music, but i figured I’d bang this out real quick while traveling for work. I don’t want to doxx myself but I’m in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do at a sub-par motel and terrible weather, so it’s the perfect environment to knock this out in a few days (I think it took 3 half-days?). I made this just as much for me as anyone else - all of the music I’ve released is because I want to make stuff that I want to listen to, and I’ve been jamming this all day while publishing it.
Some new fun facts about these tracks: Maiden Voyage is inspired by one of my college band’s songs (would have been from 2011/2012), and Engines Ready was written around a riff I used in high school when playing with high school friends (would have been from 2007/2008ish). Astrophobia is the previously unreleased track, and it’s heavily inspired by Voodoo by Godsmack and Intermission by Tool. I composed that one as part of the Music For Ghosts in Space album but it didn’t make the cut along with about three other tracks. I was listening to a lot of the Night in the Woods OST when I composed this in 2019, and while the original album holds more of it, I think it’s evident that Indefinite Infinity was written with Astral Alley on my mind. At the time, I loved the instrumentation in the Astral tracks. It’s harder to want listen to that music today.
The album art uses eight 1” by 1” ink drawings I made as part of a monthly challenge in 2019ish. The top row is all from coffee shops, though I forget where. Top center may even be from a library, I forget. Middle left, lower center, and lower right I believe to be views from a specific coffee shop in NoVA. Bottom left is an unknown woman at SPX that I ended up turning into a linocut print. Center middle is Paul Cooper’s house from Darkseed 2, complete with lawn furniture on the roof. Looks like I just can’t escape that game. The sky behind the artwork is from a photo I took at the Arboretum in DC during the winter, above the Capital Columns.