016.5 - The Deep Dive - Remember - A Deep Dive into The Conflicted and Scarred Psyche

 

The deep dive is for readers who want to dig further into the album by reading the notes and pre-review interview that is done with each artist.  It is best read after the review.

Notes

I Woke up at 3am and Realized - God I have been fearing doing this for a long time.  This album is so massive that I’m scared of how long it is going to be to take these notes.  But I have to start somewhere, so we’re going to start at the beginning.  
Distorted tones and rain begin the album. Immediately this differentiates itself form the past Remember albums, this is darker and grittier.  The tones offer a hint of paranoia and horror in them, like waking up in a startle from a dream.  The deep driving tone that joins in right around 1:05 drives all of this home as well.  Something is brooding here and it is a dreadful monstrosity whatever it is.  
The track really doesn't even come into its own until 1:45 when the main melody begins.  The main instrument is clear, but there is a sense of urgency to it.  Especially the way that it is paired with the background synths and percussion.  Everything is building towards something, but what that is isn’t clear yet.  It swells into a grand crescendo and then just drops off completely around 2:33 leaving only rain and a low tone.
The build begins again shortly thereafter when the percussion is reintroduced along with some synth pads that have a sci-fi/cyberpunk feel to them.  The way that they are layered and phased in and out give a sense that something is hunting us/stalking us.  There is a paranoia in this music that is unlike anything that I have heard in Remembers stuff in the past.  
The sense of dread keeps building and building.  That brings another point, these songs are not afraid to take their time to build up the anticipation and suspense.  They are long songs, probably the longest that Remember has done since his second album, but they use the time extremely effectively.  There is no meandering here.
The main melody returns around 4:30, and it harkens back to the sense of paranoia and fear, something is being realized here and there is clarity that comes with the melody.  After the melody fades out slightly we are left with the deep tone and it gives rise to the falling action of the song.  
The whole song has a very cinematic feel to it, in that the introduction we are startled out of whatever trance we were in.  This keeps building until we are in full blown panic mode by the middle of the song, and by the end we start calming a bit but then a new sense of horror sets in as we start to realize the implications of what we just experienced.  
This is a wonderfully dark opener to the album, it lets the listener know right away that we are not in for a typical Remember album, let alone a typical dreampunk album.  This is significantly darker, and even a casual listen will tell that there has been a drastic shift from what we’ve come to expect from both the artist and the genre.  Phenomenal start.

I Thread Between the Buildings, Attempting to Run Away From My Fragile State - This may be my favorite track on the album.  It speaks to me on a very personal level, not just from the title but from the music and how it compliments the scene that the song title is suggesting.
Right away we are greeted with percussion that sounds like it is going to be lively, but at this very moment it's holding itself back.  Rain and slow synth pads are over the top painting the scene that we are alone, outside with nowhere really to go.  We are just wandering.
It’s when the melody comes in that things take a shift.  The sense of meandering and wandering is slowly moved into a state of urgency, maybe paranoia once again.  There is real anxiety here, why are we going through this? Why am I like this? Why can’t I be better?  All of these questions come to mind when hearing what Remember has put together here.  Doubt, doubt is the operative word here.
When the percussion does finally rejoin the mix, its in your face and almost acts like a punch to the gut.  While not fast, it is very active.  Very much like mid 2000’s 2-step would be.  That’s when the surprise comes in, the dubstep bass wobble.  This isn’t brostep by any means, this is tastefully done and expertly executed.  It helps add to the fact that we don’t know what is ahead of us and we don’t know what is happening. We are running and we are now facing the unexpected.
The song largely repeats and revisits themes from this point forward, but they are mixed together in different combinations.  We have established all of the elements of the song to this point and now we are left with the logical combination of those elements.  I think that this plays well with the theme of the song.  
We’ve seen all of these different things about ourselves or the disturbance that is buried deep within our brain.  We are not yet ready to accept what happened in song one, and we are running from the implications of it.  We keep running over different scenarios in our mind, playing out different things that we could have done differently… regretting things, wishing we had done something differently, maybe even wishing we weren't here.  It’s a dangerous place to be in when your mind gets like that and this song conveys that perfectly.

