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Album Reviews: The Music of 2023

It is that time once again, when I gather together the music that I have liked over the past year, and give a brief explanation of why I like it.

This year feels like a good year, and that is because most of the albums I’ve included feel like they may just stick around longer than the time it took to get to know them well enough to talk about them. Other of my year-end lists do include entries that never made much impact beyond the listening and inclusion; as much as I thought I liked them at the time, they ultimately made no lasting impression, which is not what I hope for. This year, either the albums are better, or I have made more of an effort to exclude the ones that might be short-lived. Or both. Still, there are a handful at the bottom end of this year’s list that are unlikely to be long-term players, but that do have some good songs, so hopefully I will continue to sample them. 

There are fourteen albums here that represent a relatively narrow set of genres compared to other years. There is a fair amount of prog, or at least a fair amount of music from bands with a proggy reputation, which might be a bit of a surprise if you know me. I do not consider myself a fan of modern prog and do not seek it out, mostly because I find the vast majority of it tedious and entirely predictable. However, there are a handful of bands who fall under that (admittedly rather broad) umbrella who can manage to sound fresh, so I can’t write the genre off completely. A few of them released pretty good albums this year. There is some industrial/industrial-related, some post-rock, and straight-up rock. No metal or post-metal this year, and no oddball genres. 

In terms of the ranking… I’ve put numbers on them but except for the three or four at the bottom, those numbers don’t mean very much. It’s crowded at the top. There are some clear distinctions among some albums, but there are also places where making a choice is largely arbitrary. 

Let’s go.

Continue reading Album Reviews: The Music of 2023

Mariusz Duda – AFR AI D Album Review

Released November 17, 2023

  • Mariusz Duda: synths, keyboards, bass, vocals, all other instruments except
  • Mateusz Owczarek: electric guitar on tracks 1, 3, 4, and 8

Tracklist:

  1. Taming Nightmares
  2. Good Morning Fearmongering
  3. Fake Me Deep, Murf
  4. Bots’ Party
  5. I Love to Chat With You
  6. Why So Serious, Cassandra?
  7. Mid Jorney to Freedom
  8. Embracing the Unknown

 

Back in 2008, Mariusz Duda began Lunatic Soul, a project that was intended to be different from Riverside and showcase another side of his musical identity. Eventually though, these two “musical worlds” (as Duda likes to call them) turned out to be insufficient to contain his ever-evolving musical inventiveness. He created a third, under his own name, for ideas and projects that fit neither Lunatic Soul nor Riverside. At first the MD world was to contain one-off alt/pop songs (and a couple of those have been released), but Duda found himself driven to revisit his first childhood musical love, ambient electronica: and the minimalist, digital Lockdown Spaces project was born.

AFR AI D is the next installment in the Mariusz Duda world of electronica. On this album he addresses current cultural fears and angst (as he did with Riverside’s ID.Entity), but this time focused around the growing dominance of AI in many areas, and the suspicion that many people have of it. It is also the first album since 2018’s Under the Fragmented Sky to include a guest musician, in this case Mateusz Owczarek (Lion Shepherd and guest guitarist on Wasteland) who provides electric guitar solos on several tracks. 

As if to live up to its title, AFR AI D begins with “Taming Nightmares”: we hear hissing, the catching of breath, drones and wails and other unsettling electronic noises, until finally a repeating melody begins in the background. Synthetic percussion, distorted vocals, unintelligible words, and a jazzy, jittery guitar solo towards the end, all of which are clearly meant to evoke the unease and anxiety that the rest of the album will work to dispel.

And that’s the key — from this point on, the album begins to get brighter and more upbeat. Duda’s message is not one of fear and suspicion; this is not music that aims to unsettle. As the album progresses the tracks become less jagged, smoother and less anxious, there are more analogue sounds, small bits of percussion, real piano and bass, and more of Owczarek’s thoughtful, careful guitar.

“Bots’ Party” (the fourth track on the album) was the second single released; despite what the title implies, this is a gentle, cheerful track. It starts with a slow piano melody, gradually becoming more and more programmed and synth-heavy but never losing its serene rhythm, even when it segues into party-time and the rollicking guitar solo.

