*** 2024 update - this album has been remastered ***

Presenting the remix/remaster of 'Almirezh' - updating the sound and a few compositional elements, applying all the tools and techniques I've since learned.

I'm proud of this album, although I'll freely admit that I have stolen several components from other artists, including one track which is basically a cover version (Spice Blow). Still - there are some more experimental compositional elements here in the interludes specifically, as well as what I think is probably my best truly original track 'Bled'. The album itself grew out of an idea for a single track while I was away from the computer for a few weeks - in that sense many of the ideas crystallised well before I hit record. The idea was to play around with more electronic elements and some fun VSTs I'd found, which didn’t fit with the 'natural' theme of the previous Crawls album. So I listened to more electronic/programmed stuff to get inspiration for textures and beats. For whatever reason at the time, I was dogmatic about only using synth bass, which in retrospect didn’t give much heft where needed. Real bass has been added sparingly to add emphasis

Lisan al-Gaib
The guitar 'solos' here are a half-remembered rendition of Hans Zimmer's Dune theme from the recent movies. The textures have now been beefed up, percussion added and a new intro/outro crash sets the tone a little better for the rest of the album.

Spice Blow
Pretty much a bar-for-bar recreation of a Telefon Tel Aviv track, with my own 'rock' riff interlude in the middle and added spice blow notes. A few typical remaster edits here in the form of better drums and a 'dread note' whine which builds the tension much better. The ending notes (reflecting the falling spice after the blow) were recorded by picking about on various chord notes, and re-amping through various amp settings from aggressive to soft - as such it was impossible to recreate and so these had to be cleaned up manually.

Sandwalking
Relatively simple - switched channels, edited a few fluffed notes and added a very tasty texture which is actually generated from the notes in the guitar patterns, run through a granular delay and lots of reverb

Sayyadina
Heavily inspired by a another TTA track which phases a simple drum track for some trippy effects - I went with a tribal beat and phased in a more structured way (leaving a quarter-note pause between phrases on one of the channels), so more akin to Steve Reich's methods. The original drums have been edited quite heavily here - specifically rendered each time and then passed left and right to create some better distinction and the idea of a drum circle. Some of the synth lead lines were EQ'd better, as well as editing/adding to the vocal parts which as the only real vocals on the album needed some extra emphasis.

Thumper
Pretty much original recordings here, beefed up with EQ. In retrospect this is really just Meshuggah's 'Mind's Mirrors' - nut honestly this wasn't the direct inspiration at the time - I just liked the cool sound!

Bled
Probably my best track to date - I wasn't necessarily intending to, but there is some real channelling of Isis here. Mostly beefing up the EQ and cleaning up the recordings as I think the original track was almost perfect as-is. It came about through some late-night sessions through headphones while the world was asleep, and in some way I think that is felt through the track's quieter parts

Yali
Again very few edits - really the only addition was cleaning up some of the generated note echoes/effects and choosing the best option, as well as adding another auto-pad (as with Sandwalking) to give an ethereal feel. This one could probably have been re-done with acoustic guitar - which otherwise doesn't feature on this album at all - but the original was improvised and so I didn’t want to lose any of that hesitation which gives this closing track the mood of a lone Fremen noodling on a desert evening


*** --- ***

I'm reading a lot of Dune books recently (including some of the prequels which I wouldn't necessarily recommend, though they make great beach reading), and found I couldn't really find any music that really reflects the moods as I feel them. While keeping relatively close to the post metal/sludge template, I wanted to explore a wider set of sounds and moods, electronics and otherworldly textures: synth patches (most bass herein is generated with synths, noise machines and other effects), some out-there VSTs (Gatelab, Hysteresis and Emergence mostly) and guitar sustainiac abuse . Tracks themselves were inspired by a wider variety of music - Telefon Tel Aviv, Blanck Mass, The Bug vs Earth, Steve Reich, Wyatt E and Fennesz - while the interludes are ideas I wanted to explore but didn't feel quite deserved their own track. I also programmed more drums myself - which was an interesting if frustrating effort to tweak each hit to make it sounds natural, as well as using some Japanese taiko drum sounds. I tried to find arabic drum patterns and scales for inspiration, given that's one of Frank Herbert's main touchpoints for the Fremen. Song titles are taken from the Fremen language, with the EP itself named after the word for 'new sand', representing the new-for-me experimental nature of the music. Cover image is a NASA image of Mount Sharp on Mars - I was hardly going to be able to take a better 'desert on another world' image myself.

