A couple o' weeks back our local Calgarian legend (and all-around swell fella) Defunk geared up with SKIO Music to throw together a remix contest for one of the tracks off his latest EP, "Empire" -- original track linkie here. 

Suffice to say, I was amply elated to leap at the opportunity to dismantle and re-assemble his tune with an Alyag-ish twist. 'Twas admittedly my first time working with a trap/hip-hop sorta track, so it took a few listens and thorough ponders to sort out precisely how I could make it fit within my usual melodic instrumental mold. 

Having eventually unraveled the stems in Ableton, the part I'd immediately latched onto was the piano bit right at the end of the original track. It reminded me of Parov Stelar's album Coco (most namely the track, "Distance"), and suddenly I'd imagined the heavier hip-hop feel adopting a slightly faster swing groove, with the underlying orchestral instruments taking a greater space in the spotlight, accompanied by acoustic guitar strums. The first drop takes to that swing with a heavy, almost psy-glitchy attitude, while the second erupts into a full-blown drum-n'-bass crescendo with layers of orchestral strings, hypersaws, chugging guitar harmonies, and then some. 

Regardless of the remix contest results (which won't be announced for another couple of weeks), I'm super jazzed on having had the chance to do this 'un, and -- much like any other remix/collab in the past -- learned a tremendous deal about my own sound and production style. And, if you're of mind to support my endeavors in the contest, I humbly ask that you click the image linkie below to listen, like, and perhaps even share the track so's to draw some attention to it (which definitely helps with said contest). 

Thanks, as per always, for your generous listens, friends!

Salutations, my pretties! 

I'm most pleased to announce that, after many a moon of fervent tune-tinkering toils, I've a shiny new EP on the way! Scheduled for release on August 10th, 2018, and appropriately titled "Recreational Schizophrenia" (sort of pertains to my creative process / typical day-to-day existence), it'll feature four all-new, previously unreleased tracks. As per regular Alyag tradition, each one is vastly different than the next, and cohesively zigzags between a myriad of genres, styles, and beats per minute.

I'll put it this way: if I truly had to sum it up within the parentheses of a ridiculous run-on sentence, I'd describe it as... [cue massive inhale] ...a crowd of feral gremlins stomping frivolously at a bouncy funky neuro-disco rave to the sound of Euro-trance gated saw jitters blasting laser sounds overtop a shield-wall of down-tuned guitars chugging along to the rhythm of Viking-esque war drums beating a heavy electro beat while a drunk mountain troll blows a tremendous air horn in the distance and causes an avalanche. [cue gasp for air to catch breath] Or, something like that.

Now that I've aptly summarized the gist of it, here's an actual breakdown of the tracks:

1. When I'd first seriously began this electroinstrumental journey under the Alyag guise, I began amassing a list of ludicrous, zany, at times paradoxical, rarely sense-making word salads and catchphrases, most often derived from wine-fueled ramblings with my dearest pallo (the notorious Bree, of whom I may paint a more descript picture later, maybe), or podcasts, or what-have-yous, to be used as future track titles... Squat Lobster was the very first entry on that list, and I'd long since intended to make its sonic namesake to portray something jaunty, a tad mischievous, and more than a little weird... and I think I've done that quite well.

The resulting track begins with a jingle being played by what sounds like a ceramic bongo complemented by bells made of bouncy balls ricocheting in the distance; suddenly, a train of funky electro-bass revelers comes barreling by, leaving a swelling synth solo in its wake; in enters a spanky Telecaster followed by a swingy drum breakdown (I legit went down a deep YouTube rabbit hole of Big Band drummers breaking down their performance techniques, and subsequently sought to emulate some of those during programming); a wah-ridden heavy disco build gets crushed by a trance metal mechanoid, followed by more Telectro-funk exploding into an airy guitar solo and synthy-chordy-fadey-outey exit. (I'm seriously making up words now)

Speaking of the swingtastic drum breakdown: it really inspired me to look deeper into sample pads (ex. the Roland SPD::ONE WAV), as physically drumming on one of those is infinitely easier than manually programming individual drum hits and velocities in MIDI, as I've been doing for aeons hitherto. Apt as I am at beat-making via the ol' clicky-mouse method, it's way-hey-hey more fun to actually play the parts, and tweak them after the fact. Added bonus is the live performance aspect down the road; because the more I have to do on stage during a solo performance, the better. More on that later, though. Ahem.

