Hey kiddos,
Well, it’s finally done. My work on “Heaven’s Artifice,” my forthcoming instrumental album, is wrapped up like a holiday gift.
About the album:
“Heaven’s Artifice” was the result of several jam sessions with myself. Sessions 1 was just me playing around on the Moog Matriarch for about 45 minutes with a simple 4-on-the-floor beat going the whole time. Session 2 was me playing the guitar—yes, that lead sound is not a synth, it is a guitar running through a brassy synth pedal effect. From there, I took out a whole lot of the kicks to give some of the more atmospheric parts some breathing room. In Session 3, I went back over some of the lower notes I played with guitar with a bass synth to get some nicer low end in there. In Session 4, I built out drum parts using my drum machine, quickly building complimentary rhythms and moving on to next song/section. I was mostly satisfied by this point, but ultimately decided it was still missing something. With Session 5, I went through and improvised a bunch of parts on piano, most of which I ended up deleting; I found keeping the piano sparse allowed it to be more effective.
There is a loose storyline to this thing--at least, in my head--but I’m not really gonna detail that. My hope is your imagination conjures something in your mind that my explanations never could.
I am offering you all 10 tracks of “Heaven’s Artifice” for a Pay-What-You-Want sliding scale, almost a week before it’s available in streaming services or in digital music stores. Consider it my gift to you.
May your holidays be lovely. See y’all next year!
Love and cheer,
Rust
Sunday the 17th, 7pm, I'm playing a short set at The North End of Hollywood, as part of Ex Corpse's Experimental Nite.
I've been rehearsing for the past couple months just in case an opportunity presented itself and here it is. So that's a cool thing. I will be debuting a new song as part of my set, called “Dancing.”
This is the cyberpunk soundtracky project I've been alluding to for some time. It's a concept album. I have an idea of what the story is. Maybe the story that forms in your imagination when you hear it will be similar, but maybe not. I'll talk a little bit about the project a bit more once it's released, and how it came about, but I'm gonna leave things somewhat open-ended as far as the album's narrative. I'm hoping to get the final polish on it later this week, then put it out in time to occupy some liminal space in people's minds.