This is followed by “I Love to Chat With You”, the perfect reminder of the beauty of the human touch, with its gorgeous rolling piano theme and choral backdrop, featuring Mariusz Duda’s voice — heavily autotuned, but soaring and hauntingly delicate nevertheless. It links moments from Under the Fragmented Sky to moments in Eye of the Soundscape. It is a truly lovely song, my clear favourite on the album.

The last track, “Embracing the Unknown”, was the first single, and it was an interesting choice given that it is the longest track on the album, and stylistically it doesn’t really reflect the album as a whole. It is heavier and perhaps less obviously electronic than the rest. However, it is a powerful track and gave us the first chance to hear Owczarek’s guitar contributions.

As noted, the album is named for the fear and suspicion of the rapid proliferation of AI into our lives. And yet AFR AI D is a surprisingly upbeat and optimistic album: Duda seems to be reassuring us that our fears are misplaced. AI is a tool, and will be used, but we will not lose our humanity in the process, or our emotional connections to each other. Mateusz Owczarek provides us with much in the way of that human touch, and Duda’s choice of him as the guest guitarist was a stroke of genius. He certainly has the chops, but more importantly he seems to understand the intent of the album, and he adds a rich, organic reality to otherwise deliberately digitized, synthetic, unhuman sounds. The solos are brilliantly and instinctively right. This album would not be the album it is without him.

When I first got the files, I was a bit worried about the music’s longevity: I do not play Lockdown Spaces material very much any more, and the new album is another offering from that same musical world. I should not have been concerned: AFR AI D is richer, meatier, and more immersive than Lockdown Spaces, while extending the electronic identity of this third musical world. Duda sometimes talks of the “flow” of an album — a seamless weaving together of the songs and the sounds that give an album a satisfying sense of unity. AFR AI D flows wonderfully well: it is an album of clear vision and great confidence. Mariusz Duda, in all his musical worlds, continues to surprise and captivate with his endless creativity and the breadth of his vision.

The Music of 2023, July Update

July Update

It’s a few months and releases later from the March overview, so let’s see what is going on and how the new stuff stacks up. I’ll also take a look at some upcoming albums. You can see what I reviewed earlier in the year, here.

Continue reading The Music of 2023, July Update

Album Review: Music Inspired by Slavs

Released April 21, 2023

 Personnel:

  • Kris Wawrzak: basses, sampling, programming, vocals
  • Artur Szolc: drums and percussion
  • Robert Szrednicki: guitars, keyboards, synths, various instruments

 Guests:

Krzysztof Drabikowski; Inga Habiba; Lunatic Soul

Sebastian Aleksandrowicz; Anna Drabikowska; Michał Górczyński; Mariusz Kumala; Dyba Lach; Mariusz Mielczarek; Nadhir; Maria Oldak; Tomasz Popkrzywiński; Kamil Popławski; Mariusz Rodziewicz; Igor Szeligowski; Krzysztof Szmytke.

 Track List:

  1. Furta                                                         9. Chors
  2. Świętowit                                               10. Zachód
  3. Wschód                                                   11. Kupałą              
  4. Swaróg                                                    12. Południe
  5. Mokosz                                                    13. Łada              
  6. Północ                                                     14. Weles
  7. Perun                                                       15. Rozstaje
  8. Trzygław                                                 16. Rod

Music Inspired by Slavs is the fourth offering from the Music Inspired By… trio, who have intermittently been releasing largely instrumental thematic albums since about 1999. The last one, 2016’s Music Inspired by Alchemy, is reviewed here.

As the title suggests, the core inspiration for this album are the various deities of the Slavic pantheon. It is meant to be a musical imagining of a distant Slavic past, before conquest, science, and the imposition of a foreign religion, and the release is accompanied by lavish and detailed notes and artwork. There are eleven tracks related to the gods, organized somewhat geographically, interspersed with short, directional interludes to guide us. And so we pass through “Furta” (The Gate) into this lost world.   Continue reading Album Review: Music Inspired by Slavs

Riverside: ID.Entity

Released: January 20, 2023

 Personnel

  •  Mariusz Duda: vocals, basses, electric and acoustic guitars
  • Piotr Kozieradzki: drums
  • Michał Łapaj: keyboards and synthesizers, Rhodes piano and Hammond organ
  • Maciej Meller: electric guitars

 Tracklist

  1. Friend or Foe?
  2. Landmine Blast
  3. Big Tech Brother
  4. Post-Truth
  5. The Place Where I Belong
  6. I’m Done With You
  7. Self-Aware

 Bonus Tracks:

  1. Age of Anger
  2. Together Again
  3. Friend or Foe? (single edit)
  4. Self-Aware (single edit)

 Algorithms. Influencers and Curated Lives. How to Change Your Life in Ten Words or Less. Memes. Monetization. Tracking. Filters and Avatars. Targeted Ads. Conspiracies. Expectations versus reality. Who is real and who is not? How much control over our lives do we really have?