2. Copacetic is a track whose narrative I describe as such: if someone were to take Bossa Nova -esque elevator music, feed it a cocktail of amphetamines, and send it dancing on stage at a drum-n'-bass show in a hazy retro 80's bar while frantically strumming the acoustic guitar... that's essentially the core of it. It actually started out with a sort of jazzy acoustic guitar riff (there's an InstaGrizzle vid shortly after its conception and errrthang), later supplemented by a fretless J-Bass and a pile of layered piano / organ sounds, which I'd aimed to tone as if they came from a ramshackle elevator in an old run-down hotel lounge (anyone here play Fallout?). From there it builds and drops into a drum-and-bass re-rendition thereof, gets all airy and pretty with some of my favorite old-school bell-layered synth pads, explodes into a shreddy guitar solo, mellows out and serenades with the lone vocal verse on the entire EP, and... well, whisper and boom. 

3. Argyle Twinkletoes is tense, thick, heavy, and beautiful. This one's easily my favorite to play, and I can't wait to bring it to the stage. The dynamics shift from the creepy and ominous, to the aforementioned shield-wall of down-tuned guitars, to soaring lead guitar harmonies (as if my Scandinavian melodeath influences could be more obvious), to beating war drums, to... eh, I'll let you listen to it, but there's definitely a bit of a twist a fair way's through. Speaking of war drums: while my affinity for giant cinematic percussion has certainly charted an exponential swell over the past couple o' yarrs, the undeniable source of inspiration for the inclusion of the hefty rhythmic elements within Argyle can absolutely be attributed to my powering through the latest season of Vikings around the same time I'd produced this track -- go figure. Also, the infamous Bree became solely responsible for the title, with her remarks re: my wearing a fresh pair of argyle socks being something along the lines of, "well lookit you, mister Argyle Twinkletoes!" -- and thus, a track title was born.

4. Don't Feel Sorry For Bigfoot draws its titular inspiration from some passerby episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast (one of my all-time favorites). At this point I can't rightfully recall which episode, or who the guest was, but it was a line that Rogan had spouted mid-hearty-hilarious-conversation; one I deemed amusing enough to write down, but not important enough to note the context of... my loss, I s'pose. While working on this track, I'd put in a serious multi-hour effort to go back and revisit several of the most likely culprit episodes (Duncan Trussell, Chris Ryan, etc) in an attempt to find and potentially sample the specific line ([build, build, build... "Don't feel" ..build... "Don't feel" ... build... "Don't feel sorry for Bigfoot" ...BWAOW! Drop, etc]), but in the end my efforts bore no fruit. Eh. Already over it.

Anyway, the track ended up being borne of a necessity to complete the live set I'd been working on in parallel to this EP -- surprise! (not actually though... I'd been waxing poetically about this ongoing live set project for many months, virtually everywhere except my website... durr; I swear I've been meaning to properly articulate my intentions for said endeavors via blog post for a while, and totally will at length later... I've been busy, k?) ...long story long, the track I'd initially intended to be my set closer didn't pan out due to some technical reasons, so the decision came to scrap that plan, and instead write something altogether new in its stead. 

A year-plus prior, around the same time that I'd tracked the acoustic guitar parts for Public Restroom Justice Warrior, I'd also recorded another, as-of-yet-undetermined-in-its-intended-destination acoustic riff. Two, actually. Both were super fun to play, and good exercises in fretboard movement, so I'd figured I would cash in on them later, when more ideas came to. And so, lo and behold, with the old Ableton sesh resurrected, the entire track came together within the scope of some three-ish days.

