I set V_A_C_A_Y as a “name your price” album on my Bandcamp page. Go download it for $0 and add it to your home library. Then stream that library on whatever app you’ve set up to connect to your music library. I personally enjoy my Plex library using the Plexamp app, but you may choose whatever app tickles your fancy. Whatever the app, enjoy the music.

What Does It Sound Like?

Chillout. Washed out. Sample-less vaporwave. Retrowave. Synthpop? Synthwave? The truth is, I no longer know what genres to place my music under. But it’s “all of the above” and much more.

Song Notes

1. Someday I’ll Get To It: Sometimes all you need are three chords. And a whole lot of synth VSTs to create an expansive soundscape.
2. Major Trip Minor Treat: Initial loop was created by Audialabs’ Infinite Packs, but then I extended and turned it into a track with live bass guitar and electric guitars and a modern bossa nova treatment.
3. Smooth Sailing From Here On Out: Composed and produced in just one afternoon, this track exposes my love for pop music. It’s a pure pop chord progression given a chillout treatment.
4. No Recycling In Paradise: Initial loop was created by Audialabs’ Infinite Packs, and turned into a cowboy Western hip hop track.
5. Steadily Toward A Demise Of Caring: Melodic, emotive, and melancholic.

The post Album: V_A_C_A_Y (2024) appeared first on Acid42.

What Does It Sound Like?

Lots of drums, lots of percussions, and lots of lush, spaced out synth pads. And in the first track, my own backup vocals.

Song Notes

• Don’t Hate the Slacker, Hate the Slack: This started as a voice memo I recorded on January 24, 2018 on my phone in the car on the way home from work. It lay in my notes folder forever until I dug it up for this album and turned it into a full on track. This is why you should always record your ideas wherever you are and then come back to them and work on it.
• The Persistence of Misery: This track was inspired by Japan’s “Swing,” but with added trumpets and a Groove Armada chill vibe. I added a guitar melody (but played on a retrowave VST I had lying about) to complete the chillout sound.
• Feedbucker: This one is driven by the glitch noise drums and the harp rhythm, which was inspired by the famous Massive Attack track “Teardrop,” but it eventually turns into a melodic B-section that is very much like an Air track.
• Atlantis: It starts with a clock ticking using a kulintang rhythm, then I added a honkytonk melody and a bunch of expansive synths.
• Floridian Chill: On this track, I used a bunch of free samples from a Discord group I am part of: the result is this lo-fi vibe in major 7ths with a koto melody.
• It Takes Time to Make Things Beautiful: No drums, just plucky synths, ala Suzanne Ciani. Then I added piano and turned it into an EPIC cinematic track.
• Condense Meaning Out Of Nuance: Again, no drums, just synth pads with an ascending bass track, I also used Blue Nile tones and synth washes.
• Unfunny: What do you do when you combine soul organ + piano + noise + plucky synth horn leads and a cello? Something unfunny.
• The Neverending Disengagement: A glitchhop shuffle + electrocution synth drone + a “Blue Monday” vibe if it were played by 808 State.
• Dream of Falling Into Cars: This started with a melodic percussive synth tone beeping from left to right and then adding some synth pads atop it. The beeping turned into a solid groove. And then some melodic bells.

The post Album: Cosmic Atmosynthesis (2024) appeared first on Acid42.

Corporate/Vapor/Wave is the second installment in a series that seeks to encapsulate the stifling, caged existence of the wage worker within the confines of music. (The first was Corporate Inefficiency Machine)

This is partly a vaporwave album, partly a retrowave 1980s style nostalgic throwback album, partly a collection of sad quiet wordless ballads inspired by the best TV show about office life there is: Severance, and it is partly a funeral dirge for the death of creativity and soul within the workplace. But it is all heartfelt, every note.

What Does It Sound Like?

File this release under: #vaporwave #retrowave #muzak
Sounds like: Air, Boards of Canada, Kmart shopping music, elevator muzak

Behind The Music

Most of this album was composed and put together while watching (more like, bingeing) the AppleTV show, Severance, which is all about having a separate work persona from a life persona. But what I wanted to do with these tracks is compose a dull, bland, beige backdrop for simple melodies leaving an uncluttered soundstage for some basic pop arrangements. For the most part, they’re all slow ballads that sound like they’re slowed down jazz pop tracks (the preferred workflow for many Vaporwave tracks) but are actually not since there are no samples in this album, everything was composed from scratch.

Still, the spirit behind vaporwave music is to create a sense of haunted unease and disengagement while using nostalgic signposts and I think I was successful in creating that.

Happy listening!

