Release confirmation and some thoughts about lyrics

 I got the release confirmation from CDbaby sooner than I thought; it happened during the night of last friday/saturday. Didn't take even a week, and the have a "warning" that currently the release confirmation timeline is 1-2 weeks on average ... and when I submitted, at one point it was stated actually that it's more likely 2-3 weeks. So, ... I am really happy that I got through so fast. I usually do this "administrative stage" very carefully and precisely, so that there wouldn't be any error and questions to be asked, that could well be the biggest explanation. It went through, because there is nothing wrong and no changes needed to be asked to make. Yeah.

This means that the release date is certainly 4th April 2021, coinciding nicely with debut album release exactly 10 years ago. Hooray!

Of course I can't say for sure, how the album appears on all the different streaming platforms, but it seems that it will be released at for example Spotify exactly on 4th April. I know that, since I already got artist confirmation mail from them and I went and tweaked the forthcoming release there already. Chose "through alien eyes" for artist pick, for possible curators. Also for the 1st time ever I updated M4D avatar / band picture in Spotify, as well as uploaded doomy starscape as header picture. About time, ehh?

I'll post the lyrics here probably next, bit of a shame I can't use the PDF I crafted for lyrics, with graphical background all through and special explosive fonts ... but that will end up into bandcamp site as bonus material for album, as usual. 

Anyway, about the lyrics, a brief thinking session since at some point I commented about "having a challenge of singing them, since the lyrics are quite cryptic" (or something like that). Actually that is somewhat misleading or indescriptive expression. I guess I was thinking the amount of lyrics when I was mentioning "cryptic", ... because, well, on this album some of the lyrics are definitely the least cryptic space lyrics ever on M4D release. There are some space visions for sure that can create weird space trippin' images for those have vivid imagination (like errr myself), but there is much larger portion of completely understandable, straightforward english lyrics instead of coded stuff, fictional place names, connections in fictional world, or word play things etc (take a look at 'Cosmic time foundation' lyrics for good comparison!). This wasn't intentional in the first place, but it happened naturally since the theme of "earth album" started to take its' shape. Since it's a fictional, scifi styled & sort of post apocalyptic vision of Earth, ridden with critical approach - it's about a place everyone know, not just a product of imagination: It comes from that, the fact that lyrics turned out quite straightforward and definitely understandable instead of being gibberish word play stuff. Hell, there is even a kind of "love" song for earth (or not just earth), a very doomed one. Though, that said, some songs are not necessarily so straightforward with lyrics, that is part of the bigger picture and not at all a coincidence which songs are like that. The songs happen in certain order, but funnily they were also composed almost exactly in the order they appear in the album, too. Small tales (songs) and when combined with each other, from start to finish, they form a much bigger tale / vision about the earth and solar system. 

'Down to earth' cover art

Haven't yet received final confirmation for the album submission process from CDbaby, but I didn't expect to receive it yet, anyway. Currently they have 1-2 weeks of average time for reviewing submissions, so it might and hopefully will happen next week.

In the meanwhile, ... here you go, take a look at cover artwork for 'Down to earth' below, front and back covers. As usual, clickin' da pics opens them in larger size if you wanna see more details.

Master V3 is the key

So, it's been a full weekend of tweaking & listening and ... it turned out that the third version of master is the very final version of this album. First version had some notable flaws and it was soon clear that it needs fixing here and there. But the second version was already a good one. In the end I had to make just some minor finetunings and tweaks and then it was time for 3rd version of master ... I listened to it multiple times with headphones and with speakers and was like "this is it, really!". Then I even went and blasted it with our TV & stereos combination. No flaws.

I've submitted the album to CDbaby system for analysing and set the release date as 4th April 2021, so that it is exactly ten years from debut. We'll see when it appears into streaming systems, but I expect it to happen in the early April anyway.

I'll post the cover artwork here at some point, too, closer to the digital release coming out.

'Heaving earth' lyric video

 Here you go, the opening track of the soon-to-be-released new M4D album:

Work, work, work ... song titles, album title revealed

Been working so much with details that eyes feel like 😵 and beyond ... but the great news is that the album is rapidly getting closer to reaching the very final stage. Yeah! It seems very realistic and possible, that the release date might well be set for 4th April, so it would be exactly 10 years since debut album. 

Well, I'll state more about the release when I get the final master ready, etc.

For now I can reveal the song titles and lengths here, and the lyric video for opening track might well be published later today in youtube (I'll write about it here if that happens!). Here are the song titles and song lengths:

Overall length of this album is 42 minutes and 42 seconds. Not planned, funny coincidence (think about 'Hitchikers guide to galaxy') ...

... and the album title is (drum roll) : Down to earth

Like said, it is a theme album for first time in M4D's existence. Theme being the earth, partly fiction, partly nonfiction (kind of). The theme wasn't planned at all, it simply formed while writing the lyrics and it came very naturally. And like I've hinted, this time the scale of these scifi doom tales is much smaller (ehm, think about titles like "century of interplanetary war" from debut?) as it's "just" about our planet earth, but on the other hand there is certain grand vision to it, too.

Vocals completed and massive progression

 I got the final vocals recorded already early during this week and the same working method has continued: Working on a daily basis, and multiple session during a day. Lots of work means lots of progress. Well, how much is that then?

Since I got the vocals recorded, I started cleaning the vocals where needed and finetuning them. I'm still doing that for 2-3 songs, but while I've been mainly working with the vocals, I've been also working big time with mixing in general. Lots of tweaking and tests - and few days ago I got the process pretty much done. Actually that process paused the work with finetuning vocals on remaining tracks. But now the work is progressing on the remaining tracks again, too - since I have pretty much all prepaped for final mixing and mastering, quite likely!

And not just that, I've been doing the space / ambient elements for the album, too. This time they won't be so audible, not in such a big role - but they are there certainly. In a certain way / style. Opening and closing track have most of this space ambience going on (opening track fully completed, closing track still work in progress) since it all fits with the tale of this theme album. Some of the soundscapes (of these space elements) are sounds I've personally recorded outdoors during past 1 year or so, some are created recently by myself and so on.

As a final point; I even crafted late yesterday evening (or night) the lyric video for opening track of the album. I will publish that possibly  already on coming days (or even this coming weekend, who knows!) and it seems that the album release date will be set for April. 

I just happened to notice, that the debut album was released on 4th April 2011, so who knows if I'd set that 4th April (2021 of course) for release date for this new album? Depends on how work progresses with these final stages. Would be funny coincidence, exactly 10 years separating the two releases. Time, the ever present thing on this doom project's albums, anyway!

Progressing with them vocals

 So, the work has continued on daily basis, one session per evening. As a result it seems that four songs now have very possibly the final vocals recorded. Three are 100 % sure, one is borderline case - might well be final vocals there too, but need to finetune some very small details possibly.

Three songs that have rough test vocals will have vocals all recorded from scratch. Based on the final vocals with other songs, these remaining songs shall improve the way the others did.