It's a fair bit more minimalist than the other tracks on the EP, yet I felt little temptation to succumb to my usual M.O. of dunking it into a layer cake of sonic textures. It's also the only tune I've conjured to date, ever, in any genre, that morphs between different tempos (three in total), which was kinda neat. My favorite part, I think, was the angry gremlin-esque electro-powerhouse bit near the end, where the drop-A tuned seven-string guitars mimic the precise rhythm of the gritty synth, and are hard-gated -- which is kind of a sloppy audio-nerd way of saying that there's a muting gate applied to the guitar tracks, which only opens when it's triggered (#triggered) by the aforementioned gremlin synth. Basically, as soon as the synth makes a "BRRAP", the gate opens, and the underlying guitars are also allowed to make a "BRRAP", and together the two sound thick, and saucy, and rhythmically tight. Yays for days, all around.


Finally, a note about the artwork. Since I was developing my live show alongside the EP, the art pertains to that as much as it does to the recorded release, if not even more so. You can see the four titles, along with their tempo and key markers, poking out beneath the pile of other tracks being arranged on the giant blank canvas. The side-chained gremlin synth mentioned above is also being referenced within one of the holographic thought bubbles. I'll get into the other details and their relevance in my next blerg post, in which I'll talk about the live show (which is now ready, yasss!)... but in the meantime, enjoy the track streams as I throw them online in the coming weeks, and keep an eye and an ear out for the actual release on Friday August 10th! 

Maniest n' humblest o' thanks for your listens and reads! Love ya's muchly. ^_^

Last week, a freelance word-slinging gentleman by the name of Karl Magi had graciously reached out to me via email, asking if I'd be willing to discuss a few things regarding my tunes. It'd have been remiss of me to say anything other than, "hells to the heckin' yes!", so here we are. 

In the interview, we discuss what it was that had initially sparked my desire to pursue music, my approach to writing and production, the creative process in general, the core discipline behind staying inspired and finishing projects, the current state of electronic music in general, as well as what's next in store for Alyag -- including a new EP, and the live show I'm working at preparing now. 

The full interview (along with a number of other badass local artists Karl has had the pleasure of interviewing previously) can be found here. 

Maniest o' thanks, Karl!

Once upon a time I wrote a sort of self-dedicated "hey self, be better" anthem. The year was 2008. The anthem in question was called Shadoweaver. 

A lot of late teenage angst went into this track, ha. It was essentially borne of a series of introspective realizations that I'd fucked up and gravely disappointed some of the closest humans around me through careless and selfish disregard of their feelings. As a result, the lyrical themes depict myself as transforming into a sort of predatory demon, exiled to exist in obscurity (something something Beauty and the Beast?). In the grand scheme of things, the actions that'd spurred said disappointments were fairly inconsequential, but it all felt immensely significant at the time. I've always been my own worst critic.

Anyway, years later, it's still probably one of the best melodic metal compositions I've ever pieced together, and easily one of my favorite ones to play. More recently, I'd attempted to render an acoustic transmutation of it for funsies, which turned out surprisingly well... and so I committed it to mic. See, the trickiest thing about doing acoustic covers of metal tracks is converting the somewhat atonal growly vocals into the clean melodic sort. For this particular piece, I'd sort of cheated by following the melody of the guitar strums, with only the occasional melodic deviation, for flair (or whatever). My singing talents are dodgy at best, so it defs took a fair amount of work to get to the end result... which I am pleased with, so there's that. The varying dynamic swells sound very haunting, which serves the intention behind the track perfectly, I think.

Contrary to my usual approach to song production (typically around 60-80 tracks of percussive and instrumental layers, plus then some), it was pretty novel to piece together something relatively minimalistic (two stereo-miked acoustic guitars -- lead and rhythm, plus the lone vocal track). I'd envisioned the arrangement to be somewhat intimate, and tried to make the mix represent the sort of sensation one might experience in front of a small stage at a tiny blues club (the Blue Gator in Kelowna comes to mind... a former red-ale-fueled stomping ground). So hopefully the track sort of translates that. 

