The new album is now available.

The new Shadows of Immurement album, All The Fathomless Places is now available on Bandcamp. You can get the album either by going here or the player below.

This is the album that I recorded for the 2017 RPM Challenge. I’ve already received good feedback on the song, “Walls,” that I’ve shared online elsewhere. I also intend on uploading older Shadows of Immurement material. Unfortunately, I can’t find the sound files of the songs of last year’s album. I think they’re on a CD-R somewhere but I have to go hunting for it. The first two albums are accessible, but they’re not as good. I was thinking of throwing them up there as a “collected demos” kind of thing. But I want to wait until I get Dream Of Nowhere uploaded first.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy All The Fathomless Places.

Album is nearly done; going to a Goth club in Portland.

The album is just about done. I have all the recording done with one possible exception that I will get to in a moment. But as far as the RPM Challenge is concerned the album is recorded. I just need to put some final touches on mixing. I’m in Portland today so I don’t have access to the recording hardware to work on it. I thought I had put the files on my iPod in a way so I can review them in my car. Unfortunately I converted them to the wrong file type and not only wouldn’t they not play on my iPod, it screws up anything else I try to play on it afterwards until I reset it. I’ll just have to try again tomorrow.

Like I said, I have one song that I may need to record again, although I won’t for the RPM Challenge. I sent out the album for peer review and the feedback I got was that the performance of the different instruments didn’t sync up, tempo-wise. However, this could only be offset by the bass drum track which I hadn’t intended to be in the final piece. I’ll try taking that out tomorrow to see if that one simple fix solves the problem. But I don’t really want to record all new tracks at this point. I go back to work on Monday and I have other plans this weekend. The only time I want to spend on this album should be focused on mixing, making labels and discs to hand out to people… and to the people running the RPM Challenge as well.

I’m in Portland because I’m going to Goth night at a local club. It’s the first time I’ve been—partly out of scheduling issues since I first decided that I want to go, and partly out of nervousness. But what’s to get nervous about? That I didn’t wear my eyeliner correctly? That my boots aren’t good for dancing? That I might just sit off to the side enjoying the music and a drink or two instead of dancing anyway?

I went to a post-punk dance party at another bar in Portland on Monday night. I met a few people that apparently know everybody in the local scene. Of course one of them introduced herself to me first, but I think I did okay. That’s probably the main source of my apprehension of going in the first place. It’s not that I have social anxiety, but I know I’m out of practice actually talking to strangers. But hey, there’s always the music.

Getting closer to completing this album.

Wow, I think this is the longest period between posts for this blog. But instead of me making excuses or beating myself up over it I’ll go straight into a report on the progress of the album so far.

I would say that I’m about three-quarters done with it, perhaps more. I have seven songs which just barely add up to the minimum of thirty-five minutes. I’m cutting it really close. I won’t know for sure once I put all the tracks one after another and I’m not going to bother doing that until I master them all at the same volume. Once I do that, though, I do intend on adding an ambient track (perhaps a keyboard done—I haven’t decided) at the end of one song which I will then continue on the song after it. That should just get me over the thirty-five minute mark. If I have to I’ll record another song. I have the time still, even if I wasn’t on vacation this week.

I am having problems with one song in particular. I know I need to record a new drum machine track as I wasn’t particularly fond of the one I programmed for it initially—although I might keep it for the bridge. Then I may have to record another take for the bass guitar. It sounds just slightly out of tune. I could make that work but I keep hearing it and it keeps annoying me. Then again, it could be the effect on the guitar makes it sound slightly out of tune and the bass might be fine. But hey, it’s an easy enough fix.

The biggest challenge for me  is recording vocals. It’s not that I’m self-conscious about my singing. In fact, this time around most of the tracks with have that sort of “talk singing” as opposed to anything melodic. I can sing, it’s just the way the songs have developed. But my biggest problem is that I don’t want to agitate the neighbors. Ordinarily I wouldn’t think anything of it as I’m (usually) not screaming or performing black metal vocals or anything of the like. But I may have done something last week that could have antagonized them. I won’t go into the details and I think it blew over anyway (for that matter, I think I’ve been reading too much into the incident in the first place, as my regular readers will attest that I often do).

As I write this blog post, I believe the apartment downstairs is now empty as the adults have gone to work. Perhaps I will start on those vocals after breakfast. I would love to get them all done in one day but somehow I don’t quite see that happening. I still have lyrics to write for one more song.

…And in the process of writing the previous paragraph somebody just came back home. Oh, well. I’ll give it a try today anyway. If worse comes to worst, the gear is portable. I can always take it to my father’s place when he’s out, or even drive down to the beach and record in my car. I’ll figure it out.

Almost done with coming up with new songs, added keyboards today.

I know it’s been a few days since my last blog post but I have been busy working on the new album. For a while I thought that I reached the minimum requirements for the RPM Challenge, but I think I cut it too close. It looks like I may have to come up with one more quick piece to reach the minimum thirty-five minutes. I only need a minute or two, but I would rather worry about how good it is first. If the piece needs to be longer I’ll go longer. I’m actually making pretty good time considering that we haven’t reached the midway point of the month yet.

I wanted to work on lyrics earlier. I decided to head out to a coffee shop for a change of scenery. However, I didn’t get much time to work while I was there as they decided to close early today due to the weather. (Around here it looks like we’re getting the entirety of winter during a two-week period). As I was cleaning the snow off of my car the person who parked next to me backed into car across the lot and drove off. I got the plate number and stuck around to talk to the driver of the car that was hit. I don’t intend to present this to show what a good citizen I am (if I was, I would have remembered then rather than later that we should have called the police right away). But it did take time out of working on those lyrics, not to mention the distraction took me out of the head space I needed to be in.

I did make some progress this evening, however, with keyboard tracks. I nearly didn’t record any this time around as the power adapter for my keyboard was making some humming noises, making me nervous. Two fortunate things happened this evening when I tried it—not only did the adapter work properly, I discovered that I had indeed tuned the guitar and bass used on this album correctly and the keyboard sounds perfect with them.

I got excited about some of the keyboard tracks I’ve recorded so far. I was able to process one so it sounds like a cheesy synthesizer from the eighties, and as I’m recording in a style of music that was made popular during that time frame I view this as a plus. Either that or I’m getting nerdy and it’s distracting from the dark atmosphere. Whatever—as long as I like it, who cares? What, do I think I’m going to put this album on Bandcamp afterwards and try to sell the thing?

Started recording a fifth song, more than halfway there (composition-wise).

Last night I recorded the “bare bones” track for a fifth song. I either need five more songs or ten more minutes to reach the RPM Challenge’s goal. It’s a comfortable place to be in although I could have reached it further. I slacked off too much over the past week or so. It’s time to focus more on what I’m doing. Yes, I need diversions once in a while. But I should have everything composed by the end of this week. I still only have a few lyrics done at the moment as well.

The big challenge for me when recording last night’s guitar part is playing slowly. I have some mental block when it comes to slowing down riffs. I’m not claiming to be a great “shredder” or anything on guitar. But I get stuck into the mindset that if I slow down my playing it sounds less impressive. Who am I trying to impress? What I’m doing is more based around atmosphere. If that requires a song to be played dreadfully slow then I shall do so.

I think it came out pretty well. There’s a few minor mistakes here and there, but that only adds to the mood of the piece.