Where would a TYFTH compilation be without Nomic? I’m very happy to say that In Praise of Shadows will be featuring a brand new track from the man himself, once again bringing back memories of older releases while keeping his current sound to the fore. Caldera is a superb track that builds brilliantly towards the end, and the emotion in the breakdowns is up there with any of Nomic’s recent work. Some lovely, older-school acid really rounds things off, it’s just what I was hoping for.
Releases
Track 6 is yet another special one – this time it’s Grimsoul, taking a trip back in time to revive the spirit of Melancholy Overdose. Sentimental Pain covers all bases of the In Praise of Shadows mission statement with beautiful, melancholy melodies and twisted filters that take you all the way back to 2006. The 10 years of production experience since then are very clear though, and crucially the track is a clean, very obviously modern creation.
I absolutely love the track – even unmastered it was a huge success at CODEX last year, while Grimsoul himself has tested it on Finnish crowds with very positive results. Huge thanks to him (and all the artists involved, really), for taking my sales pitch on board and coming back with such brilliant music.
Brionac will definitely be the most familar track on the compilation to most people, both from my sets and elsewhere as various promo versions have been floating around for a while now. Here though is Hase’s definitive final version, professionally mastered to bring it right up to 2016 levels.
There’s no doubt that this has been one of my favourite tracks of the past few years, and I’m extremely happy that Hase’s glorious sound will finally see a wider audience.
Back when thoughts of TYFTH as a label were in the very earliest stages, Guld was the first person I went to for opinions. Not only did he come up with some quality advice and encouragement, when the time later came for submissions he went well beyond the call of duty with Perkele!, which might be one of his best tracks so far.
More than keeping up the production levels of his recent releases, Perkele! does something a bit different with its deeper breakdown and a really brutal finale (not in the preview, but it’s worth waiting for). Some cheeky sampling and nods to the classic Nightmare Freak add a extra element to the manic filters, a great combination.
In Praise of Shadows’ second track will hopefully be a nice surprise to anyone who fell in love with Four Beast, One Immortal and the rest of Einhander’s ferocious, twisted NRG. He’s back, and I’m honoured that Einhander has agreed to make both a return to NRG and his first official release on Thank You For The Horse.
I can honestly say that I love every track on the compilation, but Storm Coming has to be very close to the top of the list. The aggression, industrial percussion and crazed filters couldn’t be better, and even the intro/outro is a step above most NRG tracks. Playing after Alek Szahala at CODEX last year, there’s a reason I used Storm Coming as the opener – even unmastered it laid down a marker that kept the crowd with me from the start.
As an aside, massive thanks to everyone for the support on the TYFTH Facebook page. It was so encouraging to see how enthusiastic everyone is for the release, and I just want to get things finished up as soon as possible. I’ve gone ahead and said a ‘summer’ release date, which whether it ends up being next month or August is almost certainly doable.
See you tomorrow for track 3!
And so it finally begins – I’ll be sharing an In Praise of Shadows track preview each day for the rest of this week and into the next, beginning with Proteus’ Monochrome. As the earlier master of this track will be familar to most of you, today’s post will also introduce TYFTH’s new logo and a preview of the artwork.
Unfortunately the blog still isn’t ready for the cosmetic surgery needed to really do the art justice, so instead I’ll point you towards SoundCloud, Facebook and Twitter, where there’s now some unified brand-identity action going on.
The backgrounds show off a small part of In Praise of Shadows’ cover, but seeing the entire image is something else altogether. To say it nails the atmosphere I was hoping for is an understatement – you can almost hear the music just by looking at it.
I’m also enormously happy with the logo. It has the balance of aggression, moodiness and slight delicacy that I was hoping for, and despite being effective wherever it’s placed, also manages to look like it was designed specifically for this release.
TYFTH still takes priority, but I’ll be adding plenty of info to the new Facebook page in the near future (not least the release date and ordering links). I’ll also be more active on the label Twitter account, as it could be a nice supplement to the blog if life continues to be as hectic as it has been recently. Please feel more than free to share posts and links with whoever you think might (or might not, come to think of it) be interested.
Finally, back to Monochrome – I could hardly have asked for a better prologue to the album, especially as I’ve been talking with a few people recently about how NRG and freeform could potentially grab all kinds of new audiences with the occasional drop in bpm (similar thoughts led to my Dark Alternative set a while back). Dark and beautiful, it’s just the kind of track I was hoping for when I first pitched the project to Proteus, and this improved master really does it justice.
As always, don’t hold back with the feedback, thoughts and suggestions – thanks again for your patience, and I’ll be back tomorrow with the second of the track previews.
Ok, false alarm re. the previews – over the weekend Real Life intervened in fine style, and I’ve had to postpone. Depending how things go, I may be able to start uploading as early as Wednesday, but keep an eye on here or twitter/facebook for the real announcements.
Incidentally, this won’t affect the progress on the album itself, as that’s almost entirely out of my hands (and has been for a long while). It would still be nice to give everyone something to see and hear at long last, so stay tuned for the rest of this week.
A little last-minute, but Shimotsukei and I will appearing this afternoon on the Lucky Lotus Festival at 15:10 GMT (00:10 JST). S3RL will be up before us, while Lab 4, Guld and Morita Yuuhei will be coming later. The festival is already in full swing, and with Evolutionize and Byproduct also playing towards the end of the day, Saturday looks to be a great one.
I’m going to do my best to be in the chat for our set, and as things have been pretty quiet here lately it would be lovely to catch up with any Horsers in the vicinity. See the next post for some In Praise of Shadows info, but it’ll also be worth tuning in today for a preview of something that’ll appear on the album.
A few things to catch up on, starting with an impressive looking release from Alias A.K.A. More familiar to most of us as Shanty, Alias’ album is a freeform take on twelve of his house, breakbeat and trance tracks, with production duties taken on by a broad range of the scene’s artists.
It’s this diversity that’s the selling point of the compilation – a real showcase of Alias’ taste in freeform, with everything from Qygen’s psychedelics to some very strong contributions from the UK crew. Alchemiist’s frantic rework of Inescapable Fatalism deserves special mention for representing the FINRG sound, but there’s lots to like here. CD2 is a mixed version of all the tracks, something likely to be appreciated by the car/home listening brigade.
The album is up for pre-order here until the 26th of this month, and as it’s only after that production numbers will decided, showing some support right now makes lots of sense.
If you’ve ever wondered what freeform jungle produced by Transcend would sound like, then this post combined with the previous one might get you somewhere close – another sample pack, but this time free and featuring a huge range of classic jungle/drum and bass samples from 1989-1999. It was compiled by veteran intelligent junglists Blu Mar Ten, and while it might only be Qygen who has effectively incorporated 90s jungle into freeform so far, there’s more than enough here to get anyone’s inspiration going.
Heading the post is fine example of BMT’s work in the 90s – the quality drum edits and beautiful atmosphere of Lunar.