incognizance

"incognizance" is the name of an experimental (well, for me at least) album I worked on. There's seven tracks in there, but each track is relatively short, and the entire album is under 15 minutes. You don't have to listen to it before reading this, but I mean... music?

The album was released on March 14 2024. You can check it out here. It's also out on a bunch of music streaming services^[1], like Spotify.

NOTE: The official spelling for the album and song names are all in lowercase, but I capitilize them because I think it's more intuitive for reading.

Except for the first sentence, because, uh —

inspiration

The main reason I started working on this project was because of comfortable silence, an album released by tomcbumpz. I was brainrotting on Instagram, and I came across a reel that had the first track braincells playing, and I thought it was a pretty cool song, then I found the album on Spotify and it consumed my life (in terms of creative media I enjoy) for several days.

The last time I became intensely invested into a piece of media (Bocchi the Rock), I ended up releasing an EP (Fascination) to put all that energy somewhere, so it wasn't suprising to me that I very quickly wanted to make an album.

Another reason why I started this project was a growing frustration with music at the time — tl;dr: burnout — and wanting to do something different. I think every creator has to choose that balance on what they want to work on, and what they think others would enjoy. I'm not any different — a decent amount of music I've released has partially been because I thought it would be good on Spotify, but I wanted this album to be different — making it only because I was inspired, and not because I thought others would enjoy it.^[2]

development

As with most of my more-than-one instrumental releases, the songs are usually hacked together from a bunch of sources and/or ideas that I think fit compositionally(?), though Incognizance had a bit more structure to it. I knew that I wanted the entire album to be something that you had to actively listen too — a part of why I liked the song braincells is that it took me from passively listening (bored on Instagram), to actively listening. The song wasn't particularly catchy (at least, not in the way a pop song is catchy), but it made me pause to listen to it again.

I'm not really sure how I should talk about this album, but I suppose going through the track order is good enough?

01. petals must fall

Petals Must Fall was one of the first songs I made for this album (the first if we ignore the attempts beforehand), and it's probably one of my favourites. It has a lot of qualities I think made it a good first track — the lobsided rhythm of the initial synth, the low-cut noise + the bubble pop sound effects in the background, and the sad string bend around ten seconds in give a good hook to get you invested.

There's a melody that plays for the second and third part of the song, but it's not a melody in the way I'd normally try and make one. It's catchy, but not in a way where you'd sing it. I think it adds to the (pondering?) vibe of the song.

The name of the song is taken directly from Darkest Dungeon. It's a quote from the Leper, my favourite character in the game.

02. an old story

I had an old project with the first part of the song (without the melody) because I wanted to experiment with making something that reminded me of a kalimba or a music box. I remembered it when I was relistening to the Undertale OST, and the first song gave me a similar hook that I liked in comfortable silence, so I figured I'd slap this on here.

The original song was a bit more clean, but I wanted something more sentimental, so I crunched the audio a bit to give it a nostalgia vibe.

03. atonement

I don't really experiment too much with atmospheric or ambient music, so I thought this album would be a nice oppertunity to make some. I think the kalimba (or some type of metallophone idk) in the middle section helps divide the song into three distinct parts. The first and last segments aren't actually very different, but the context changes it around.

I think.

I don't know, I just make funny sounds.

My favourite part of this song is the ending, where the main synths cut off. You get to hear a few of those bell(?) hits that have been in the background. I'm a big fan of the specific hits that get played at the end, though it was pure chance that it sounded like that.

04. moonlight

Moonlight started off as a random concept song I had for a visual novel — meeting someone outside and bonding with them, or something like that. The original song already fitted the album pretty well, but I updated the instrumentation to be a bit more interesting.

The main thing I changed between the song now and before was increasing the volume of those little droplets that you hear -- I just love the way it pops between your ears. I made sure to crank it up at the end just to get that burst of ear candy.