Matching cocktail here should really be a sip of precious recycled stillsuit waters, I suppose, but I have been drinking a lot of Suze with tonic in the sun. Dry, herbal, bitter and bracing, and an otherworldly yellow - it suits well.

Lisan al-Gaib - aka 'the voice from the outer world' - and what better voice to use for the intro than Alice's babbling? This track evolved a lot and was the last one finished, going through several solos, none of which felt quite right. The idea then came to slowly 'synchronise' the chants to the solo in a way bringing the voice into focus.

Spice Blow - ashamed to say this track structure is ripped almost to the bar from a Telefon Tel Aviv song - but with (most) instruments replaced by metal versions. It builds well, with the main riff exploding from the noisy build up perfectly - the underlying gated texture is actually built out of Woodpecker and Slow Worm from 'Crawls', processed out of recognition. The ringing notes at the end are there to represent the falling spice, twinkling in the air, again using the trick from Red Kite - that is, recording a pattern on a looper pedal, then playing through various effects to go from noisy tones to clean ones. These chimed notes then lead well into the next interlude.

Sandwalking - inspired by Steve Reich, Terry Riley et al, this is three snippets of guitar notes of different lengths, cycling against each other, and meant to represent the unpredictable walking patterns the Fremen use over the dunes so as not to attract the attention of any worms. This sort of effect often generates hidden patterns through harmonics and clashing notes, and in this case the bassline was effectively 'generated' from nothing as it leapt out at me from the main notes.

Sayyadina - built from phasing drum loops and improvised sustainer lines, later fleshed out with chanting vocals. The drum loops are hard-panned left and right, with the right set moving a quarter-note out of step each cycle, starting in sync, moving to an echo but eventually creating a tribal effect. Composing a drum beat which was interesting enough but not too busy was challenging. The sustainer lines (three - one midrange centre and two sides with higher registers) were mostly improvised along a few notes, with the bass being added later via MIDI. The chanting and vocals was added to give the effect of the orgy spiralling out of controls, and consists of the word 'Sayyadina' - the spiritual mother of the sietch - repeated, along with various other relevant phrases the Fremen use. I wanted an abrupt ending, so the song segues into (Atambal).

Atambal - heavily distorted guitar, detuned completely by whammy bar. This is meant to represent the thumper tools the Fremen use to call a worm - atambal is 'impacted sand with the property to amplify any sound blow; found on the windward face of dunes'. While the sound itself was gnarly enough, I wanted some movement, so I added a gating effect and some reverb for it to fade out. Tempting to end the track on a huge crash to signify the worm exploding from the sands, but I knew my limitations and could never do that justice in a home studio

Bled - Inspired by some of the Bug vs Earth tunes, I wanted something which felt like standing out on the desert bled at midnight, hearing the quieter sounds of the desert, but also the rumbling threats in the dark. Liberal use of granular delays, extreme reverb and guitar chimes and vocalisations create the opening and closing textures. If anything, this is the most 'traditional' post metal song - quiet-LOUD-quiet-LOUDER-quiet, but hopefully maintains the overall outerworlds desert mood

Yali - The Fremen word for a Fremen's personal space within the sietch. This was meant to be a softer bit of noodling, the sort of thing you might hear coming from a room somewhere else. I wanted to experiment with Fennesz-style note treatments, and built a random-effect generator to do so. The treated notes go through a randomly-selected effect - reverb, granular echo, phasers, distortions - so some out differently every time. Much of the noodling was improvised, to retain that lazy feel, though the scale was carefully chosen.