Release Facts

Although most of my material can be considered monotone, dark and harsh, I do like to use melodic elements & melodies from time to time (whenever I think it fits the mood of the track).

Wandering in the Dark was made in 2014 and actually originated as the second half of another (still unreleased) track, was finished in 2017 and released in 2020 on Ophidian’s Meta4 label.

The track’s title, was taken from the video game “The Witcher 3” – it’s the name of a playable mission. It just sounded badass and I really wanted to use it. The voice samples are from another video game as well – Mad Max (2015).

Additional fun fact: I used a short fragment of Madonna‘s song “Frozen”, edited it to make it unrecognizable and used it as a percussive loop in this track. It amuses me to do all sort of stuff as a reference (that nobody will ever notice besides myself, lol).

Release Facts is a series of funny stories / anecdotes about some of my released material that I posted on my socials through the years. This one is about Arh+, released on Meta4 X. There’s a funny story behind this one…. Did you know it actually started out as a Mute. track? Yes, you read that correctly.

Somewhere back in the Symp.tom days, Mute. sent me a short fragment of 30 seconds. But eventually he never finished this idea.

At some point, years later, I wanted to do a podcast mix with only Mute’s stuff. And since I really liked that 30 second fragment a lot, I used my creativity cutting & pasting skills to make a longer version to use in that mix.

Eventually that version grew out to become long enough, that I decided to add some sounds, layers & channels of my own and finish it entirely during the Dark Descent days. I just had to think about the track title & project name, and to release it as a collaboration or as a remix perhaps?

I sent it to Mute, and he liked it. But by then, his style had become something entirely different compared to the Symp.tom days. So he didn’t want to take any credit for that track anymore.

But since it didn’t feel as a Mental Wreckage track either, I used an old (unused) project name of mine; Empty Shell, and I added Mute’s characteristic dot between the words. So technically, ‘Empty.Shell‘ is not an alias of mine – it’s an unofficial collab project between Mute. and myself.

Release Facts is a series of funny stories / anecdotes about some of my released material that I posted on my socials through the years. This one is about Neural Framework, released on Symp.tom 10.

This track was originally planned to be released under the alias ‘Empty Shell‘, since it felt somewhat like a detour from my usual style. By the time the other tracks of Symp.tom 10 were ready, I eventually decided to stick to just one name and put it on the same release as Mental Wreckage.

Years later, Neural Framework would be remixed by a certain American hardcore/techno artist who loved this track (*cough* who likes to Break the Rules *cough*), but those plans were cancelled after the sudden demise of the Symp.tom label in 2011. Since the rights of the entire label’s back-catalogue were sold to another party, all legal stuff regarding any Symp.tom tracks would only give us a major headache. But who knows what the future will bring.

Release Facts is a series of funny stories / anecdotes about some of my released material that I posted on my socials through the years. This one is about Rawk & Roll, released on Symp.tom 13.

Some musicians give their tracks a title based on the movie sample(s) they use in it. Moleculez and I did exactly the opposite here. Bartosz already came up with “Rawk & Roll” as title. But the “this is rock & roll” movie sample was a last-minute addition of mine before we sent the track away for mastering, because I watched ‘The Glimmer Man‘ that week and found that that quote fit in just perfectly!

And yes, even though it’s covered in layers of distortion; that’s Steven Seagal‘s voice. Despite what many people say, I still think he’s a badass.

By the way, this was a very awesome collaboration project to work on – Moleculez and I both enjoyed working on this one a lot!

Release Facts is a series of funny stories / anecdotes about some of my released material that I posted on my socials through the years. This one is about Secret Government, released on Symp.tom 10.

Originally, this track was intended to be a collaboration with Frank from The Outside Agency. I made the first beginnings and then we would exchange it and work on it in turns. However, at the time he was still pretty busy with other projects so it would have to wait a few weeks before he could work on it. Since I was boiling with inspiration at the time I decided to work ahead, doing just a little more each time.

Eventually I ended up doing such a large portion of the concept, arrangement & structure of this track that it was almost complete in itself anyway, so I finished it and let it remain a solo track. It was one of the fastest times that I produced a track; just a little more than a week. It felt really good to have that amount of inspiration & ideas. It just kept coming and coming – the ‘flow’ felt almost as if the track wrote itself.

For those wondering; the spoken samples (“the secret government” and “a plague to end all plagues”) are from the movie ‘X-Files: Fight the Future‘. And yes, there’s a specific reason for why I used those samples & title.