Unreleased_2024 is a series of 52 tracks I made once a week throughout the year it's titled after. The idea originally came from 'Weeklybeats', a site dedicated to uploading weekly tracks every two years. Any folks making music here can upload, share their thoughts, comment on other tracks, all with the intent made up by the person engaging with it.
It was important to me that I did not let the rigid schedule hinder the creative process and put it into a box. I took the time to see this as an opportunity to steady my pace in learning more about my music and experimenting with as many tools and techniques as I could along the way, without creating with the intent to release a polished album or release. The year-long process was less about fulfilling output, and more about engaging with the process steadily in order to grow.
There's a lot that happened here, so I'm happy with everything I learned! The experience gave me a lot in the way of thinking about why I'm attracted to some of the themes that I explore in music. Sometimes I'd write about various imagined future places, others would have to do with my day to day activities like my offensive cybersecurity work. There's some tracks about wireless hacking in there, winter mountains, and finding unknown ancient tech either underground or in empty floors of old metal towers. These sort of things always spawn either during the process, or while I'm living those things which come before.
There's a lot of gear/tool exploration here too. Through some points in the year, I was able to do purely live tracks and recording with my hardware mixer. Sometimes they were ambient structured noodles on Hydrasynth or MegaFM, other times I used drum machines like the ER1MKII or Model:Cycles in conjunction with live key playing. Using Renoise, new plugins, the M8 tracker, microtonal systems, or recorded outdoor sounds from a mic all pushed me to think about composition and structure differently. I feel like I have a better grip on how I'd construct a methodology for what I want to make now!
Videos were created for every track made during this time which are up on my youtube channel. Feel free to head there if you want to see some accompanying visuals of synths, fuzzy creatures, light play and live playing
While a few of these tracks ended up a bit rough, I'm glad for everything they taught me. There are some sounds, songs, and tools that have become close friends during all this; It feels right and warm to bring them into the future with me. I hope this sort of thing changes how others value engaging with continued creation. Thank you for listening to my work!