With ID.Entity, Riverside’s 8th album, Mariusz Duda and his bandmates explore these themes: negotiating virtual realities, hanging on to one’s identity and self, fighting the ubiquitous and implacable presence of the data collectors and algorithms that tell us what we should want, trying to deal with the polarization and angry echo chambers of the online world.

We get some hints from the outset that things are different: the cover is by Polish artist Jarek Kubicki and it thrums with life. This is not the dark, sombre palette of the covers of most of the previous albums. Bright, fragmented shards of colour fly out against a stark white background; we can glimpse shadowy figures in the background. Does this new vision reflect what is inside? Continue reading Riverside: ID.Entity

The Albums of 2022

It’s that time again, when, along with many other people, I maunder on about some music I heard in the past year. I’m not sure how many albums I did hear altogether, definitely more than the dozen I talk about, but I don’t make notes unless for some reason the album gets my attention long enough to play it more than once. A lot of albums don’t get that far. A lot of albums I don’t manage to get all the way through even once. I’m sure there is a lot of music that I have missed — there always is, mostly due to time constraints, and mood constraints, and the inability to listen to everything that gets recommended by various friends, musicians, and algorithms, but I do try.

 Anyway, what follows is the music that did catch my attention sufficiently for me to revisit it. I think there is less variety than usual: metal and post-metal dominate, but there is a surprising amount of prog considering my general disdain for the modern form of the genre, some ambient/electronica, and a bluegrass album. I’d heard of every band on the list except for one, and that one proved to be one of the best discoveries for a long time. I found a couple of albums simply because it struck me that the band had been awfully quiet lately and maybe I should check what they were up to.

In terms of ranking… I’m beginning to wonder whether I should bother: at least, for anything not in the Top 3. I did a little research, looking back on my previous lists to see what albums had actually stood the test of time. It wasn’t quite as bad as I feared: for most years, a lot of my top picks have turned out to be albums that I still play. Not all years to be sure, and not all albums, but enough for me to continue to trust my own judgment. So take the top 3 as the top 3, and the rest in more or less rough order, as in — the ones near the bottom are less interesting than the ones near the top.

Continue reading The Albums of 2022

The Music of 2022 So Far

Well, it’s already May, and I haven’t updated the blog for a while.

What is new and exciting so far? There are a few new things to be sure, but not very many have caught my attention. I haven’t really had the time to dig in and listen to stuff, let alone search out new things.

That being said, some singles have hit in anticipation of new albums:

 Porcupine Tree: “Of the New Day”

Steven Wilson and crew follow up the first single from 2021 with this one, much slower and more contemplative, but still managing to sound like a mash-up of earlier Wilson solo albums and Porcupine Tree — which is not to say that it is a bad or derivative song. It is not. Maybe not as instantly compelling as “Harridan”, and a bit more of a grower, but the two singles together suggest the upcoming album may be a pretty good one, whatever the reasons for its release.

 

Killing Joke: Lord of Chaos EP

There are two new tracks on this EP, and a couple of remixes of things from 2015’s Pylon. The new tracks are “Lord of Chaos” and “Total”, and these are worthy follow-ups to the angry melodic industrial post-punk of Pylon. It is, however, not clear whether a full-length album is to follow.

 

Decapitated: “Cancer Culture” and “Hello Death”

Technical death metal from Poland, beat-and-riff-heavy, relentlessly energetic, reminiscent of beloved early albums. “Hello Death” stands out because of guest vocalist Tatiana Shmayluk (Jinjer) who adds a whole level of richness with her soaring clean vocals, in opposition to Rafał Piotrowski’s angry growls.

 

Kellermensch: “6705”

The angst-ridden Danes are back after several years, with a new album in the works, due to be released on May 27th. The single is very much in the vein of songs from 2017’s Goliath: darkly melodic and orchestral, dealing with loneliness and broken relationships. Christian Sindermann’s plaintive voice may be an acquired taste, but it does fit the mood of the songs.