It Shouldn't Be My Burden To Bare - The title of the track itself has a lot of weight to it.  Just by the title alone we can tell that we are having now to face what is haunting us, we can’t run forever.  
This song is massive, aggressive, and in your face.  Deep deep tones start off along with a highly distorted voice that keeps calling out the same thing over and over.  It’s very ominous and very attention grabbing.  Eventually percussion is added in, again in a 2-step manner.  This time however the drums are forceful and very high in the mix.  They are impossible to miss.
Some noise joins in shortly thereafter to contrast the voice sample, and they alternate.  Everything has moved beyond the brooding and paranoia of the first two tracks to full on panic here.  We don’t want to have to face what is bothering us but we have no choice anymore, we are staring it in the face and it horrifies us.  
Right at 1:36 the song shifts slightly and introduces a melody.  To this point it has been almost exclusively rhythmic, almost like a metal song.  If dreampunk was done in a metal frame of mind this is likely what it would sound like.  
The melody has a huge amount of distortion on it.  I can’t tell what the base instrument is, but it really dosent’ even matter.  It adds a real tangible quality to the fear that is present in this song.  Especially when it shifts up by a fifth (I think).  The whole thing just has a heightened sense of tearing away at our sanity.
There is a bit of a breakdown after the melody shift and while a normal breakdown would give us a sense of relief, this one only has a sense of brooding.  The whole song is so tense and in your face.  So unlike anything I’ve ever heard from Remember before.  Everything in this album is like that, but this song really is a punch in the gut.  Insanely good.

I Laid Down and Floated On The Fear - By far the longest song on the album and it comes with a large contrast to the previous songs.  While everything prior to this was building up into the horror that was in track three, here we start to see the deep contemplation and reflection that comes with a life altering revelation.  This is meditative and reflective.  We are finally facing our fear.  
From all of the songs on the album this one likely is the closest to the classic Remember sound, though even then its pretty far removed.  There is a lot of pure ambience on display here.  Synth pads weave the listener though a period of reflection and slowly guide us towards the goal.  
This is all broken up by what I presume is a highly distorted and effects laden guitar.  The backbone of the synth pads is still there and it keeps building, but the distortion really breaks any type of meditative state that could be gained by just reflecting on the background.  
I think that this is entirely intentional.  There is conflict going on, we are trying to remain calm and reflect on everything that is happening, but the constant nagging of the fear that birthed in track 1 is still there and it haunts us.  It is keeping us from reaching that state of zen that we so desperately desire.
And this is the way that the track unfolds.  The fear intermixed with the peace.  The track will continue to evolve and add in some layers indicating that the peace is evolving, while the fear remains largely the same throughout the track when it is present.  
It only after about 6 minutes where the song really moves into another phase.  The fear slowly gets pushed out and the synth pads swell into something grander, while still retaining that ambience.  We are achieving our goal.  We are staring into the face of the fear and acknowledging that it is there.  But this time it does not dominate us.  It is part of us, it is real, but it does not define us.
The very end of the song the distorted guitar comes back.  Maybe we lost our zen? But even if we did, we now know that we can move beyond this.  We have faced our fear head on and we have realized that it is not the insurmountable beast that we thought it was.  
The musical narrative that is going on here is extremely powerful.  The song titles give a bit of context to the music, but the music itself would tell the same story with or without the titles.  This is powerful, and truly excellent.  

