2,2 mil palabras en 22 entradas.

Time and Tide Listen on: Bandcamp, YouTube (lista de reproducción), Spotify y Apple Music

Circlejourney:

An album one year in the making.

Circlejourney: (booklet commentary)

TO THE PERSON READING THIS,

Thank you for listening to Time and Tide! (If you’ve somehow come upon this booklet by itself, here’s a link to the album.)

Here’s what I was up to when I wasn’t responding to your Discord messages or toiling away at my freelance work.

I’ve been putting out yearly music compilations for several years now, and this album is my slightly-late 2017 comp. You can expect a plethora of styles: synthpop, orchestral, jazz, and combinations of the above.

I’m glad I’ve been able to put this together, even with my life taking new turns, and new obligations emerging constantly. Music is a comforting spot of familiarity amid all the change.

To everyone who helped and supported me throughout the production of this album, whether by helping me or simply by encouraging me—Skip, Veri, Asprg, Kim, Yanperng, Yvonne, Alfonse, Hej, Waff, OP, Njike, the rest of the Root Crew, Split, Jo, Roxe, Poize, Austin, Poe, my parents, and everyone else who was there for me in some way—my biggest thank you!

Circlejourney

Circlejourney: (booklet commentary)

Generally speaking, all the bonus tracks were originally intended to be featured on the main album. But things change, and sometimes you make enough decent tracks to displace this many to the bonus section. Think of it as a side B or a collection of album rejects.

Timekeeper Listen on: Bandcamp, YouTube, Spotify y Apple Music

Circlejourney: (booklet commentary)

I have always believed that Frost and Clockwork, an earlier track of mine, was a good concept wasted on sub-par production. For that reason, I’ve made numerous variations on that concept ever since. Timekeeper, with its tongue-in-cheek former title Ice Horologue, is perhaps the most fully-realised variation

It features the “Never Gonna Give You Up progression” that I’ve become mildly infamous for overusing. That progression represents a very particular mood to me, shaped by Vanessa Carlton’s A Thousand Miles rather than Rick Astley’s classic. (Prepare to find out over the course of this booklet just how big of a fan I am of mainstream pop.)

The character in the illustration to the left is the first of a few track gijinka that I’ve designed for this album. They’re some sort of deity whom I refer to as the Timekeeper, a being in charge of keeping the inner mechanisms of time well-oiled and running.

SPECIAL THANKS

Splitsuns for production feedback on this track!

Zeitgeist Listen on: Bandcamp, YouTube, Spotify y Apple Music

Circlejourney: (booklet commentary)

I had a lot of fun making Zeitgeist, possibly more than I did on any other track on this album. The bassline is inspired by (and indeed the creation of the whole track was precipitated by) the chorus of Boney M’s Rasputin. There you go, now you’ll never be able to unhear it.

To me, the track evokes the feel of a decade past, although I can’t pinpoint which one that is. It has that funky bass, a twenty-piece string ensemble, an erhu, white noise effects, bitcrushing, goodness knows what’s going on in here.

As a play on both track and title (“zeitgeist” literally translates to “time ghost”), the art features a clock and a hoverboard surfer straight out of Back To The Future. Probably a second-rate professional time-traveller.

Nighttime cityscapes are a favourite subject of mine, and here I thought it would really fit the feel of the track: metropolitan, up-tempo, and retrofuturistic.

Cosmic Significance Listen on: Bandcamp, YouTube, Spotify y Apple Music

Circlejourney:

This track was also released on the Vast Error fan album, Vast Error Vol. 3.

Vast Error is a webcomic by Austinado and Sparaze that can be read here: mspfa.com?s=2302

Circlejourney: (booklet commentary)

I wear my Celtic Woman influence on my sleeve. The solo violin on harp/string ensemble gradually joined by drums, the frequent borrowing from Dorian mode...yeah, that’s Celtic Woman-style, alright.

To understand what the track is really about, you have to read Austinado and Sparaze’s comic, Vast Error. It’s good, I highly recommend it. In summary, this track is about the players of the game looking on at their universe-changing destiny, which has existed eons longer than they have, and wondering how they will contend with it.

Who’s that in the art, then? To avoid unintentional copyright infringement, I decided to make it a drawing of me.

CREDITS

This track was also released on Vast Error Vol. 3.

Vast Error is a webcomic by Austinado and Sparaze.

SPECIAL THANKS

Austinado and Sparaze for creating Vast Error, and for granting me the permission to include a track inspired by it on this album.

