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UPDATE 8/22: THE AUTIOMAA EP IS OUT New EP: Autiomaa --------------original post-------------- New release, new thread (old thread got archived, see also first thread here)! People here have generally liked my poo poo, so I figured I'd post this one here, too. Last year I released my first full-length album with the unnecessarily/necessarily long title "Eräänä ikitalven yönä heräsin yksin jäätyneiden aaltojen keskeltä" as well as its accompanying kinda-sorta 8-bit remix EP, Eräänä ikitalven yönä heräsin yksin NESin vierestä. So it's only logical that my next release's title would be as short as possible, so it came to be titled ♃  and it ended up having five tracks, adding up to a total of about 18 minutes of music: 1. Io 2. Europa 3. Ganymedes 4. Kallisto 5. Jupiter You can stream and download/buy (name your price) the album on Bandcamp. I'll be uploading the thing to YouTube in the next couple of days as well, if you prefer that. I've already got everything else I've released this far on my channel. ♃ is the astrological symbol for Jupiter, the largest planet in our beautiful little solar system. As you might've guessed, space and planets were a large part of the inspiration for this EP. Musically it was heavily inspired by the soundtracks to the Metroid series of games which I dearly love - especially Metroid Prime's soundtrack easily belongs in the top 10 of my favorite albums of all time. Of particular importance is that this EP was made almost entirely on the iPad NanoStudio software, which is where I consolidated to after realizing that my hardware setup'd gotten way too unwieldy during the making of my last release. NanoStudio opened the palette up maybe a little too much for my own comfort so that I'd theoretically be able to just add infinite amounts of layers and tracks, so I set myself strict limits for this EP - there is not a single song here that has more than five tracks, and all pieces were limited to the following toolset: a beat, a bass, a lead synth, a piano and choirs or any combination of those. It's hard to pick favorites out of just five tracks, but I'd recommend just starting with Io. It's a slow, intro kind of thing that introduces you to how this EP sounds. Europa is an energetic, bubbly track with bouncy basslines and spacey arpeggios, while Ganymedes is the big epic on this EP with its huge choirs and dramatic pianos. The original sketch for Kallisto was what inspired this EP, and it turned into this calm little song with lovely pianos and spacey arps. Jupiter works as the outro to this EP. No noise or glitches this time around, sorry if you liked that stuff on my previous releases v  v The next release will have some of that again.As with all but my first release, the artwork for ♃ was made by my wonderful buddy Gregory Pilling. The man has to be some kind of wizard, since my directions for him were pretty much "I'm making an EP about Jupiter's moons. Can you make something geometrical and spherical this time around?" and he came up with the cool rear end poo poo you can see in the booklet included in the download and on Bandcamp. The greyscale was an inspired choice, in my opinion - gives the whole thing even more of a retro-scifi kind of feeling! Greg is seriously a great guy and I can wholeheartedly recommend him if you ever need any graphics work done. Check out his Tumblr here and his official site here. And finally, if you're interested in that sort of thing, you can follow me on Facebook or SoundCloud or even Tumblr, since my official website is based on that. I usually put stuff like demos or concepts on SoundCloud and repost that stuff on FB, the official website is there mostly to have an official internet presence and I pretty much only post there if I have a new thing out. More stuff is in the works. Hoping to have a three-track EP done in the summer and then maybe some more 8-bit remixes. I'm also still working on some stuff I'd like to see be not just instrumental some day. Hope someone digs this, and if you have any questions about the music, the production or whatever, feel free to ask! edit: Lol of course my album title once again can't be displayed in the thread title edit: apparently I can't write! a cyborg mug fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Aug 22, 2014 |
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May 3, 2014 22:08
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Just wanted to mention that it seems I'll finally be playing my first show under this name sometime this fall! I'm already freaking out about what I want to/should play (and what tracks are doable with my current setup) and have drafted at least like a dozen different setlists already... Luckily I have the entire summer to prepare for this thing. I definitely want a recording of some sort of the show if and when it happens. Edit: might actually get to play a show in the summer as well  Also, I just finished uploading ♃ to YouTube if someone likes their music that way 
a cyborg mug fucked around with this message at 09:03 on May 13, 2014 |
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May 10, 2014 16:14
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Just finished listening to this. I think I remember listening to and liking your last album, and this one's no exception It definitely sounds like it could fit into a video game, so I can see your influences in your work. I'm impressed that you managed to make this all in an iPad app  I also admire your strategy for setting limits for yourself. I've been slow to make new music myself, and I think one of the big reasons is that I've been trying to fit too much in each new song I've come up with and they come across as sounding too busy and jumbled as a result. But with this release, you don't have too many tracks going on at once but it's also just enough to get a full and expansive sound. I think I might need to take some lessons from you, buddy
