016 - Remember - A Deep Dive into the Conflicted and Scarred Psyche

 

Magnum. Opus.  The highest level that an artist has achieved in their collective works. The best offering that they have put out.  Oxford puts it simply as “a large and important work of music, especially one regarded as the most important work of an artist or writer.”

But this isn’t just anyone’s magnum opus, this is Remember.  The artist that released ルートバックホーム (Route Back Home), largely considered one of the most important and best dreampunk releases across the entire genre.  The same Remember that released ハートエイクに歩い (Walking to Heartbreak), an album that helped define the ‘classic’ dreampunk sound.  The author of The City is My Friend, an album that has significant personal importance to my introduction to the genre, and holds a special place in many people’s hearts.  A Deep Dive into the Conflicted and Scarred Psyche eclipses them all.

As the title suggests, this album is a chaotic, emotional, and dark trip through someone's mind.  “I was less worried about details, massive emotional melodies, and the typical Remember tropes on this album than my others,” Remember explains. “I was trying to create something more raw and to the point. The darkness in the album came naturally from my headspace at the time, one that has been carried through pretty much all of 2020.”

A Deep Dive into the Conflicted and Scarred Psyche strips away much of what Remember is known for.  Instead of soaring melodies guided by gentle beats, we have stripped back minimalist passages with an ominous mood.  Instead of layered atmospheric ambient passages we have rhythmic beats and distortion.  Hope, dreams and melancholy are replaced by paranoia, desperation, and fear.

That’s not to say that the Remember of old is gone - this is unmistakably a Remember album.  There are points amongst the deep rhythmic sections where one of the iconic emotive melodies will take over the song and bring it to new heights - particularly on Lost It Lost It Lost It.  I Laid Down and Floated on the Fear shows us that the album can still focus on beautiful ambiance.  However, these are no longer the dominant forces guiding the album.  

During the opening minute of I Woke up at 3am and Realized we, the listeners, are immediately informed that this will be a different type of album. Soft rain and an eerie melody begin the introduction: similar to what we would expect from Remember, but slightly darker and a bit grittier.  It's at 54 seconds that we witness the first major departure.

A deep bass driven tone interrupts the melody, like a startled waking from a dream.  From this point forward, rhythm dominates the song with hints of melody sprinkled in.  Such as right around a minute forty five into the song.  A melody defined by a building sense of paranoia begins to take form and eventually soars over the percussion and background.  This  is only temporary as the deep tone will again interrupt this shortly after it begins.  This is indeed a new side to Remember’s sound.

It’s this dynamic that drives this album into the next stratosphere.  Having the melodies being sparse lets us appreciate them more when they are there.  By incorporating elements of dubstep and 2-step along with the minor key focused soundscapes, Remember’s sound is transformed into something that has been lacking in dreampunk.  A trip on the darker side of dreams, nightmarepunk if you will.

Nowhere is this more apparent than on the second track I Thread Between the Buildings, Attempting to Run Away From My Fragile State.  This song is structured much like the opening track, yet it introduces the listener to the iconic dubstep wobble in the more rhythmic focused sections of the song.  This is paired against almost angelic sounding synth pads and a melody that has a strong sense of urgency to it.  Mix all of these elements together and you get my favorite track off of the album and one of my favorite Remember songs regardless of album.

The shift in style came alongside a mental deterioration in Remember.  “About mid-way through 2020, during peak COVID-19 lockdown, I had a very severe mental breakdown, probably the worst of my life. I wasn’t making music, I wasn’t going outside very much, it just got very dark. However while this was going on, some of the best music, via the dreampunk was coming out and I loved it all, and it did get me excited to make music again. I wanted to make an album that responded to all of that, to document coming out the other end, and becoming more grounded, an output.”

It is often said that the best art arises from tragedy, and with A Deep Dive into The Conflicted and Scarred Psyche this adage comes true.  Remember has created not only the best album of 2020, but created an album that stands as a pillar of the best of what the genre has to offer.  I consider us fortunate that he has decided to share this intensely personal moment with the world.  By doing so he has greatly enriched the dreampunk genre.

Equipment Used

Ableton Live 10 Suite as my DAW, NI Massive and Serum as my synths, Valhalla and Ableton stock plugins for my delays and reverbs, and pretty much just Ableton stock effects for the rest of my effects. I think there is a little analog synth from the Korg Volca Modular in there too.

Acknowledgements

Thank you very much to Remember for speaking to me about his outstanding album and for taking the time to answer my questions.  As always thank you to Blissmonkey for editing and promotion.