 

Shearwater: “Xenarthran” and “Aqaba”

Jonathan Meiburg has been busy: he released his first book last year (the very excellent A Most Remarkable Creature — a book that has nothing at all to do with music) and is still promoting it; and he also managed to finish the latest Shearwater album (The Great Awakening) which will be released in June. The album was released to crowdfunders early this year, so I have been listening to it for quite some time now.

 The singles give a taste of what the album is like. Slow, contemplative, rather more acoustic than the previous album, and it can sound deceptively sparse, but it isn’t really. It hearkens back to earlier albums: in fact, “Aqaba” has very much the feel of “The Snow Leopard” from Rook, and if you know that song, you know that is not a bad thing at all.

 

Mariusz Duda: “News From the World”

 This song does not presage a new album, but winds up the Lockdown trilogy of albums that Duda composed and released over the past two years. And it is an interesting song to end with; rather than being more of the sparse, jittery electronica of the Trilogy, it is dense and analog, with the three-part structure common to Duda’s best Riverside or Lunatic Soul tracks. It is certainly full of electronic washes and soundscapes, and it even begins in a deceptively Lockdown-ish way, but soon a slightly jazzy bass riff and actual drums take over. Piano dominates the middle third, before heavy rolling bass-and-drum riffs return. There are bits reminiscent of Lunatic Soul, and Eye of the Soundscape; it is by far the strongest track of the entire Trilogy, probably because this is where Duda’s strengths lie. I could stand a whole album like this.

Albums

At this point most of the albums I’m interested in are in the future. I’ve only picked up three new ones to date:

 Author and Punisher: Krüller

 Author and Punisher is the nom de plume of one Tristan Shone, industrial musician who takes the genre descriptor literally: he builds machines that make industrial music. No guitars or drums on his stage, just huge metal contraptions that he works with hands, feet, and voice, to produce enormous swathes of massive sound. He came to my attention a few years ago via the Spotify algorithm, back when it seemed to actually work — for some reason it suggested I might like this stuff.

It was not wrong. Author and Punisher makes brutal, dense, angry electronic noises, at least at his best. I’m not sure, alas, that Krüller is his best: this album sees his material somewhat more melodic, and less brutal, and somehow less effective. For me, only “Centurion” really stands out as indicative of what he can do, perhaps followed by the title track.

 

Amorphis: Halo

 The Finnish folk metal masters have released an album that is very reminiscent of Under the Red Sky, and that is fine with me, because I liked that album very much. These guys present deeply melodic and heavy folk metal, full of catchy riffs, and really the best part of these songs is how well Tomi Joutsen switches between growl vocals and a rich clean tenor voice throughout the songs. He’s one of the best in the business at that. This is a nice and easy album to listen to, head-banging all the way.

 

Marillion: An Hour Before It’s Dark

Marillion, the long-standing neo-prog outfit, is a band that never did much for me. The level of adoration from many of my friends does lead me to occasionally try out yet another Marillion track, just to see if something has changed — and since I tend to find Fish and Hogarth both annoyingly mannered vocalists, it shouldn’t really matter what album I pick. Pretty much every attempt has resulted in a bemused “meh”.

So yeah, I was rather surprised (as were most of the people I know when I mentioned it) when I actually took to the new album. I can’t remember why I listened to it — I think I just liked the cover — and somehow, despite Hogarth’s nasal whine, the album itself works. Now it is not one that is ever going to make my all-time best list by any means — it doesn’t have that kind of depth or thoughtfulness or originality — but it is certainly accomplished, smooth, with some pretty lush moments. It is a good album to put on and just play.

And no, I won’t be attending any Marillion weekends.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Year-end Windup: The Albums of 2021

This past year was an excellent year for music, much better than the travesty that was 2020. Right from the beginning with the early releases it promised to be a strong one, and quality-wise it never really let up. The music did come along in fits and starts: a bunch of late winter/spring releases, a bit of a lull through summer into the fall, and then a final surge very late in the year. It was this last bit that proved problematic, because the late releases were so strong they threw off all the calculations I had made up to that point. By mid December I had to completely rethink my top-tier albums.

