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annihilation operator: notes from the dark mountain.
🕑 Added 2024-03-24 19:15:32 +0000 UTCannihilation operator started being worked on as early as October 2022, practically right after Chromatic Acceleration was finished, which was when the earliest version of kill mode was rendered.
My idea was to follow up Chromatic with a project that would be its emotional and sonic antithesis, a project that would drop the mellow and cheerful melodism to be dark, somber and violent.
At first, there was no reason for this, just a desire to be a contrarian.
It was also my idea to make it a full-length album from the get-go, and I wanted it to be some sort of direct sequel to Meritless Hobby in terms of length and sonic inconsistency, with many tracks planned as direct-ish sequels to ones in Meritless.
However, Meritless Hobby was also emotionally inconsistent, while Annihilation is incredibly steady in its negativeness.
The idea was to mix and match features and production techniques from both Meritless and Chromatic to create this album.
Gradually, real negative events and situations in my life would pile up and imbue the album with genuinity, and I would stake its completion upon my honor.
It was the project I worked on for the longest time, painstakingly tuning the sound of each individual track to the best of my ability and accuracy of my vision.
Nowadays, I look back at it for the achievement it represents for me and not the events surrounding it.
hello hello hell
the title for this track was a point of contention for me for the longest time.
Akina's heavily effected voice appears throughout.
I wanted the album to have a grating intro that scared off those not meant to listen to it and that acted as a warning of what was to come for those who stayed.
kill mode
the earliest track I made for the album, with the express intent of marking the style for a faster and much darker project (for context, I was just finishing up Chromatic Acceleration)
The heavy use of glitch rolls and ring mods was meant to hark back directly to Meritless Hobby in general and to "I Am The Wizard" in particular, as so was the use of square waves sampled from The Wizard of Wor arcade game.
The inclusion of incessant, vastly echoed beat markers went on to become a hallmark of the album.
An excerpt of the track was present right at the end of the previous transient data clutter 2020-2022 compilation album, as a hidden clue of what was to come.
cluster damage
Title was originally meant to go all in caps and to include the subtitle "Meri-tans Theme (Meri-tan being a gijinka character I made to represent Meritless Hobby)
At some parts during making it, I felt like I was making some sort of Kirby boss battle theme.
The middle section that starts at 2:09 was meant to reference the thrash metal I was so obsessed with when I was younger, and I decided to repeat it again during the end with some instruments gradually muting so that it could be better appreciated.
saiyaku no namae
Means "name of the disaster"
A badly mangled recording of Akina (actually showering me in praises) was superimposed over an ambient background driven by ringmoded chords and is affected by sudden surges of distortion (these also would become a hallmark of this album)
The only purpose of this track was to unnerve and be uncomfortable.
chlorochrome
When I was making this track, I decided that it would be the closest that the album would ever get to the warmth and comfort of the previous Chromatic Acceleration, and thus, I included "chrome" in the title, right next to "chloro", which was meant to signify that it was still of a darker and more dangerous nature for being in this album, even though the track is more dubiously melancholic than anything else.
The chords that lead the track are actually reversed bass guitar harmonics.
clouds in the ceiling
Along with kill mode and dysnomia, the other earliest track of the album.
The track was meant to be an homage to Erik Satie and had a working title that was something like "Another Day Waking Up Without You"
fear needs no translation
This track was supposed to represent a nerve gas attack on the japanese Yamanote Line, because when I was making the album, I guess I must have subconsciously thought about the Aum Shinrikyo attacks but somehow forgot that they were a real thing that actually happened...
But at the time I thought I was being like "wouldn't it be messed up if..."
At least the real ones were on the Tokyo Metro, not the JY line.
The track has a middle section that has been completely fucked up with glitches, intended to represent the nerve gas taking hold.
The original title for this track was "translated from your fears" which is part of a phrase I saw in some old weird Macintosh game I forgot the name of, but I changed it.
endless self detriment
a track that I thought up and made in like an hour that worked great as an interlude.
Originally, it was meant to be filtered and mixed in a way that sounded like it was playing from another room.
The clipping in the mix was intentional.
nerve strike
A track that I composed with my bass guitar, in a couple of minutes (but obviously realising it to completion took days)
I used a gimmick I really like to use, which I call "creeping chords", chords (usually square waves) that come at you like a car honking about to hit you.
zaginioni krolik
A mangled recording of Dottie's voice is present in the track, as I was intending it to be a direct sequel to "złe słowa" from Meritless Hobby.
The recording itself was close to never even existing in the first place, and it was captured by Gexuma.
Sadly, Dottie would pass away during the production of the album and I'd be in denial (and, gradually, in legitimate doubt) until well after releasing it, including the track justifying it to myself with "it's what she would've wanted"
The recording would be the last ever of Dottie's voice to my knowledge, but I hope to be wrong.
Even now, I still think it's what she would've wanted.
The track stays because I have no way to ask anymore anyway.
dysnomia
A heavily effected and reversed loop.
This was another of the earliest "concept" tracks specifically made to set what the album would sound and feel like.
The original title included the subtitle "- pale moon"
dysregulation
A personal favorite, my own most listened song in the album.
The track was actually spun off from "Attachment Wthdrawal Relapse" from Chromatic Acceleration, discretely(?) using many of it's building blocks.