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May 10, 2014 23:00
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Rageaholic Monkey posted:Just finished listening to this. I think I remember listening to and liking your last album, and this one's no exception Thanks, man NanoStudio really is an unbelievable app, a full-blown DAW, even though it is limited in some ways. However, I think I can say I've spent enough time with it now that I know my way around it pretty well - or at least I've started to become comfortable with its limitations and quirks and mostly know how to get the kind of things I want out of it now. For example, the fact that you can use samples as waveforms opens up the otherwise sonically kind of unimpressive and otherwise somewhat limited Eden Synth quite dramatically!And yeah, your situation sounds familiar. After finishing my full-length album last year I too ended up making music that had way too much going on for its own good and ended up sounding stuffy. I guess I was trying to one-up myself, in a way, thinking that I now had to make more complex stuff for some reason? At some point I realized that was a weird and dumb idea, which eventually led to this EP. I think setting strict limits for yourself is a great exercise and I can definitely recommend giving it a try! I'd say my self-imposed limitations helped me both to stop trying to be needlessly complex and just make music as well as to achieve a consistent sound for the entire release. An interesting method I've started using is testing how a composition sounds like in an 8-bit form - if you follow, say, a NES soundchip's limitations, you really need to think about what your composition's most important elements are and what kind of space they occupy in it. I think trying something like that can give you a fantastic new perspective on your compositions. Good luck with your music, the demos you've been posting on SoundCloud are great
a cyborg mug fucked around with this message at 00:13 on May 11, 2014 |
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May 11, 2014 00:04
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There's something really unreal about seeing your own music on a service like Spotify, but there you go: Desert M is now on Spotify. Currently only have Eräänä... and my newest EP on there, but more are coming when I get around to it. For anyone interested, here's how I got my poo poo on Spotify: Normally you'd need to be on a label that has a deal with Spotify, or, in the case of, say, independent artists, to have some other distributor or artist aggregator, of which there are actually several online (CDBaby might sound familiar to some). The problem for me, however, has always been the prices: As a broke student I plain can't afford to pay the $10 - $50 (or more) aggregators usually want per single, EP or album. This week I finally found a deal that I could afford. RouteNote is, as far as I know, currently the only aggregator to offer a free distribution deal, where you get your music to the digital stores you want for free, and pay 15% royalties of whatever you earn to RouteNote. This is an amazing deal in my opinion, especially for a tiny act like DM that won't be making any money in the first place, anyway, because it's not really something this project is about. They do have a premium deal as well where you pay a flat rate for your release and keep 100% of the earnings. Might have to put one of my EPs up with a premium deal just to support these people. These guys are also ludicrously fast: I signed up for the service and put these two releases up on Wednesday, and they're already online, even though their website says it usually takes up to two weeks for music to get on Spotify. I'm honestly completely amazed. I don't mean to sound like a shill here, but I'm just really loving excited about this
a cyborg mug fucked around with this message at 23:16 on May 31, 2014 |
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May 31, 2014 19:42
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poo poo this is really happening: I'm playing two shows next month  Maybe there's someone from Finland here who might interested, so I'll post the dates here as well: 16.8. Desert M + TLP + Kermakerho + DJ Boot + DJ Peik + DJ John Major + DJ Gosling @ XXX-3, Annis, Pori, Finland (this is especially exciting because the venue Annis is kind of legendary and I never would've dreamed my first show would be there!) 20.8. Desert M + kfu + Taivaan Kappaleita + two more TBA @ Sähkösatama 2014, Kalasataman konttiaukio, Helsinki, Finland (organized by some of my buddies and yours truly! I'm absolutely loving terrified!) Also, the next EP, called Autiomaa (wasteland/desert - yes, there's ALL KINDS of cringe-inducing self-referential wordplay going on here), is almost done. Maybe I'll post a teaser here just for goons. Unfortunately it's kind of difficult to do certain things right now as I only have an iPad and an office PC I'm probably not supposed to install stuff on. a cyborg mug fucked around with this message at 11:08 on Jul 30, 2014 |
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Jul 30, 2014 10:58