Release on Egoscapes

I submitted the album to be released on the Egoscapes netlabel on Bandcamp and they graciously did, even commissioning new non-AI artwork for the album cover by artist Mary Formankova (d4xis on Instagram. (Go see her work at https://www.fiverr.com/d4xisart/make-an-art-for-you and https://www.instagram.com/d4xis/ )

Egoscapes release page

The post Album: Corporate/Vapor/Wave (2024) appeared first on Acid42.

Every year that March rolls around, I force myself to finish tracks and release them to the world as a way to honor the passing of my dad who died from lung cancer on March 21st, 2021. It’s also a personal reminder that if I don’t record and release these tracks, the music will fade away on a notebook in a dusty shelf. This year’s fresh new collection, In The Country of Lost Minds, features six songs tackling death, children, aging, school violence, toxicity, bitterness, and yet through it all is a prayer for the safety of loved ones. I wrote the lyrics from equal parts of sadness, disdain, and just pure manic joy. Welcome back to the neon-hued land of 1980s synthscapes and new romanticism.

What’s The Title About?

Before my sister moved to Toronto to earn her masteral degree in poetry, I stole — well, borrowed — one of her books. It was by the American author Paul Auster entitled In the Country of Last Things, and it was as bleak and as hope-shriveling as the title suggests. But I loved every bit of its dystopian, end of the world desperation, even the most heart-crushing moments. In it, a sister searches a ruined city for her lost brother, and has to resort to scavenging to stay alive in a city that has devolved into street gangs and suicide cults. My album title is an homage to that great novel, and mirrors some of that dystopian desperation within songs about school shootings, abusive relationships, and broken dreams.

What Does It Sound Like?

As in my previous albums, The Only Water Flowing and The Modern Conundrums, this has a whole boatload of 1980s British new wave /new romantic influences: everyone from Heaven 17, Modern English, Duran Duran, Propaganda, New Order, and as ever, Tears for Fears.

Take a listen and see if you can spot which artists influenced which tracks:

The post Album: In The Country of Lost Minds (2024) appeared first on Acid42.

This album brings together the songs I’ve recorded in the past 2 years that match the chosen theme.

What are Those Modern Conundrums?

Throughout the album, I try to examine various situations which are uniquely modern, tainted by rapidly developing technology and our human reactions to them, and how these behaviors affect our relationships.

Below, I outline the conundrums for each song and what I wanted to express with each track.

1. Winter Dream: Being in a committed relationship with someone who then wants to leave to find themselves
2. 3 Hours 15 Minutes: You’re dying to talk but the person across from you is more interested in checking every single phone notification that arrives. There is a lack of communication despite severe phone addiction. Turns out Americans spend an average of 3 hours and 15 minutes on their mobile devices every day
3. Walking With Dolby: Despite the rapid development of tech, it’s only music from 35 years in the past that lets you find equanimity and peace. Nostalgia for old pop culture — while drowning in uncountable new variants of the same.
4. Another Madman Vying for the Crown: The son of a once-despised, long-dead king comes to claim his father’s throne… without qualifications, without charisma or real power. And the people let him, nay, they even prop him up as the kingdom’s savior
5. After This our Exile: Missing your homeland while simultaneously hating it and being exiled from it. Imagine wanting so badly to leave your home country, only to end up wandering in the desert that is other lands, wishing you could go back home
6. You Are the Guillotine: One partner believes the vaccine works, another partner believes it doesn’t. Who gets to the cut the decision in half? The guillotine.
7. Northern Sky: What happens when discouragement comes from the very people you trust? Crisis. Chaos. Diminishment. Thankfully, the human spirit rises above its challenges and inevitably aims for the stars no matter the response of the people around.

What the Album Sounds Like

Like my previous album of vocal songs, The Only Water Flowing, this release takes a lot of inspiration from U.K. new wave / new romantic bands of the late 80s such as: Heaven 17, Depeche Mode, and Tears for Fears. And I particularly wanted to point out that my love for Thomas Dolby’s music ended up as the song “Walking With Dolby.”

This is the music I grew up with, the music that formed me.

So hats off to all who listen to synthpop, synthwave, retrowave, and electronic dance music. May this music bring you to a place above your problems. Happy listening.

The post Album: The Modern Conundrums (2023) appeared first on Acid42.

Anyway, it inspired me to get on my virtual synths and try to recreate those stark synthesizer sounds using plugins like Cherry Audio’s DCO-106, Korg PolySix, Layers Wave, and built-in synths within my DAW, Reason Studio 11.

The result is this pretty faithful cover version of Ice Machine, which doesn’t really offer anything new to someone who’s familiar with the track, but — just being honest here — was a total blast to recreate, play, and record. And if music can’t be fun, well, no one would do it!

