Deeply blessed mashup album.

  1. Some Asshole Slams His Desk: I think this has the best opening 12 seconds of any album I’ve worked on. I knew it was important to start with a high-energy banger, so this ended up being one of the most chaotic tracks. TJ (someone in a Discord server I’m in) made a sample pack “drumkit” of xQc desk slams as a joke, so I made a beat out of those. (xQc is, unfortunately, a Gamer, which is why he’s referred to as “Some Asshole”.)

    The biggest contributor to the sense of chaos, though, is the constant back-and-forth stereo thing: I pan “seltzer” to the left for 4 measures, then the right is 4 measures. “Harder Better Faster Stronger” alternates left and right every beat. “The Boys are Back in Town”’s vocals alternate panning about once each measure in the original sample, so I didn’t even need to do anything there. The result feels like you’re being bombarded on all sides, never able to settle down.
  2. Too Many Goddamn Notes: I saw a video by Left at London on Twitter about chanting in 5/4, and I thought it was funny so I made a track about it. (A lot of the stuff on this album has a similar story.) Since it’s verbally drawing attention to its own time signature, I decided to do a polyrhythm thing: Head On in 4/4, “Vache” by Venetian Snares in 7/4, and “Strong One (Masked Man)” from Mother 3 in (hold on, let me google this) 29/16.
  3. Bass Shack: The structure in this album is less concise than “Everyone disliked that.”, but I still put a lot of thought into it. There’s a fairly gradual ramp-up in tension until track 10, where it explodes. That ramp-up really starts here. The subject matter slightly foreshadows the countercultural stuff later in the album, but in a vacuum or on a first listen it’s just a meme.
  4. Æ: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

    This was the first track I made for the album, and set the tone as being generally more demented than its predecessor. However, I went back after making most of the other tracks to make some changes: originally instead of Revenge it was the pizza music from the Spider-Man 2 game. I couldn’t get the latter to work. With the constant key changes, increasing tempo, and increasing pitch, it was a perfect storm of annoying shit. Revenge ended up fitting perfectly, so as sad as I am to lose the pizza music I’m ultimately very happy with the change.
  5. Bustin Phase: Neil I’m not apologizing
  6. Woohoo Boys: This is the gayest track I’ve ever made. It’s kind of like “The CBT Experience” from the last album (manic stuff structured around the bgm from an explicitly sexual spoken word sample), only femme instead of masc.

    In this context, the line “Sometimes, things that are more expensive are worse” is intended as a rebuttal to stuff like the opening spoken word sample, like treating virtuosity and inaccessible gear as measures of artistic worth. (Yeah, I roll fucking highbrow with my meme mashups)
  7. We’re Approaching E3: Ladies and gentlemen, E number 3!

    That outro is pretty explicitly political, huh? The lefty politics thing in this album is getting more and more blatant as it progresses.

    Also, since I know you’re wondering: This track samples a cover of “Korok Forest” from Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The cover was made by Amie Waters. The “Alek why” clip is Amie Waters livestreaming, just after she read my chat message describing the concept of this track. Unfortunately the archive has presumably been lost forever, but her reaction has thankfully been immortalized in the track itself.
  8. Gun 2: The album is almost at the breaking point, so the uncomfortable manic energy is in full force here. At its peak, the track suddenly glitches and switches to something more somber. There’s a little connection being made between gun violence and monetary greed, so there’s a thing.

    Also what the fuck O.J. Simpson, you can’t announce you’re on Twitter and immediately say you’ve “got a little gettin’ even to do”, Jesus Christ
  9. Very Normal Human Conversation: This track is just an unmodified Toyota Corolla commercial. Everything about it is super uncanny and off-putting. A lot of weird corporate worship, and I love that the CEO doesn’t even offer him a job at the end.
  10. Yassss: This is where everything goes to hell. If “Everyone disliked that” was anti-musical elitism, Care is anti-neoliberalism. Hamilton is a really prominent example of faux-woke apologia for the US being really shitty, so I knew it’d be perfect for this turning point. I don’t really know if any of this stuff comes across to the listener, but it’s what was on my mind working on this, and grounded the album’s structure.
  11. Earf Time: The most straightforward mashup on the album; literally just two samples played over each other. If we continue the metaphor from the previous track, I guess Tyler the Creator represents capitalism? Sorry Tyler
  12. My Brother, My Brother, and the Abyss: Bringing back some manic energy to head into the finale. Intricate sample chopping makes a return, and sped-up SOPHIE is pretty overwhelming.
  13. Care: The climax of the album. “Roar” by Katy Perry always annoyed me because it reminds me of “Eye of the Tiger” but refuses to actually be “Eye of the Tiger”, so mashing them up was cathartic for me. Also the lyrics are much better now that they’re recontextualized to be about rejecting capitalism instead of something generic. It’s not all positive though. Earl Sweatshirt and C418 make things feel a little melancholy, too.
  14. Be Alright: Straightforward crossfade from Bob Marley to a vaporwave track. I thought the album needed a break between super long intense tracks. I like how it lends a more grand feeling to his song, like there’s a massive sense of relief when he says every little thing’s gonna be alright. The dark intense part of the album is firmly behind us now.
  15. Golden: One last party. It’s a lot like “Gamer National Anthem” from the last one, but I think it’s structured a little better. Mastering this track was a nightmare, just because there’s so many tracks. One trick that helped was a little sneaky: when Snow Halation comes in, only a few of the tracks accompany it, not all at once. This helped keep it manageable, and it still sounds like it’s giving you everything it’s got.

    Sometimes I leave this on in the background and stop paying attention, and then get jumpscared by Will Smith at the end.