In terms of genres, what attracted me is largely divided between various forms of instrumental ambient electronica or industrial, and good ol’ rock‘n’roll/metal. A bit of proggish and alternativey stuff is sprinkled throughout, but not too much. There were certainly surprises along the way. I ended up with an even dozen albums that stand out; I think this is the strongest year for music in a while.

Gary Numan released his crowd-funded album early in the year, and Shriekback did the same thing in December. Industrial legend Bill Leeb gave us two offerings: one from Front Line Assembly and another from the long-quiescent Noise Unit. Mariusz Duda, who has an inordinate fondness for trilogies, also released two albums to complete his latest, which was begun in 2020 with Lockdown Spaces. The Tea Party emerged almost out of nowhere to demonstrate that they are still very much alive and a force to be reckoned with. The long-awaited new album from post-metal masters Tacoma Narrows Bridge Disaster finally appeared.

Anyway: on to the list. Continue reading Year-end Windup: The Albums of 2021

Interior Drawings: Mariusz Duda

Release date: December 10th, 2021 on Bandcamp;  December 17th on all other streaming services, and on cassette.

Mariusz Duda: all instruments and vocals

 Tracklist

  1. Racing Thoughts
  2. Interior Drawings
  3. Shapes in Notebooks
  4. Prisoner by Request
  5. Dream of Calm
  6. How to Overcome Crisis
  7. Almost Done
  8. Temporary Happiness

Interior Drawings is the third album in the Lockdown Trilogy that was begun back in 2020 during the first wave of the pandemic, and added to in the spring of 2021 during some subsequent wave. The first two albums are rather existential in theme, dealing with the emotional response to literal lockdowns and enforced isolation. This one is not.

This time around, Duda has presented us with an exercise in recursiveness: he’s made a fascinating attempt to use music to represent the process of creating music – at least, Mariusz Duda’s mode of creating music. Each song represents a step along the way, from initial inspiration (“Racing Thoughts”) through battling creative roadblocks (“How to Overcome Crisis”) to the final product (“Temporary Happiness”). This makes Interior Drawings a much more literal album than the others. There is isolation here, but it is the kind of self-isolation required in order to complete a project, and not imposed from outside. It’s an intriguing approach, and it will be interesting to see (hear?) if he has succeeded.

Each track tries to evoke the mood and experience suggested in the title. While I don’t plan to discuss each song on the album, some of them really do give us a sensory glimpse into the process of creating. The first track, “Racing Thoughts”, is piano-heavy, and fast — we feel the initial swirl of ideas, and the intensity of trying to capture them,pinning them down. There is a palpable sense of the excitement of starting a fresh project.

“Interior Drawings” starts with the sounds of drawing – literally. Duda has even posted a short video of this: pencil in hand, drawing a square, circle, triangle, over and over, a visual representation of the musical representation of the making of this music (did I mention the recursiveness of the album?); then bass and electronic percussion start to build. Clearly these are the initial ideas taking shape; the song winds up with a rather beautiful piano theme, something that would not be out of place as an outro on a Lunatic Soul or Riverside track.

At the moment my favourite piece is “Almost Done”, a track of impelling forward movement, dark and full of synths and electronic drums, with little familiar themes tracking in the background. This really does give the feeling of the end in sight, racing towards the goal.

 The album (and our journey into the making of the album) ends with “Temporary Happiness”: more upbeat and brighter, a nice smooth melody and soft vocals – appropriate given that the project is finally done. It ends – again literally – with the sounds of someone locking doors, street noises, steps walking away as the last repetitive theme fades into the background. A final soft chuckle, and it’s done.

 As with the other albums in the trilogy, Interior Drawings is minimalist, mostly instrumental, mostly electronic, created largely on digital instruments. However, Duda makes great use of analogue piano and adds more vocals. There is also more straight melody here – in fact, there is much that is reminiscent of Lunatic Soul, or at least of Under the Fragmented Sky, in its moody electronic jaggedness. It does remain distinct though – the whole trilogy does – from Duda’s other projects.

Interior Drawings is a richer, denser, more melodic album than the other two in the Lockdown Trilogy. While I think that it lacks some of the overall diversity of Claustrophobic Universe, the addition of real piano and vocals adds depth to it: the album feels more grounded, more accessible. It is quite a personal album, too: we don’t often get an inside look at how creativity works, so we are privileged to go on a musical tour with Duda as he walks us through his process.