The Palace Greenhouse Listen on: Bandcamp, YouTube, Spotify y Apple Music

Circlejourney: (booklet commentary)

This track is a bit of an outlier: it’s almost purely a string ensemble piece with concessions to a bass drum and a snare, making it more exception than norm on this album composed largely of synth orchestrals.

A tie-in to my novel Eagles and Swans (which most listeners haven’t read, I wager), it’s a track about a garden within the greenhouse of the palace complex, where one of the main characters likes to read on weekends. It’s stately, calm, and gives way to an interlude with a solo violin melody that, in my opinion, is the highlight of the track.

All in all, this is probably the closest thing to a filler track on this album, just something connecting two parts of the album together. The next track is more interesting, I guarantee you.

Sidecar Swing Listen on: Bandcamp, YouTube, Spotify y Apple Music

Circlejourney: (booklet commentary)

This one’s got a bit of a story to it. I initially meant for Sidecar Swing to be a short, simple experiment with a 20s jazz-style piece, the sort you might hear playing at a party or in a saloon.

The instant I had that imagery in my head, I started to picture mini-stories to accompany it, surrounding a speakeasy where people go to live the lives they may not live anywhere else.

Pictured in the track illustration is a pair of characters from one of the ideas I had while pondering the setting: a couple of flappers who regularly meet at the speakeasy, romancing each other and parting only when the sun comes up.

Chariot Listen on: Bandcamp, YouTube, Spotify y Apple Music

Circlejourney:

This track will be released on a future Handshake Collaborations album.

Circlejourney: (booklet commentary)

Speaking of Celtic-inspired new age music…

Chariot is about the sun. The title references the god Helios, and the track itself is a riff on the structure and style of Reel Around the Sun, one of my favourite works of music, with a spacey touch introduced by the glitching.

The art was initially created not for Chariot, but for a different track that was meant to be on this album, but which I am unable to release. I think the subject matters are similar enough that the image still fits. (I like making music about space, surprise surprise.)

For those to whom this makes sense: Chariot is technically in the D-sharp Aeolian dominant scale, but I like to think of it as being in D-sharp minor with the tonic triad always being borrowed from D-sharp major.

CREDITS

This track will be featured on an upcoming charity album by Handshake Collaborations, with extended commentary. Handshake Collaborations is a group of artists, musicians and writers from around the world creating stuff together!

SPECIAL THANKS

Helena Ruth and the people at Handshake Collaborations for agreeing to let me feature this on Time and Tide before their album’s release.

Evening Song Listen on: Bandcamp, YouTube, Spotify y Apple Music

Circlejourney: (booklet commentary)

Evening Song is the only track on this album composed for the art rather than the other way around.

Inspired by the intro of Tender by Yvette Young, it was an experiment in a style that had so far eluded me, with a solo melody on top of guitar broken chords, completely devoid of drums.

Ultimately, I still gave in to the temptation of sticking drums into the track, towards the end.

The guitarist in the art is the imaginary guitarist of the track. If I’d had the idea sooner, I would have added some aural indication that the piece is being played at the seaside, as shown in the image.

Pick a City Listen on: Bandcamp, YouTube, Spotify y Apple Music

Circlejourney: (booklet commentary)

This was me noodling with the synths in FL Studio, trying to make something as sweet and bubblegummy as the shade of pink in the illustration.

I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t inspired by Carly Rae Jepsen if I tried. The title itself is based on a lyric from her song Picture. I can’t say what specific genre it’s reminiscent of, but it was a sincere attempt to make something that would sound vaguely at home on a J-pop playlist.

There’s a bit going on here synth-wise: it was the first time I’d tried making a more complex strum pattern, which you can hear in the last third of the track. There’s also a generous helping of sound effects: bicycle bells, the crows synth (one of my favourites), and the water drop effect for example.

SPECIAL THANKS

Splitsuns for the invaluable production feedback on this track, and helping me iron out some modulations!

Emptiness Listen on: Bandcamp, YouTube, Spotify y Apple Music

Circlejourney:

This track was also released on INHOSPITABLE Volume 1: Consciousness

INHOSPITABLE is a webcomic by Roxanne Heikens that can be read at inhospitablecomic.mspfa.com.

Circlejourney: (booklet commentary)

This track was part of a music compilation for INHOSPITABLE, a comic by my friend Roxe. It’s a image-rich, dialogue-light story, and you’ll come to notice the eerie greyscale static and the silence that characterise a great part of the webcomic.