All in all, turned out pree neat. I kinda like it. 

As the title implies -- BAM! Etc.

Srsly though, I'm amply jazzed on the fact that I finally got off my proverbial posterior and started diverting some of my creative grind into the oft-overlooked (on our musician types' part) yet incredibly crucial aspect of self-whoring (a.k.a. "marketing"). At the very least, an online hub for all that is my repertoire of artsy spewings, a tiny pocket of teh interwebz that I shall call my own and mine home. Here I shall make my stand. Here I shall stage my beach head in a full-scale online assault on the senses of all those who fall prey to my wiles and are haplessly lured into imbibing my nonsense unto their beings via aural and/or visual means. (if you're reading this, by the way, I love and appreciate you to no end -- thanks for being here, fren!)

So, like, welcome, or whatever.

I'll elaborate further on the name "Alyag" in another post down the line, but in the meantime, know this: it's been an alias of mine (pertaining most of all to my imaginative explorations) for many, many years -- so much so that I defaulted to it as a musical moniker when I'd first began experimenting with electronic music back in 2005 (using, ahem, a pirated copy of Reason... shh!). In 2008 I'd finished the first Alyag "EP", a 7-track collection called Falling Into The Abyss (the title track having since been made available for listens via mine SoundCloud). It certainly wasn't anything special to write home about, but it was definitely a welcome, muchly stimulating aside to my primary project at the time -- a growly Scandinavian melodeath metal band-later-turned-solo-studio-endeavor: Celestis. (again, more on that later) 

The one really neat thing that came of that 2008 release was one track in particular -- a very chill, atmospheric piano-trickled track with some very pretty guitar leads (plus the occasional bout of shreddy weedlie-wahs) called Waters Of Eternity; a track that I was fond enough of to reproduce eight years later. (I've since pondered doing the same to Falling Into The Abyss, buuut... meh.) The other neat part was that the entire project was a pleasantly stimulating deviation from my usual ra-ra-ra-angry-walls-of-guitars-smashy-drums-screamy-growl antics (which I still love so very dearly to this day), and had allowed me to vent my more experimentative fringe ideas that wouldn't have fit within any other mold o' mine at the time. Something something seeds planted.

Fast-forward to Shambhala 2016, an ineffably cathartic experience I was deeply involved with. One night during showtime it had dawned upon me that the electronic music I'd loved so very dearly for the entirety of my incarnation upon this particular plane, which had also intimidated me as a producer for so long (watching my sound designer pals go to town on reverse-engineering patches in Massive and Sylenth and whatnot, and failing miserably to wrap my head around all the automation and signal flow)... that, THAT was my true calling. In the months that followed, I made it my sole missive to sink my claws into Ableton as aggressively as I could (mad props to Mr Bill, Noiselab, Au5, and Slynk for their tremendous tutorials)... and a year and a bit later, here we are. No other artistic undertaking has ever made me feel nearly as elated, as motivated, as driven toward unabashed exploration, experimentation, and learning as this project has within the past year and a half. And this site is to become an extension of all of these efforts; a collected, focused showcase of everything I strive toward and am most creatively tickled by. 

And so I invite you to join me on this journey of mine. Part of the primary focus of this site will be the e-mailing list -- still, by far, the best way to receive regular updates on the things that interest you most amidst the hella saturated static noise of contemporary social media. To sign up (if you haven't been so gracious already), simply head over to the home page, and submit thine glorious addy via button-clicky... I'll do my utter best to keep you appraised of all my shenanigans. And if you've words to throw at me, fire 'em away via the Contact page! I always look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks so much for being here, and for your attention to my ramblings, and hopefully you'll continue to be around to see all the latest. Cheers, friend!