Dialectical Observations (Remastered)

This has been a somewhat laborious project, three months in the making. It started with an album intended to bring my label (ex-label?), Rehegoo Music, up to speed on my discography: Legends of the Small collected eight tracks each from the albums Dialectical Observations and Pattern Recognition. To make it a little extra special, and to give Rehegoo some exclusive content, I remastered six of the songs from Dialectical. I was disappointed to find out that the label wanted only exclusive content, and would not be publishing Legends. I decided to make the album an exclusive Patreon patron reward. But I still wanted a way to share those six remastered songs.

I thought of inserting them in an upcoming album, where they would be piled on top of the eight new songs I already had at the time. There was also the possibility of releasing them on their own EP, which would be called The Dialectical Sessions; I made a cover and everything.

But then the most logical conclusion arrived: I thought, "Hey, I've already remastered six songs from a nine-track album. Why not just remaster the remaining three?" for a remastered edition of the whole album.

I'd thought of releasing an EP of new songs on the Winter Solstice, but in the end, I wanted to reserve them for a full-length album and keep them close to my vest. But I could still put out something on what to me is a special day to me: it's my winter holiday, one I should be celebrating at Short Mountain with the Radical Faeries. But I can't drive that far in my condition, and I lack the funds to travel anyway. Still, I can celebrate in my own way. With music! So I set that date to release the remastered edition of Dialectical Observations. In between writing new songs, I worked on remastering the remaining three songs. I'm very happy with all of them, but I'm especially fond of the new "Movement (Alternate Spin)".

For "Movement," I ended up returning to the original project file. I removed a whole synth track that wasn't really clearly defined and I thought just muddied up the song. Then I combed through each track and repositioned notes where I felt it was necessary, and I started over the remastering process from the beginning. With the other songs, I made adjustments according to the originals' final MP3 320s. For this, I went from project file to AIF on headphones, to AIF on external speakers, to MP3 on headphones, and finishing with MP3 on external speakers. It was tedious, but the result is that each instrument is clearly distinguishable and not muddied up by too much bass. Actually, with each song I turned down the bass in favor of treble, and often added more ringing reverb. I also turned down the drum tracks so they didn't take away the focus from the other instruments.

I won't review the inspiration and stories behind each song, as you can already read all about it in the article for the original version of the album. But I will say the original has done me proud. "Fleeting Fractals" ended up being kind of a "sleeper hit," but it eventually made its radio rounds and continues to be in rotation on some stations. It was used to represent the album in the review by Starlight Music Chronicles. And it's been Shazamed a number of times. Right now, "When Anchorage Became an Island," is my most-played song on Apple Music. On Bandcamp, it's my album with the most Facebook Likes, even more than albums by artists whom I consider superior and are inspirations for me. I can only hope that this remastered edition garners as much attention and that people agree with me that the remastered songs are an improvement.

Now, you may have noticed that the Snail Tunes edition of the album above is twelve tracks instead of the original nine. I'd thought of releasing an EP called Pulses Intertwined of four new songs, named for the song "Pulses Intertwined," which had made its radio rounds shortly after the release of Pattern Recognition. That was originally planned for the December 21st release date. Instead, I released "Pulses" as a single on another significant date, November 30th. I was trying to hold out on exposing the other songs planned for the Pulses EP, but here are three of them as bonus tracks on this exclusive version of the EP. Unfortunately, they are not available for individual download; you have to download the entire album.

When I had been writing mostly-acoustic soundtrack-like songs, "Pulses Intertwined" pulled me back into a more post-industrial mode of songwriting. That became a trend with "Pierced Heart," and "Dark Highways" to a lesser extent. These songs demanded more synths, but were relatively minimalist, and "Pulses" and "Pierced" called for electric guitars. This was a style of songwriting I hadn't really explored for over a year. Pattern Recognition and many of the following songs are in a more neoclassical ambient-acoustic style. Dialectical Observations was one of my first steps in the neoclassical direction, but was full of odd beats, abrasive synths, and electric guitars. "Pulses Intertwined," "Pierced Heart," and "Dark Highways" are somewhat in the same vein, and I thought they'd fit in well with Dialectical Observations, so I'm making them publicly available a little sooner than a full-length album. Still, they are exclusive to the Snail Tunes version of Dialectical Observations (Remastered).

I had a bit of difficulty in getting this album submitted to stores and streaming platforms. My distributor recommended the title format for the songs to have versions defined by parentheses, and any more specifications in brackets, so some of the titles looked like this: "Movement (Alternate Spin) [Remastered 2018]". I thought that looked a lot messier than "Movement (Alternate Spin) - Remastered 2018," but I went with their recommendation. It was rejected by stores, which I was informed of a week after first submitting the album. With only a week left before the release date, I decided to make it as simple as possible: I just went with simple song-titles-only with the album title defining it as "Remastered," and I hoped the album title would speak for the songs themselves. But you'll notice above that the Snail Tunes version has each song marked as "Remastered 2018," which I had wanted for the songs at each store and streaming platform. But when submitting it, it seemed simpler was better. And even though I submitted it to my distributor with only a week to go, it was still released at Amazon, Google Play, iTunes and Apple Music, Spotify, TIDAL, Deezer, YouTube, iHeartRadio, and Napster at midnight on the Winter Solstice, as I had been hoping. So, yeah, I think simpler was better, when getting the album released on time.

Now I'll leave you with something extra special, as usual. My step-father challenged me to write a score for Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem "Ulysses," to see how well I could write a soundtrack for something. This is what I came up with, with building cymbals and twinkling acoustic guitar to reflect the mariner metaphors in the poem. It was a return to the piano for me, but there are string arrangements, that first come in swells and bursts as the ocean waves. I thought of having a voiceover of the poem in this, but instead I'm leaving it to the reader to listen to this simultaneously. Give it a try! Just Google the poem and play this tune.

This started the trend of more soundtrack-like pieces I started composing, before "Pulses Intertwined" interrupted and took me in a more post-industrial direction. That's a continuing trend right now, though my latest composition, "Elation," sounds almost as if it belongs on Pattern Recognition, except it has some very metal interludes.

I hope you enjoy this little bonus song, and the remastered edition of Dialectical Observations. Until later, may your inner snails remain resilient and determined.