Fun story... I didn’t make this one, but yes, I'm still posting it... And yes, the guy who did make it is completely okay with me saying that =) ‪  One of the ideas behind this project is that it's supposed to function like an actual studio, not just me wearing twelve hats forever. So I wanted to test what happens when somebody else takes one of these tracks and rebuilds it through the personalities / constraints of the characters that make up the studio. ‪  A longtime friend took the original flat WAVs and reinterpreted the track from there. No stems. No project files. No peeking under the hood. Same lyrics. Same original creative brief. Completely different set of ears. So anything that sounds familiar was either sampled from the finished track or recreated by ear. ‪  I’m calling it a reinterpretation rather than a remix because the interesting part to me wasn’t "how would you rearrange my session?" It was "what do you think this song is, after hearing it from the outside?" ‪  Turns out that’s a really fun experiment and more importantly, it still feels like it belongs to the "artist" or the puppet studio, however you want to frame it... ‪  If you want to A/B test it against the original, feel free (I would love to hear your thoughts): https://slaps.com/track/rhz2OKYzmore

After listening to a bunch of my old 2018 stuff, I started wondering what would happen if I stopped pretending to have restraint and leaned completely into my love of golden-era Eurodance. Not "a few nostalgic touches." I mean full commitment... bright piano, offbeat bass, giant supersaw stacks, hands-up trance lifts, sugary vocal hooks, toy-box noises, crowd chants, snare climbs, key changes, and enough little fills / transitions to keep my brain occupied for nearly six minutes. Basically, I wanted to take everything I've learned as a lyricist and producer since then and use it in service of the kind of shamelessly sincere dance track that 2018-me probably thought he was already making. There was a surprising amount of work hiding underneath the cheese too... layering leads without turning them into one giant fuzzy rectangle, carving room for the bass and kick, making the vocal feel like part of the synth stack without losing the words, and constantly changing small things so the energy keeps climbing instead of just looping in place. It may be a little ridiculous. It is also completely sincere.more

Little time-capsule one from my 2018 folder... It reminded me of something useful: I should really use taiko drum fills more often. 808s are great when you want weight, punch, or that clean electronic drop language... but taikos do this different thing. They add movement, drama, and a little human war-drum chaos without just making the low end bigger. I love that they can push a transition forward instead of just making it hit harder. So yeah... sharing this partly because it's a fun 2018-me artifact, and partly because apparently past-me left current-me a note that just says "more taikos, idiot." more