CTF trivia

Ok, as an icing to the cake for those massive afterthought sessions, I'll write some curious details about "Cosmic time foundation" - more like trivia, things that only I know about ... until after this blog post you know about them, too. Simple facts that might expand the listening experience on some levels - or then not - it depends on person(ality) I guess. Some details are also very personal, you'll be able to see what I mean as you read on. And I have to say; I thought this wouldn't be as long post but ... see what happened.

The oldest song in the album is ... "Cosmic scale cloning" - that song's riffs were created during the so-called labor day (1st May) in 2011. Only 2-3 weeks after the release of debut album in April 2011. And the riffs were not created at home, but instead in the wilderness, far away from civilization, playing with an acoustic guitar which neck is badly twisted, too (I no longer have that guitar, it was the fist ever real guitar I received as gift around mid'1980s when I was a kid). I didn't even save the riffs to my phone like I usually did in such cases but the riffs sticked my mind ever since. Made the early demo sketch during the same weekend as I returned home from the wilderness.

The second oldest song in the album is ... "Atom model emit" - This song's riffs were created in August 2011. The screechy main riff idea was born from listening to Incantation. Incantation has inspired me a lot ever since early 1990s, but not necessarily this doom metal project though. Ok, about the other songs "ages" so to speak; "Dissolian energy foundation" and "Rewriting pnagraph law" date back to 2012-2013.

The "happy sounding song" that I was wondering in the blog earlier this year, first whether it could be doom metal material or not, then suddenly it made perfect sense - in a sad way though - namely "M-Light formation" ... I came up with the riffs in Autumn 2014. Ever since I was wondering that it's not M4D material, or is it. I was actually thinking it could be a start for some all different metal'lish project with one (or few) friends but for some reason that didn't make sense either. Then some dramatic happened, not in 2014 but only in early 2016; a death in the family, not my family but very close anyway. Little girl died suddenly. A girl I saw just some days before she was gone. Girl who was pure light and joy, no matter what was happening around her. I remembered the "too happy riffs" after the initial shock and sadness had passed and suddenly it made sense: Those happy riffs depict her to me. Girl who was pure light and joy. Think about the song title? Yeah. It's a musical obituary for someone special. Tribute, more than obituary. Both the music and the lyrics, even the vocal style reflects all that.

The newest song in the album is ... "Leaving the giant molecular clouds". That song was made last and also very fast. Even that it's not fast, ha! It's a different song from the others, musically, and there's a reason for that: It's a song purely inspired by Godflesh, as I've been fan of Godflesh since their debut album. The other two new songs which were created last summer and don't base to any past years' riff demos are "Star birth machine" and "Nebula wisdom". Out of these three, "star" was composed and recorded first, then came the little rocker "nebula" and like said, "leaving" was crafted as the last piece.

Originally the opening song of the album was going to be ... "Cosmic scale cloning", simply as it was the oldest song, ancient monster and it also felt so debut albumish to me. At first it made perfect sense, just because it felt so debut albumish ... so it was at the opening song slot for a long time, but there were few things that made me swap its' place with "Star birth machine". The biggest reason was that it started to feel like too similar opening song stylistically if compared to opening song of debut album ("Another species falls"). It's not necessarily so similar, but both are long, slow, brooding songs. Another equally big reason was, that as I had composed "Star birth machine" and the longer time passed and I listened to that "star" song, I started to feel more and more like "this song so deserves to be the opening song!" ... that combined with the fact, that it's also very different song compared to "Cosmic scale cloning" (or debut album's opening song, too) ... suddenly I was 100% sure about the swapping and looking back that was exactly the right thing to do.