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It's that time again! Autiomaa EP You can stream and download/buy (name your price) the album on Bandcamp. I've just sent the EP to be uploaded to Spotify, so it'll be there in a week or two and I'll be uploading the whole thing to YouTube next week when I get back home from a short trip. Anyway, three tracks and about 13 minutes of new music! 1. Autiomaa (Wasteland / Desert) 2. Auringon maa (Land of the Sun) 3. Autio (Deserted / Desolate) Autiomaa is a nasty and super heavy stomper of a track, Auringon maa has a bit of a video game-y feel and some of the prettiest composition work by me thus far and Autio is a slowly building, melancholy but beautiful track that ends the EP with a very literal bang. I love all of 'em, but Auringon maa is easily one of my favorites out of everything I've made this far and I'd suggest that if you just want to check out one track. Unlike the previous EP, where the pianos were recorded separately, this EP was done 100% in the iPad app NanoStudio (apart from the final mastering and editing stuff). Also unlike the previous EP, this release didn't really have a unifying concept, but is just a trio of tracks I worked on simultaneously - aside from that the other bit that connects them is that this was a very conscious effort to make something more complex technically and composition-wise than the previous EP, which aimed for a certain minimality. I think they ended up sounding great together in any case! And once again, the artwork for the EP was made by my buddy/wizard Gregory Pilling. Interestingly enough, when he was looking for material for the previous EP's artwork, he stumbled upon the public domain US photo repositories where he found some fascinating photos of nuclear tests - incidentally something I'd had in mind for a long time - which inspired me to name the EP and the tracks accordingly. In addition to the cringe-inducing self-referential worldplay (see the Autio and Aurinkoon EPs, the project name etc.), I'm sure you'll see the connection between the track titles and the imagery: Nuclear tests are performed in wastelands and deserts, nuclear explosions are "brighter than a thousand suns" and leave uninhabitable wastelands behind... And once again, Greg immediately understood exactly what I wanted and did some absolutely stunning work. If you download the EP on Bandcamp you'll get a booklet showing the full series of pictures and a credits page. What's next for DM: I'll take a break from making any new DM material for a while, and instead concentrate on the following for a while: - Making more of my back catalogue of tracks playable live (currently can play 17 out of ~30 of tracks I want to be able to play live) - Creating visuals for live purposes (for example, I want to try making animated versions of the ♃ artwork) - Playing more live shows (I had a ton of fun playing my first two shows! I'll post a video at some point, a friend is working on a thing) - Maybe covers and remixes or something. I have something special in mind I'd like to do at some point. - Maybe some unrelated projects. Hard to tell what I'll have time for once university life kicks in again. After that I think it's time for my second LP. Dunno when that'll come out, maybe next year or maybe later. Hoping a short break from composition work will help me do something completely new again. I'd like to do something really minimal, glitchy and nasty, but I guess we'll see what'll come out of it at some point. As always - hope someone gets a kick out of this, and if you have any questions or comments, feel free to 
a cyborg mug fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Aug 23, 2014 |
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Aug 22, 2014 23:28
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Autiomaa is now on Spotify and I'll be playing a special 8-bit set somewhere in Helsinki Thursday next week. I currently have no idea where it'll happen. Weird times!
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Aug 30, 2014 22:56
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Behold my goony rear end failing at playing Kallisto at my second live show, I guess This was filmed at the event a couple of my friends and I organized myself. At least 50 people (probably more) came to check it out, so I'd say it was a success, especially for a bunch of people who'd never organized anything like this before. We had five very different artists performing and we filmed everything, here's a compilation video of sorts of the evening.
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Sep 16, 2014 18:18
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Hey would you look at that, we made this lovely wintery compilation thing in the synth thread over in Musician's Lounge and there's also a new track from me! It's a puzzlingly good album and all proceeds go to Doctors Without Borders because it's Christmas time and poo poo.
a cyborg mug fucked around with this message at 12:22 on Dec 6, 2014 |
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Dec 6, 2014 12:20
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Wanted to release that track on my own channels as well, so here's a kind of a single thing including the live version of Jääkiteet as a B-side: (picture links to Bandcamp) 1. Lunta (Single Master) 2. Jääkiteet (Live Version) The artwork was once again created by Gregory Pilling who is an extremely cool dude.
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Apr 2, 2015 11:11
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