Deviant Angels

Happy Valentine's Day! Now, normally I don't celebrate or make a big deal out of Valentine's Day. Normally I don't have someone to celebrate it with. I've been single almost eight years now, but even when I was married, we didn't do much about Valentine's Day. Except, one year, I think we bought Tori Amos' DVD Fade to Red as a present for ourselves. Or, actually, I bought it, since I supported us financially through almost the entire relationship. Ah, but you don't need to hear me reminisce about a failed marriage.

Something I like to do with my musical releases is release them on a special day, to give that day extra-special or new meaning to me. I figured, why shouldn't Valentine's Day be one of those days? I might not get anything for it, but I can give to the world with my music. And it really is the world. My music tends to be listened to more outside of my home country, the United States, than within it. Except there was a curious couple of weeks when my music was being listened to in Branson, Missouri, more than anywhere else on Apple Music. That appears to have been a total fluke, but what on odd one, considering I live in Missouri, and Missouri's taste in music tends to be country, not anything like neoclassical or industrial-metal.

Anyway, this release is partly about changing the meaning of Valentine's Day for myself. And now it will have its anniversary every Valentine's Day, and maybe I'll even celebrate that anniversary with future releases. It's been known to happen. My best friend's birthday is March 12th, and I've put out a couple releases for it - in fact, my next full length album, Edges, is scheduled to come out this coming March 12th. More on that later.

First off, this EP owes its title to the cover piece by Cyril Rolando, "Deviant Insanity."

Now, a couple of these songs go way back. I don't even remember how long ago I started "Grounded and High," but it must have been around a couple of years ago, before I wrote Pattern Recognition. It was just a bass line with some some whimsical synths and a danceable beat that I had sitting on the shelf of unfinished songs for a long time. I do remember that it was an exercise in writing more of an EDM bass line that I ever had before. I guess because it wasn't as "neoclassical" as I had been aiming for, I dropped it for a long time. But one day when I came back it, I couldn't remember why I stopped, and I had a lot of fun finishing it, mostly adding piano, guitars, and length. It's very uncharacteristic of me, and in a way, set the uncharacteristic tone of this EP.

"Love Gravity Power Time" has its roots all the way back in the EP With Love, Catatonia and the song of the very similar name "Power Time Gravity Love." Don't ask me why, I never wanted to attach the words "Alternate Spin" to this title. Instead, I've just changed around the words for its various incarnations, of which there've been a few. First, I gave it an overhaul for the "album version" on Pattern Recognition, "Gravity Time Power Love." I then tried out doing a version of the song that translated the leading cello melody to piano in "Time Power Gravity Love," which is only available as a rarity and bonus track on the Snail Tunes edition of the EP Compromises, which is also how I first made "Grounded and High" publicly available. I guess I wasn't entirely satisfied with the piano I had written, because I went back to the drawing board and rewrote it. Then I found myself adding the cello back in and rewriting the violin and viola, and I added some upright bass to the song's "trip-hop interlude," which carried over into the rest of the song. And that's how I ended up with, "Love Gravity Power Time," which I think I like better than any other version so far.

"Passion on a Screen" was, funnily enough, originally inspired by the Collective Soul song "Generate." Rather, it was inspired by the guitar, which prompted me to write the leading synth riff. That almost automatically informed it as an EDM song. There's almost no neoclassicism to this one, just some orchestral strings and some jamming on an electric piano. I'm pretty proud of the electric piano riff, though I have to confess that it really came together with some note-by-note editing after a less complicated version was recorded by me live. This song makes use of the "suspense bass" synth I've recently discovered, and have gone on to use quite a bit since. It's that deep buzz in the background that's distorted by a mechanical treble. I'm trying not to overuse it, but I've gotten a little addicted to it...

I'm also very proud of the rapid staccato cello riff in "Stars Aligned," but this time that was entirely programmed in note-by-note. I can't claim any amazing achievements in dexterity.

"Brazen" is my first attempt at a straightforward industrial-metal track in quite some time, probably since "Roughspun" on the EP Dissonance. It was initially inspired by the Nine Inch Nails song "Burn" from the Natural Born Killers soundtrack. That's where I got the idea to make percussion by synchronizing and layering synths with distorted beats. The electric guitars weren't originally so involved, but became more so as the song evolved, and then it was clearly industrial-metal. Because it's the most "hardcore" song on the EP, I'm thinking of it being the one I send in to radio stations. But again, I'm nervous, because it's so different than anything I've done in a while.

"Little Boxes" and "Little Bat" are this EP's two neoclassical contributions. Because of this, they've gone on to be included on the next full-length album, Edges, which is another mostly neoclassical record - with a lot of industrial-metal influence, of course. I don't know why every full-length album I've been doing is so neoclassical-oriented, except that maybe I want to be recognized as a neoclassical artist. I've often said I want to be Lorenzo Masotto when I grow up. He just put out a solo piano record, which inspired me to try doing a solo piano composition. You might think that'd be simpler than layering several instruments, but I found it to be more difficult, because I was trying to make one instrument an entire orchestra. After successfully composing one such song, I didn't feel the need to do it anymore, so you just get the one at the end of the album. I'm very excited to unveil it to you. The album is thirteen-or-fourteen tracks (I just finished one that I'm not sure if I'll hold onto until a following release or not) and, as I mentioned before, will come out March 12th.

Until then, you can enjoy Deviant Angels at YouTube and YouTube Music, Spotify, Google Play, Apple Music and iTunes, Amazon, Deezer, iHeartRadio, Napster, Pandora, and TIDAL (as usual, the links will be inserted as I discover them).

I've mentioned before that I want to put out an EP called The Naked Truth with stripped-down versions of some of my more neoclassical songs. Obviously, this would include - widely available for the first time - "Why Can't We Have Nice Things? (Naked)." I'm happy to report that I'm a step closer to that now with a completed "Naked" version of The Soul Washer's "Faceless Men," which I thought I'd share with you as your bonus song for this article. That conjures up a simultaneously amusing and horrifying mental picture, doesn't it? Naked faceless men... (shiver)

Well, that's all for now. I hope you're excited for Edges, for which I will see you in about one month's time. Until then, may your inner snails remain resilient and determined.