petriform

my album “ultramarine” turned five years old yesterday. its name refers to the color of the photo that comprises its album art.

at the time i released this album, i hadn’t released anything of significance that wasn’t chiptune in about four years. the last such release was “brown plaid,” the spiritual predecessor to this album.

(“brown plaid” was also a december release, but don’t worry - no anniversary posts for that one until next year, when it turns ten.)

that album was slow, personal, vulnerable. naturally, to my mind, this one Had™ to be slower, more personal, and more vulnerable in order to be “worth it.” and that’s okay, because i was in the space to do that.

see, within those four years since “brown plaid,” i had:

• begun to lean heavily into chiptunes for my live sets due to a number of factors, phasing out non-chiptune songs from my setlists
• released two full-length chiptune albums (“veneer,” “don’t worry, you’re great!”)
• gotten to do a lot of really cool stuff i would’ve never imagined as a result of said leaning into chiptunes

but the latter part of that period existed in overlap with an era of my life that i spent wounded and miserable. i was under an incredible amount of stress, staring into that feedback-looping void of capitalism being ready and willing to discard me. medical issues were popping up. the mental health care i had access to ranged from mediocre at best to abysmal at worst - for as long i had access to it at all, that is.

i wrote most of “don’t worry, you’re great!” during this period as affirmations for myself because i desperately needed them, and i hoped that those songs could help others in that way. (some people have been kind enough to share with me that they really did, which i appreciate beyond measure.)

that same energy went into “ultramarine” - but instead of affirmation, it was for validation; validation of the more cynical feelings and experiences that weighed heavily upon me at the time. so to go back and release something like that was daunting because not only was it Not Chiptune at a time i’d come to be known for being Very Chiptune, more importantly, it felt like a betrayal of those who found something to connect with in the optimism of “don’t worry, you’re great!” i still kind of feel this way, to be honest. that’s part of why i haven’t gone back to celebrate this one very often. this was the first album for which i declined to press CDs, and i’ve never performed any of the songs live. hell, it’s not even up on my youtube (fixing that soon).

but there’s a lot in there that’s special, i think. i go off-vocoder in almost every song, and it’s easily my most vocal album in that manner. i mean, the first track is fully-acapella save for a sustained string chord! and having not followed it up, it’s still very easily my most personal and vulnerable album. given the circumstances of the time, it might stay that way.

in retrospect, would i do some things differently? yeah. five years of music production experience later, the album sounds about five years of production experience worse. that’s fine. i regret chickening out and revising the lyrics of songs like “precious” to be more optimistic than i truly felt. i didn’t want people to worry about me. i guess it worked out.

anyway, i should stop before i go on too long. “ultramarine” is unique in my discography for a number of reasons, and it’ll remain so (even with the spiritual sequel it’s getting). five years out, i can say i’m glad i released it, despite everything.

listen to and download “ultramarine” for free / name-your-price here.

did this. petriform.com/album/relentless-eventful-ii