Happy listening.

And kindly subscribe to my YouTube channel while you’re at it!

The post Recreating My Own Version of Depeche Mode’s Ice Machine appeared first on Acid42.

Building The Machine

I have to balance out my day job as content marketing person with art. This is why I write music (mostly at night) when the work day is done. Most are instrumentals that sound like B-side tracks from 80s new romantic groups like Talk Talk or Japan or Tears from Fears.

Check it out on Bandcamp or stream it below.

Track By Track

01 Mass Exodus
A synthesizer anthem dedicated to all those who have resigned and moved on to better jobs. Emotive synth pads on a downtempo groove that builds into a symphonic fury.

02 The Glorious Purpose of the Totally Bad
A downtempo groove built off of a pluck synth doing an arpeggio. Chunky, syncopated drums bring it to a sad, distant ending.

03 Soldiers of the Corporate Army
A bouncy acid techno bass on top of a driving dance rhythm. The startup soldiers march maniacally to a frenzied drum.

04 The Contract is in Cursive
Downtempo synthwave with digital brass melodies that weave in and out, like cursive script on a contract that takes your soul away.

05 Behavior Hommem
This one takes world music and turns it on its ear, using retro 80s sounds and mutating into a full-on drum-heavy groove. The song title is taken directly from the subject line of a spam email I got in the early 2000s.

06 Key Performance Vindicator
Sounding like a house music version of New Order’s “Subculture,” this one begins floating into the stratosphere like a true rocketship, which is every startup’s favorite euphemism for the company launching successfully.

07 Gravitational Inertia
The truth is, every rocket ship is held tightly by gravity and inertia — whether that’s by its own inefficiencies or by its people. This is an ode to all those who break free from gravity to conquer the stars.

Credits

As with my previous albums, this one was made entirely using Reason Studios’ Reason Version 11.

Album cover created with the help of Stable Diffusion AI.

The post Album: Corporate Inefficiency Machine (2022) appeared first on Acid42.

How I Know Bing Kimpo

Our paths crossed back in high school. I was a few years ahead of him, but our paths would often cross at school fairs where our bands would inevitably perform. I was part of an idiosyncratic dueling-guitar (mostly) instrumental band called Subdivision of Thought, best known for our covers of Ventures surf guitar themes and our original songs about cats getting run over in the street. Meanwhile Bing was a part of The Happy Shrimps, a new wave/new romantic outfit that did covers of the coolest UK bands and even recorded for an indie compilation album. Anyway, we were mutual fans of each others’ bands. In fact, their drummer Andre would become the drummer of our pop showband many years later. But, I digress.

Bing contacted me after my Facebook post on my new album (at the time, The Only Water Flowing) came out, and he wanted me to guest on his show to talk about the process of making the album, and why it sounds so much like the music we grew up listening to.

Here’s the interview in its entirety:

What We Talked About, Complete With Timestamps

• 04:35 – The 80s are back? What is going on? Well, musicians are bringing back the sound of nostalgic 80s synthpop and have created an entire new genre: synthwave and retrowave.
• 05:20 – How I found that there’s really no escape from the 80s. Since people who heard my tunes would inevitably say “It sounds so much like an 1980s song.” I decided to embrace it fully and go make a real 80s-sounding vocal album.
• 06:41 – How I realize 2020 is the perfect time to lay it all out, musically. 2020 was also the 20th anniversary of Alanis’ Jagged Little Pill album. If she could lay herself bare in her lyrics and music so fearlessly all those years ago? Why can’t I?
• 12:28 – How every arrangement I make, I realize I’m taking inspiration from a ton of 80s music I’ve heard throughout my life. Unconscious creative recycling of the music.
• 14:20 – How I went back to Heaven17 and Human League and listened to their earlier albums and realized: this is exactly what I want to sound like. How clearly I was influenced by all the UK New Romantic/New Wave bands like Tears for Fears, Simple Minds, Human League.
• 19:23 – How I came up with the title of the album: it’s a lyric in the song “Desert Dancing” and it turns out, it was also a line in “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” by Band Aid. And I didn’t realize it at the time until I did a search on Spotify for my own album.
• 21:33 – How I wrote the track about my dad “Apple Pie & Coffee,” starting off with the story that my dad loved to keep repeating.
• 23:31 – How I share that some of the best ’80s songs had happy, danceable beats but bittersweet, sad lyrics. Very introspective as well.
• 30:33 – My musical arrangement for the Filipino Christmas song “Gumising” by Bukas Palad Music Ministry.

Many thanks to Bing for a wonderful show! Looking forward to more podcasts in the future.

The post My Interview On The Bing Kimpo Show appeared first on Acid42.

