Nothing Left To Lose, Part Two

It's a sunny, beautiful Sunday, and even though it's almost brutally hot, I'm working outside, waiting for the coffee to finish brewing. Last night, I opened a tab to "new post" here, so that I would stop forgetting to write this article. It's been a while in coming, as I was thwarted in publishing this album at my store by a dead computer in need of a new charger, and now it's been a few days - like a week - since I got it up there. I've also been struggling with a lack of motivation. There was quite a while after With Love, Catatonia during which I wasn't even writing new music; normally, I'd have songs lined up even while promoting for a new EP or album. The songs have been slow in coming these days. I am, however, starting to diligently make it a practice that I'll work on music every day, no matter what aspect. Even writing this article counts (posting on social media, however, does not). Originally it was a goal to have a new full-length album ready for publication by July 30th, the anniversary of Elemental and Dialectical Observations. Now I've pushed it back to the more likely and looser time period of sometime-this-winter.

This album was also a little slow in coming. To be frank I'm not that impressed with my new label, Rehegoo, so far. I'm sticking with it because I want the full experience (and if there's a chance of licensing my music to a third party, then it might be worth it) but I've yet to see much in the way of promotion for Nothing Left To Lose, Part One and I had to get on their ass to get Part Two published. However, they have put both "The Seventh Swan" and "Wrong Pocket Kinda Day" - both from this half of the album, somewhat ironically - on compilation albums that, from what I can see, has totally boosted the awareness of those songs, and in turn, my music.

So, to get you up to speed: Nothing Left To Lose has been a long time gestating, from my very first EP. The track list has been tested in some form or other, mostly on my Patreon patrons, over the past three years. I finally drew a line in the sand as to what could be included after the EP Elemental, focusing mainly on the essentials from my first five albums, and I decided it needed to be limited to twenty tracks - a difficult feat, as I had produced somewhere over a hundred songs. But a demo was locked into place for a good while, and I was waiting for some occasion to publish it. I'd hoped to put it out on physical media, like CDs and vinyl. I'm still a ways off from my being able to fund that independently. But hey, I'm no longer entirely independent! I decided signing on with a label was just the catalyst needed for publication.

Without planning to, it seems I put most of the "hits" (on regular radio rotation) on the first half. There's still some songs, on here, that are being played by one station or another. "Wrong Pocket Kinda Day," "The Seventh Swan," and "Matriculating" still pop up every now and then on indie radio. And "The Cloud Walkers" and "Fistfuls of Whimsy" had their time in the sun. I think of the former three as being more radio-friendly ambient pop, while the latter two are more esoteric and epic in nature. So there's half of this second part of the album that has seen mass exposure - nothing to sneer at. Oh, I almost forgot about "The Nocturnal Dervish." It was my most popular song for quite a while, and it also saw some airplay on Darkwave Radio, the first station to play my music.

I guess "Dervish" makes a good segue to briefly go over each song on the track list. "Dervish" started life as a dark piano ballad called "Dusk Devils." After a stepping-stone remix called the "Whirlwind Mix" (now an extreme rarity) I made a more successful "Nocturnal Dervish" mix, which soared to relative popularity on Soundcloud, and was one of my first to be put into regular radio rotation. I'm not sure which was first anymore - "Slowly Scooting Closer" and "The Last Waltz" also made their way onto Darkwave Radio at about the same time. I'm getting ahead of myself, though. The "Dervish" mix greatly overshadowed its source material, so much that I began to regard it as its own separate entity. That's when its name was shortened from "Dusk Devils (Nocturnal Dervish Mix)" to simply "The Nocturnal Dervish."

Quite some time had passed that when I listened to it, some flaws began to glare at me; mostly the convoluted multi-layered drum tracks. Overlaying multiple drum machines has become a regular technique of mine, but this was one of the first times I employed it, if not the first. But it was sounding so overly busy to me that I decided to simplify it, specifically for the Nothing Left To Lose demo. The Instrumentality Project, on which it was later included, was partly an excuse to make it public. I think I may have gone overboard in writing some additional instrumentation. I thought it very subtle, but I think I should have perhaps stuck with simplifying the beats. Maybe someday I'll simplify the "Simplified" mix.

Track 02 ("Matriculating") on this collection was one of those early, unintentional happy accidents in which a song with more pop sensibilities found itself tweaked by metal aspects. It doesn't fall completely into an urgent rush of industrial-metal like "Wrong Pocket Kinda Day," but like "The Seventh Swan" it found that metal-ish electric guitars were a natural progression. This has, like the overlaid drum tracks, started to become a regular writing style of mine. But back then, it was always a fun surprise to me when it would happen, seemingly of its own accord.

Since I just kind of covered tracks 04 ("The Seventh Swan") and 05 ("Wrong Pocket Kinda Day") I'll just comment that "Day" was named for when things take a wrong turn during a so-far perfect day, while "Swan" named itself, and I imagine its namesake to be some kind of faery tale character.