Something about TV static inspires in me a sense of intrigue, about what’s hiding behind it, what message, garbled by interference from space, is struggling to take form and make itself seen. Emptiness is about all that, the lost information, the void, the spaces and silence.

The character? Once again a representation of the music, gazing down upon a black hole as it guzzles light and information.

NOTES

This track was also released on INHOSPITABLE Volume 1: Consciousness.

INHOSPITABLE is a webcomic by Roxanne Heikens.

SPECIAL THANKS

Roxe for creating the beautiful webcomic INHOSPITABLE, and for allowing me to include this track on the album.

The World as We Know It Listen on: Bandcamp, YouTube, Spotify y Apple Music

Circlejourney: (booklet commentary)

The World as We Know It was initially made for an earlier project, but when that fell through, I repurposed it for this one.

This track is a wistful contemplation of the earth—temporary, fragile, full of vivid sensory experiences, but ultimately lonely.

Would intelligent life from elsewhere know the beauty of the sunset? Would they even be able to perceive it, or fathom beauty at all? The notion must be confronted, then, that we may be the only beings who will ever experience what we call beauty.

This tracks’ gijinka character is inspired by a cherry blossom petal, everyone’s favourite symbol of life’s transience.

NOTES

This track quotes Homestuck Anthem by Clark Powell, released on Homestuck Vol. 5.

Homestuck is a webcomic by Andrew Hussie.

SPECIAL THANKS

Clark Powell for granting me permission to include the track on this album.

Frosted Glass Listen on: Bandcamp, YouTube, Spotify y Apple Music

Circlejourney: (booklet commentary)

Another track from the same abandoned project that The World as We Know It was meant to be released on, Frosted Glass quotes two of my old tracks: Frost and Clockwork (again) and Hyalomancy. The title is a combination of the titles of both. I always thought the two were oddly compatible, and this piece bears that out.

Just like the previous track, Frosted Glass is nostalgic in both style and content, sort of an account of gazing through broken windows into a blurry past with a distinct sense of loss for what one left behind there.

It’s inspired, as a lot of my work is, by the works of Joe Hisaishi, legendary composer of the soundtracks of such films as Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. His work formed the soundtrack of much of my childhood and was one of several things that inspired my love for the major pentatonic scale.

It was incredibly satisfying to draw and adjust blending modes on the glass shards in the image, which form a half-mask over the face.

Shipwreck Listen on: Bandcamp, YouTube, Spotify y Apple Music

Circlejourney: (booklet commentary)

Here is the obligatory sea-themed track on this album!

Moving on is a common theme in songs, and I thought this made Shipwreck particularly fitting as a closer.

This was written about confronting the departure of someone who used to be an anchoring force in your life. I did have two particular people in mind when I wrote the lyrics, but the specifics of that don’t quite matter.

The vocals, being mine, are far from what I’d like them to be (and in all honesty it’s still difficult for me to share my singing voice), but I hope you like it nevertheless!

NOTES

Additional composition and production by SerialSymphony.

SPECIAL THANKS

SerialSymphony for your tireless help, support and enthusiasm for my projects. <3

All Things Grow Towards the Sun

Circlejourney: (booklet commentary)

Originally the album’s opener, I ultimately set it aside as I made new tracks that were similar in style but exceeded it in quality. Several people have mentioned that it sounds like something from Undertale; personally I just see it as yet another variation on the Frost and Clockwork theme (F&C was also referred to by many as being reminiscent of the Undertale soundtrack, so that’s no surprise).

Waterside Sunset

Circlejourney: (booklet commentary)

A rearrangement of an old piece of music under the same title, found on my album Coastal Dreaming. I was always fond of the melody and instrumentation on that piece and it was the first thing I tried remaking after upgrading my instruments. The track sounds a lot closer to what I envisioned now, though I miss the in-your-face timbre of the original instruments.

Dirty Dirge

Circlejourney: (booklet commentary)

This one was made for no rhyme or reason; the melody came to me, and I liked it and built the rest of the track around it. Brash and very hard-rock, I didn’t feel like I could do it justice until I got my hands on some better instruments. It was almost a year before I took it the draft and finished it up. Later on, I decided to make it a song played by a band formed of a few of my characters.

Wineglasses

Circlejourney: (booklet commentary)

A soft lounge jazz piece that’s just missing the sound of clinking glasses over it. Its original title was Wineglasses on Red Stone, conjuring a very specific image (or at least intended to) of a table made of blood-red stone. I made the whole thing on a whim and it materialised in barely an hour; I’m not letting it on the main album by virtue of how little effort it took.