Actually, I lied — the droplets weren't the main change, but they were my favourite so they get special treatment(!!!). Everything else was just boring — choosing a quieter piano, getting rid of instruments that were too loud, blah blah blah —

SIDENOTE: For some reason, when I play this song with Windows Media Player, it displays this random cover art of hangman on a newspaper. I honestly have no idea how this came about.

05. liftoff

As you could've probably figured out if you've listened to this, Liftoff is one of the songs that was made before I came up with incognizance.

It's punchy, it's loud — it's the complete opposite of the songs before it, practically not even fitting.

But, I like the song, so... eh?

I think it fits the album, honestly. I know with my previous stuff that there was a lot of time I spent wondering about stuff like:

• Does this song fit everything else?

• How much does it fit?

  • Is it too similar to other songs?

  • Is it WAY too different from everything else?

• What if this song is too good? Maybe I need to change the other songs???

Now, I try and avoid overthinking. I just add what sounds good to my ear. The whole idea of having an album with a strict cohesive theme is too much for my brain — at most, I'll just do EP's, since they're shorter.

My favourite part of this song is when it goes:

          #-
#-# #-# #-  #--      #-------
                  #--
               #--
|   .   .   .   |   .   .   .

Q: what does this mean

A: timestamp — 0:42

SIDENOTE: the rendering of this may break on mobile whoops

06. respite

I think Respite is funny because the main reason I added it to the album was because of the loud siren thing that plays.

To be clear — I think the song sounds good, and I like the double ostinatos that play throughout the piece, but I was getting pretty frustrated with trying to arrange this song — each chord of this song plays forever so it's weird to organize everything. I also wanted to add a melody, because I like adding melodies in a lot of my songs.

In the end, I just said (insert bad word), let's do an arrangement that sounds semi-cohesive and move on. Melodies are optional.

07. delirious

The final song in the album, and my favourite (...?) one.

Delirious was actually the second song (not including failed attempts) in terms of initial proof of concept. I planned on scrapping it because it started off as a quiet song without any drums, but then I found that snap sound, beefed it up, and thought "wow ok maybe i should work on this"

My favourite songs are when I set up the song in a way where the melody can just go ham and do it's own thing (this structure is probably used in most of my songs, actually). I have an MPK Mini I use for that type of stuff -- just ripping out a melody without any thoughts, and calling it a day.^[3]

I had the similar frustrations with this song as I did with Respite, so it's not exactly what I would've released if I was in a better headspace when working on it. The main thing is the mixing -- I think it doesn't exactly hit the mark. It almost sounds muffled to my ears, though that may just be due to the fact Liftoff exists. The melody is fine, but I basically slapped the entirety of it together in three takes, one take for each part.

I've loosened up on this overtime, specifically with melodies. I still move notes around, don't get me wrong, but it's more about getting the pitches right. When I want to time-align notes, I turn off grid-snap and just nudge them to where I think is a nice balance.

album cover

I think the cover of the album is pretty funny — the text and background clashes somewhat with my stickman drawing, but it feels like me, if that makes sense.

The root of the album cover probably comes from Oasis (from the Descent EP). When I was working on that song, the image that kept popping into my mind was someone standing still as the world around them changed. I didn't write lyrics (instrumental...) but the main idea of the song was something about regrets the world changing while you remained stagnent.

Actually, now that I type that out, that might be wrong.

Uh —

The little guy in Incognizance's cover is going through a similar experience, though I'd categorize the vibe as "quiet self-reflection" or "pondering" rather than "loud anguish." He's just laying down, staring upwards (at a ceiling? maybe). I made the background an abstract void because ~it's easier to draw~ I think it's more... accurate? Emotionally, if that makes sense.

retrospective

tl;dr: good album

I think Incognizance was a good project for me. Each song felt like an experiment rather than a product I was working on. Less stress, too. For all the dislike I have for actually working on an album (Pathos...), it is rewarding when it goes well.

Though, maybe I should try and say this again when I release something longer than twenty minutes.

footnotes