Project Background

This project started out in 2021 when we exchanged music loops (WAV files) and agreed on the simplest process for collaboration: he’d make a song out of my instrumental loops and sing over it and I would do the same using his loops, adding lyrics and singing over it. We would have final approval over each track and release it on an online label somewhere.

So Cerumentric sent me some synthbass-heavy loops, which inspired me to add a touch of late ’80s synthpop ear candy and write Depeche Mode style lyrics about love, fidelity, and lasting relationships. The result is “Another Day.”

For my music, I sent Cerumentric some bouncy mid-80s pop loops — funky drums, plucky synth, and slap bass — and he crafted an angsty ode to preserving the earth with ecological sense, taking inspiration from the late great Carl Sagan. The result he entitled “Pale Blue.”

From Cerumentric’s POV

From Cerumentrics’s Facebook post:

Using these loops and practically nothing else, I was inspired to channel my secret love for Prince and 80’s soulfunk-rock legends Morris Day and The Time. For the lyrics, I wrote my own rephrasing of Carl Sagan’s meditation on human existence from a cosmic perspective, filtered through a David Bowie cut-and-paste style of lyric writing.

Hopefully this 2-song single, our first collaboration, gives you enjoyment, nostalgia if you grew up in the 80’s (and even if you didn’t), and inspiration to become better versions of yourselves, so you can share a part of yourselves to others.

If anything, may this project encourage you to appreciate both similarities and differences in the people you work and interact with, recognizing that it’s those qualities that make for interesting collaborations.
– Erick A. Fabian (CERUMENTRIC)
10/3/2022

Check out the single over on Bandcamp.

And check out Cerumentric’s Bandcamp page: cerumentric.bandcamp.com

I look forward to more collaborations in the coming months.

The post Synthpop Single: Acid42 + Cerumentric appeared first on Acid42.

Side effects include: elevated levels of dopamine in your brain at peak levels of emotional arousal caused by the synthesizer music in this EP. Consult your nearest audiologist if symptoms persist, there may be a blockage in your ear canal.

About the EP

On February 8, 2022, I released Lux In Tenebris — a 6-song EP full of synthwave and synthpop tunes.

The title, Lux In Tenebris, is Latin for “light in darkness.” And it consists of 6 tracks of synthwave instrumentals for happier living. This doesn’t mean the entire EP is bouncy, shiny, and happy. It DOES mean that it’s a serious weapon against ennui and uncertainty.

The truth is, it’s an extended musical memoir for my father. I produced Requiescat In Pace for his death in 2021, and I wrote Lux In Tenebris for his life.

Lux In Tenebris: Track Details

1. Not Someone You Want to Mess With 03:13
   A happy tune that vacillates between upbeat and perky with half-time rhythms and a braggadocious synth solo. The incongruous title just came to mind. I wasn’t thinking about my dad at the time, but now it does make sense. My dad had an abysmal temper (that I inherited) and wasn’t someone who’d take mediocre performance from you.

2. Dies Feriatus (Days at Leisure) 03:35
   Remember those old 80s dramas with heartbroken teens and summers that never seemed to end? This synthpop tune just brings all that back. It’s a memory. Captured with all the grainy imperfection of a VHS tape. It’s a ballad to lost youth.

3. The Collected Syndrome Drawing Down 03:36
   Subtly sinister, this slow tune combines sinuous bass with thudding drums, gongs, and a Chinese erhu sample.

4. In a Cloud of Smoke 03:41
   My father always seemed to be surrounded by a cloud of cigarette smoke. The smoke clung to the walls at home and to his clothes. This homage to that smoke uses synths reminiscent of the Stranger Things soundtrack.

5. Five Fourths 02:56
   My dad loved jazz. Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” was a favorite. I thought, wouldn’t it be cool if I could program something electronic in a 5/4 time signature and make it work? Hence the acoustic jazz sound complete with distorted organ, keyboards, bass, and acoustic drum samples.

6. Sunset in Constantinopole 03:18
   The climax of this EP is this track, which tries to bring forth, using sound, one glorious afternoon with my parents and sisters, on a sunset cruise on the Bosphorus Strait, the waterway in Turkey that divides the Turkey side from the European side. Istanbul was a perfect place to visit, an exotic mystery, a beautiful gem of history. The afternoon was a perfect memory, golden in its remembering.

Lux In Tenebris: Album Credits

All music and programming: Acid42 (Lionel Valdellon)
Release date: February 8, 2022
Album cover design: Alessio Marella @maregraphic_design (on Instagram)

Download the album on Bandcamp.

The post EP: Lux In Tenebris (2022) appeared first on Acid42.