 Interior Drawings, and the whole Lockdown Trilogy, give us a side of Mariusz Duda that he hasn’t had much chance to show us before, his main focus being on Riverside and Lunatic Soul. With this trilogy, he has reached back into his past, to his early influences and first musical loves, bringing them forward to this new reality. I think it is safe to say that Duda has a lot of ideas left to find and shape, and we look forward to hearing them for many years to come.

 

Mariusz Duda — Claustrophobic Universe

Released April 23, 2021

Personnel:

  • Mariusz Duda: pianos, keyboards, synthesizers, and all other sounds

 Tracklist: 

  1. Knock Lock
  2. Planets in a Milk Bowl
  3. I Landed on Mars
  4. Waves From a Flat Earth
  5. 2084
  6. Escape Pod
  7. Lemon Flavoured Stars
  8. Claustrophobic Universe
  9. Numbers and Denials

 Last summer, during the first phase of the pandemic and some version of some lockdown that we all hoped would end the problem, Mariusz Duda took a break from working on Lunatic Soul to create a brief album of jagged electronic sounds, that he called Lockdown Spaces. It is not clear whether the plan for a trilogy originated with the first album or if the idea came later, but here we are: Claustrophobic Universe is the second instalment of what will be a trilogy that explores Duda’s early musical love, electronica.

 Lockdown Spaces was created in about two weeks, and it shows. Claustrophobic Universe took more time and, well, it shows. The album continues the minimalist trajectory started byLockdown Spaces: even though both rely heavily on programmed sounds and synths and electronic instrumentation, Claustrophobic Universe is a more nuanced album, more carefully considered, more textural, at times edging towards industrial. Along with the digital pulses and anxious rhythms there are analogue bits and pieces creeping in: piano, voice, small percussive sounds. The tracks are either constructions of jittery synth-beats, or leaning towards ambient (“Waves from a Flat Earth” versus “I Landed on Mars”, for example), but Duda cannot escape melody: even in the most spare, programmed tracks, little melodic themes trickle through, repeating and weaving in and out among the beats. Some of these tunes are on the edge of familiarity — it wouldn’t surprise me if he has reworked older ideas and I just haven’t identified them yet.

There is a lot of repetition in these songs; themes and rhythms bounce back and forth, and move from track to track, a fitting reflection of the overall idea of the album: confined as many of us are to four walls and a restricted physical space, we seek escape from the internet-filtered reality and distorted facts into universes of our own making, and yet this too can be constrained. We bounce between the two of them.

 Notable songs include “2084”, which reflects the feel of the first track “Knock Lock”, both beginning with hollow programmed percussive rhythm, but then ”2084” develops into a bouncy little melody. The title track starts with a warbly hypnotic piano and synthesizer melody that weaves its way through the whole song, draggy and with deliberate drop-outs, imperfect, rising to choppy percussion and back again, some breathy sounds — there is a sense here of striving to escape but not quite making it. The last track (“Numbers and Denials”) is downright rock ’n’ roll. Okay, not really, but it starts out heavy, chugging nicely along, before it fades away into echoey keyboard plinks and white noise.

 My favourite track so far is “Escape Pod”, a rather beautiful diversion after all the jittery distortion and processed noises of the previous songs. Starting with an actual piano melody it gathers momentum with drums (I’m sure they are programmed but they have a nice hefty feel), a throbbing repetitive bass rhythm, small percussive noises — a lovely, almost soothing song. It is reminiscent of material from Eye of the Soundscape.

 With Claustrophobic Universe, Mariusz Duda has demonstrated that the breadth of his creativity goes well beyond what we have heard from him so far. This is nowhere near the heavy prog of Riverside, the lush, melodic sounds of Lunatic Soul, or even the electronic ambience of Eye of the Soundscape. Lockdown Spaces was a hint; Claustrophobic Universe takes it to the next level and proves that he can create and develop music that draws from a rather different source than his main projects, or at least draws from it differently. I don’t think it is quite as accomplished as Lunatic Soul or Riverside, but he’s been at those a lot longer. it certainly makes one look forward to what he will do with the third instalment.

 As befits music based on digital noises and early musical influences, the releases are initially available as downloads, by streaming, or on cassette. Full physical releases will become available after the trilogy is complete.