Right Brain (Purple)

Hey. It’s me. You may be wondering where I’ve been the last 4 years. My last album, Somniphobia, was released in 2020. Then, musically, I fell off the face of the Earth. The details don’t matter. I’m here to present Right Brain (Purple). It’s available everywhere now: Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, and probably anywhere else you listen to music. This blog post is the first in a short series where I’ll talk about my new album.

Let’s just run through each song. That should be fun.

  1. “Purple”
    This song probably isn’t “good,” but whatever. It’s short and weird, like me. It features a number of synths and an Asian voice reciting words that the color purple is associate with. Yep.
  2. “The Actual Eff”
    I think the bones of this song was recorded in 2022. There may have been some real guitar in it at some point. The music transformed a bit every few months, and the vocals began their life via an off-the-cuff scratch vocal I recorded in one take. A decent amount of those improvised lyrics made their way to the final version, most notably the line of “I don’t know what I’m saying. You don’t know what I’m saying.” which is satisfying to me, for some reason.
  3. “Consume”
    This was also started in 2022. It might be my favorite song on the album. It’s got a decent chorus, the guitars sound cool, and it overall has THAT sound that I’m almost always shooting for but rarely achieve. Besides the guitars, there are additionally some synths that are rather complimentary. I can’t remember how many I ended up using, but I probably recorded all the vocals 5 times.
  4. “I Don’t Know Why You Like It”
    The guitars sound a little nasty on this one. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad or not, but they have a particular sound. With the guitar riffs and drums, I was going for a Static-X kind of vibe. It went through a few iterations, and the extra time I spent on this album allowed me to cut out the fat on this particular song. Originally, there were a lot more instrumental sections. I used to be really bad about having those in my songs. I almost let this one get through like that.
  5. “Three Knocks, Two Scratches”
    The beginning piano and guitar parts were recorded a long time ago, maybe before 2020. It wasn’t until late last year/early this year that it really came together though. The title refers to a certain crime that happened about 9 years ago that was interesting to me. The lyrics don’t really have anything to do with the title though. For better or for worse, my vocals on this one sound…different. I’m trying to sing or something. For all the other songs, I instituted my go-to rocks-in-the-throat sound.
  6. “Muggy Fluffernutter”
    My ode to a semi-feral cat that I tried to befriend. She might be dead now. 🙁 I feel like this song sounds like it’s from The Cure or something, but I can’t put my finger on it.
  7. “Come on Home”
    I pulled this song out of a special place. I’ll check later to be sure, but this song got its start in 2005 or something. It was this short piece of instrumental that was just guitar and drums for the longest time. Now, it has two halves: one is a mostly electronic, dancey affair, and the other is likely the thrashiest music I’ve ever produced. Guest cat vocals at the end provided by Billy.
  8. “I Am Lobo”
    Another old song. This was fun to retool as well. I think I composed this around 2010. It’s mostly still the same except most of the vocal parts were rerecorded and there’s a new verse. It’s essentially a retelling of the blockbuster movie Don’t Tell Her It’s Me (a.k.a. The Boyfriend School).
  9. “Blue Blur 3000”
    A super old song! I suppose you could call this a cover as it was originally performed by my high school band, Blind Hate. I took a couple liberties with it, but it’s largely the same song. Since there were guitar parts lifted from Metallica and Nirvana songs, I had to alter those sections.
  10. “Marvy”
    This song its start around 2012, but it wasn’t until I was putting Right Brain together that it had any lyrics or vocals to it. The title was inspired by an episode of The Lucy Show when the titular character’s daughter referred to something as being “marvy.” I’m not 100% sure of what it’s supposed to mean, but I took it to be a short version of “marvelous.” I’m trying to bring it back. Marvy.
  11. “Doc Chocolate”
    I suppose this could be considered a somewhat playful diss track of sorts. I started working on the music in December 2023. I was hoping the vocals were going to be something else, but I had to call an audible and now it is what it is.

Stay tuned for more!

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