Now, track 03 ("A Different Story") was a completely foreign writing experience, a style that I haven't really reproduced since. It's origin was an attempt to create a rhythm section entirely out of tweaked synths. Some bass and drums were added as a natural step later, but what I had accomplished was something that sort of sounds like "R2-D2 being tortured," as my mom put it. Then, curiously, I wrote an almost neoclassical interplay of piano and acoustic guitar over it. I guess I sort of repeated the experiment, and ended up with a similar piano-and-acoustic-guitar overlay, with Dialectical Observations' "Man Seeking Cocoon," but they're really not the same. "Story" was something really different for me, and that's where it got its name, as I was then relating my music to stories in my head. That's something I kind of miss - associating songs with the faery tales in my mind. I've been hoping to do more short story writing to get back into that groove.

Moving on to track 06 ("Cold Sunlight"): I'd been attempting to write something jazzy that got shelved for some time, then began to turn into psychedelic rock when I picked it up again. It just so happened that I was listening to what I had thus far, outside and smoking on a sunny winter's day. I began to croon about what I was seeing and experiencing, then immediately began to write it down as lyrics. There were some rhymes and lines that were thrown out, but I began to incorporate a new stanza with every next few measures of music I wrote. Similar to Jaded's "Mr. Douter," I found myself writing lyrics and instrumentation simultaneously, which seems to be the method of writing songs with vocals-and-verse that works best for me. This was my most successful attempt at such a song, and it even earned some attention from an indie radio host and reviewer. So, it's notable and I feel an essential tune from my repertoire.

Seven is a magical number to me, and it just so happens that I considered track 07, "The Cloud Walkers," to be my finest achievement for quite a while. So yeah, it had to be a part of this collection. It was informed by writing styles that I was just starting to explore, and it contained some methods that have since become regularly used in my songwriting. I wanted a dark piano ballad with a sort of industrial-metal quality, and I ended up writing something kind of epic. It was my longest song up to that point, yet it didn't feel drawn out anywhere. There's some of that interplay of piano and acoustic guitar, and it's one of my first experiments with the inclusion of electric guitars. I felt I had really outdone myself, and I was afraid that I would never surpass it. Now I feel as though I have, with songwriting techniques that have evolved and become more polished. But it all owes quite a lot to "The Cloud Walkers."

I may have published it prematurely in my desire to share it, though. I kept on toying with it for a little while afterward, and found myself switching around some arrangements, adding a little bit, and subtly changing the ending. A more settled version was published on a no-longer-available EP called Selenophilia. When that EP was pulled from shelves, it wasn't available for a while. It was essential it get back out there. I republished it on my fifth album, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and now it's integral to representing my discography.

Track 08 ("The Tranquil Isles") was originally inspired by the more ambient works of my favorite band, Tool - "Right in Two," in particular. That's where the rhythmic synths came from; the rest was formed around a wandering acoustic guitar melody. I found myself thinking of the Sea of Tranquility when writing this song, that it might make a good setting in the adventures of my mascot, the Snail. I tried the Latin name, but that didn't quite sit well with me. Instead, I found a trail of islands forming in my imagination similar to the settings of the adventures in C.S. Lewis' Voyage of the Dawn Treader. So that's where the Snail found Itself instead.

The lullaby of "Isles" has been the perfect ending for many mixes of my music that I came up with, as well as others in general, but I found myself juggling three songs that I felt would be a perfect way to end Nothing Left To Lose. "Microcosms" is short, sweet, and simple. "Fistfuls of Whimsy" is epic, and its latter half is one of the most perfect pieces of music I've written. I tried several combinations of these songs for the ending, kind of hoping that it would decompress and fade with "Isles." But the natural progression had other ideas. Instead, I went from a lullaby to a neoclassical ballad to a post-rock epic. Maybe it works out best this way. Whatever, it's what ended up sticking in the demo, and that's how it was ultimately published.

Rehegoo has published Nothing Left To Lose, Part Two at all the usual suspects, including Spotify, Google Play, Apple Music/iTunes, Amazon, Napster, and TIDAL. Once I've finished my Facebook and Google Plus Jukebox posts for each of its songs, I'll post a playlist at my YouTube channel. Since I most likely have all the songs posted at my Soundcloud, I may round them up into playlists there as well. Of course, the best and most direct way to support me and my art is through the link in the embedded player, or you can pledge at my Patreon and get Nothing Left To Lose as a downloadable reward, along with many others.

That's about it for now. I'm hoping it will cool off enough this evening that I'll brave working on mastering a full draft of my latest tune. That will put me one step closer to completing a new album and releasing new music to y'all. I sense you shivering with anticipation. Until then, may your inner snails remain resilient and determined.