The track is meant to represent obsessive, twisted love and its machinations.
sonar no threshold
a field recording of an empty park I liked to drink at provides background sound.
A mental image I get a lot is that of an scenic valley, viewed from away atop a cliff, with a massive radio antenna right in the middle of it transmitting a pulse that echoes across the valley's infinity, which is what I hoped to recreate in this track.
endless imposition - the gray halls
One of many efforts to include my guitar in my music for the first time.
This track hopes to represent being trapped in a wide, gray maze with no ceiling, gazing into a starry sky.
malfunction 54
The main "single" of the album.
The title is a reference to the Therac 25 incidents, in which unsafe radiotherapy accelerators were misused, shooting patients with insane doses of radiation to the face.
During its calmer sections, the song aims to capture the somber of a cancer ward and a repeating wave simulates a heartrate monitor.
The racing beat and rising distortion represent the moments of irradiation, and the rapid onset of acute radiation poisoning and cell damage.
Distorted kicks are also present at the end since I wanted the album to have gabber and hardcore influences.
god complex
another early song, attempting to symbolize a loss of sanity, or the moment leading up to a consciously monstruous decision.
mathematical obliteration - annihilation operator
A track with no actual dark inspirations, carrying over the beats from god complex but gating them.
I remember making the track with the feeling of running out of time in a math exam in mind, hence the title.
now while you're pretty
an interlude track made specifically to connect into hurts so good.
The title is in reference to something my mom said to me during a bad argument several years, telling me to kill myself then and there "while I was still pretty"
hurts so good
A track that was meant to have a vocal track, because I wanted to make something that felt like Plaid's Extork, however, I composed and programmed the entirety of it before having the lyrics, and decided it was so overproduced to have lyrics on top obscuring the work on it.
A whispery vocal track is still present below, instead of on top of everything.
An alternate mix that better represents what I originally wanted to do is present in Second Quantization, with lyrics at the forefront.
you cannot go back
I don't remember the exact way I came up with this one, but I remember that the recording it onto the computer and processing on it went like a breeze.
Sadly, I came up with lyrics to this song after the album was released, but a version including them may be heard in Second Quantization.
a cute love song, my revenge.
A clear cut song made out of jealousy due to a situation I was experiencing at the time.
I had envisioned the album having a bossa nova-inspired song that would turn into something horrible, so the situation simply added genuinity to the track.
The main melody to the song was first used in a reversed, instrumental version, much like Radiohead's Spinning Plates, that was scrapped for the final version with lyrics and the sudden overdriven section.
phantom decapod
Inspired by Squarepusher's Go Plastic.
Another track that included gabber-inspired kicks.
Must have the feeling of being spotted, then chased by a giant crab, then apparently be safe, only to be spotted, chased again and killed.
i stare down from the top of the mountain.
This track was made early in the production of the album and was inspired by the Flashbulb's Piety of Ashes album.
Before hello hello hell was produced, this was the track that was meant to open the album, and I was still considering it late into the production.
your hands are my resting place
Another favorite, this was the last track to be finished for the album, and fittingly placed second to last in it.
This is the only track in the entirety of the album to simultaneously include both my bass guitar and my acoustic guitar.
Starting at 2:56, ringmoded bass chords are present below the melody every 4 bars.
This track also includes a hidden instance of Dottie's voice.
friendly monstrosity
a jazz experiment that was meant to be longer, with Music Is Rotten One Note vibes, until I decided to leave it as a short send-off.
It was meant to close off the album in a lighter but still dubious note, like watching a cute cat wander into a threatening cave, or the album itself saying something like "don't worry, I was just kidding! ...or was I?"
The track is meant to loop back into hello hello hell to convey that there's no escape neither from the Annihilation Operator, nor the feelings encapsulated in it.
Outtakes, unfinished and unreleased tracks
annihilation operator has a bunch of tracks that didn't make the cut or just weren't released on it.
The first that comes to mind is "what I felt that night" (it was a working title, too literal) which was the recreation of something I experienced one night, in which I hallucinated(?) a bunch of random beep noises in my hearing that rose in volume until they all disappeared (i also felt like I was having some sort of heart attack)
I've never felt anything like that ever again for no reason.
The song wasn't included because it wasn't a good recreation of what I heard (even though I mostly cannot remember it now so it's at least something), because I couldn't find any space for it that made sense and ultimately because it just didn't fit the style of the album.
The reversed instrumental of cute love song could also be counted as an unreleased version, as the instrumentation was completely different and included my bass guitar and some short bass and guitar solos.
There were a pair of versions of an ambient track I intended to call "i hope it didn't hurt" until I scrapped the concept entirely because it was too taxing on my mental state.
There was an unfinished house-ish track with a ringmod ambient intro that I never gave a name to
"Sorry for Bleeding All Over the Place" or just "Bleeding All Over the Place" was a fast-paced track with distorted kicks and also another fast-paced untitled song that was driven by an M1 piano preset.
"the rails" was also a song that was first recorded during the production of annihilation operator, so an alternate "demo" version different from the one in Second Quantization exists that I shyly considered including somewhere in the album at one point before deciding that the song shouldn't be released anywhere at that point in time.
Comments
Gexuma
I love seeing these extra details on the album