Originally the closing song of the album was going to be ... "M-Light formation". You see, here's another trivia bit for you (something I haven't mentioned anywhere before I think); debut album's closing song ("the silent galaxies") is another musical obituary, even if it's an obituary for a cat, not a human being. So, at first I was thinking that it would be logical that CTF album would close with the musical obituary like debut album did, right? What changed that original idea, was the mood of "M-Light formation". Unlike debut album's closing song, it isn't brooding, gloomy song - it could be debated to some extent, whether it's even a doomy song. Well it is, kind of, but it's ... different. The mood is not doom - see the irony while thinking the band's name? That song has no real doomy mood, it's doom metal executed intentionally in a sort of joyful mood, even if it has a sad background story based on real life. Joy, yes, because like said the girl was pure joy. Doom, because she no longer walks the earth. Instead ... she's somewhere travelling in the space, take a look at the lyrics and you might see the symbolism, some of it anyway (I won't explain all the hints). So you can see the problem I was facing ... if you could call it a problem: I wanted the closing song to be doomy, brooding, something mysterious. The song that was composed as last piece, became the perfect last piece also for the album. And the way the soundscapes end after the actual music is gone, it's also ... perfect. The album has ended, time to wake up from the M4D dimension. The lyrics connect to many of the other songs on the album, as well.

About the "Rewriting pnagraph law" song: Originally when I composed this song, I / we didn't have cats living with us. Nowadays we have two cats (british shorthair breed) and the other one of them was reacting to this song notably. It became evident when I was preparing, practicing and recording the song ... because our cat called Sofia was meowing according to riffs and clearly came to me, listening to the riffs. When I stopped playing, she was like "why?" and went away. I restarted playing, she came fast back and settled into sphinx position, listening carefully and looking as I was playing the riffs. As this song of course didn't have a name back then, I started to call this song "Sofia's song" because Sofia seemed to like it so much. Even cats enjoy doom! ;)

About the space / ambient soundscapes on the album: I had a vision about what kind of "space soundscapes" I want to get for the album early on. I kept thinking about it during the early summer already, knowing that some day during the summer it will happen and so it did: It was July 17th, a very hot and beautiful summer day when I recorded all the darkest spacy soundscapes outdoors in the neighborhood. I didn't have anything planned, I simply went walking outdoors and recorded both nature sounds and some chosen city sounds. Machinery sounds as well as animal sounds. And funnily as I kept having problems with recording just sound (did sound tests few days before the chosen date) I didn't record just sound but I shot videos outdoors and at home I separated the sound from the videos, post processed the soundscapes and that's what ended up on the album. At that point I knew it's the first stage of "space sounds" - I thought I'd also record some crazy sounds with guitar and/or bass and use them combined with the outdoor sounds. That's what happened, too. Most of the space soundscapes audible in the album are the outdoor soundscapes though. The most audible guitar "space sound" recording is perhaps the ending of "Nebula wisdom" where you can hear strange accelerating'like sound of ... something. That's me playing some guitar, not aliens roaming in forgotten space station, ha! What I did not plan though, was the third ambient soundscape recording session. It was about following intuition, once again: I went and recorded some machinery soundscapes also at home, and these three ambient soundscape recording sessions form everything that ended up finally into the album.

Oh, almost forgot; it's worth mentioning that the bell sounds you can hear at certain key moments during the CTF album ... it's not just some freeware sounds fetched online or stuff like that. It's genuine singing bowls: I bought three singing bowls during last winter and I had a feeling I'll play them for some music project. I didn't think about M4D then, but during the ambient sound creating process I realized the singing bowl sounds would also expand the soundscapes nicely. So ... singing bowl recording sessions could be labeled as the fourth ambient recording session. The points and songs the bowls are used (not just hitting sound) is not random at all, either. They have certain meaning and the most obvious one is the way the album / last song ends. If you know anything about yoga and/or meditation, about different states of mind, you'll understand why the album ends the way it does.

That's it, yeah. You can bet this blog goes into dormant mode for now. What am I doing in the meanwhile, musically speaking? Some other music projects of course. ^_^ ... I was not planning to start any other project soon after this CTF album completion, but what happened ... well, first I put up a blog for Focus Minus and thought it might be next up ... but I thought quite wrong. If you want to know what happened, you can read about it here. In any case, feel free to enjoy CTF album and have a happy holidays, too!

PS: One more thing worth hinting. While I wrote about lyrics in the afterthought session vol2, I think I didn't mention this there: If you happen to know the tales in the lyrics of Scumfusion's past few albums, you'll be able to spot different kind of cross-references to those space tales, just from different viewpoint. Places, names, characters, events ... and you might even spot cross-references to other projects like Focus Minus (even that FM has no lyrics at all), etc. ^_^