Disconnecting From the Ways of Distraction - Remember stated that this was the song that almost drove him insane.  It gave him the biggest challenge to complete.  
Starting off with a low quiet ambience, it's almost brooding… like something is waiting to ambush us.  Or is this a moment of quiet reflection? Are we contemplating our actions after the meditative state of the last track or are we feeling the anxiety build again after we have stopped the reflective period? It's a moment of truth.
When the melody finally comes in after almost a minute we start to get our answer.  The melody is simple, yet it progresses with purpose.  This is not a paranoid melody, this is a melody that is calling us to action.  It is fragile, yet it is strong. We have a direction, now it’s time to try and put our plan into action.
We face immediate pushback when the beat comes in.  It has a huge aggressive production that is accompanied by the dubstep wobble again.  This is mixed much more aggressively than the previous visit with the wobble in track 2.  
This really feels like the physical manifestation of the fear that we were running away from and finally acknowledged in the previous tracks.  Every bit of the melody that was established earlier in the song has been eradicated violently.  We are staring the fear directly in the face and it is shaking our resolve.  
Soon though we hear the beat shift slightly and the melody returns with hints of the wobble still in the background.  We have faced the fear and we are going to start to accept it.  We are now able to face the fear and move beyond it.  It's not easy, but it is possible.  
We go in between these two sections several times throughout the song, the melodic vs the deep dubstep.  We are still in flux but we have a deep seeded need to be able to move on from this.  We are no longer paranoid, but we are afraid… but we have resolve.  We will face this and we are determined to not let it conquer us.  This is signified in how the song ends… we end with the melody in just ambience.  We can do this.

Using The Digital Data As A Means From All That Is Dark - The song is quiet, but not in a calming sense.  Urgency is what this calls for.  We are now faced with the reality of what is causing our fear and are trying to disconnect ourselves from what was causing the fear and horrible reality that woke us up in the first track.
There is pretty much no melody throughout all of the track except for just a few moments here and there.  There is also something unique to this track, a voice sample.  This paired with the higher bpm of the song really gives form to something that is rising within us.  We are now at a primal level where we need to be able to control this fear and we are wrestling with it in the core of our being.  If we don’t do this we risk losing everything.
The sense of urgency in this song is unparalleled throughout the album.  This really signifies how important it is to conquer this fear.  The rhythmic focus of the track really beats home how desperate we are, there is no more melody… there is only purpose.  Where do we go from here?  Well we only have one track left to find out.

Lost It Lost It Lost It - Did we make it? Did we conquer the fear? Did we lose our fight?
This is the first time in the album where a major key is used… and it feels like we have accomplished something.  Is this hope? There is an angelic choir type synth pad used to create the background and it really does feel like sunshine cracking through clouds.  Just little rays of hope.
When the song really starts up, we have melodies mixed with the dubstep portions.  The only thing I can think of at this point is that we have accepted the fear and it is part of us.  The melody plays at the same time as the dubstep for the first time in the entirety of the album and it creates a beautiful dichotomy.  We’re no longer split, we are whole.
The way that all of this comes together on the final track here is just amazing.  This is a masterwork of musical narration.  Everything is so clearly told it's incredibly difficult to think of a better representation of this in the past year or two.  Completely blown away.

Overall - The way this album progresses from the dark beginnings to ultimate acceptance is phenomenal.  Whatever happened with Remember, we don’t have the specifics of what happened, but he has given us a deep look into his mental state during this fragile time.  This album is something that should be viewed as someone opening themselves up and showing us, the listeners what life was like in a desperate time of need for them.  
This album is likely my album of the year, and will stand as one of the pillars of the dreampunk and ambient genres for years to come.  This fuses together the darkness that I have been seeking and the dreamy landscape.  Remember’s magnum opus.

Interview

How did you choose Remember as the moniker for your dreampunk output?

I took the name Remember from the Oneohtrix Point Never track of the same name. Replica is probably my favourite album by him and when I was thinking about names that song came on. It felt like a nice name to use. Some of my favourite artist/band names are just singular everyday words, so I thought it would be interesting to do the same.

Track 6 contains the only voice sample in the entirety of the album.  What is it saying and why was it included? Is it significant that it's the only song that contains a voice sample?

I must admit, I have no idea what it is saying, or even where I got it from. It was just in a random collection of samples I have and I thought it sounded quite cool and dark. No significance other than to build a mood.

This album is significantly darker than your previous Remember works, ever Four Shots… how did your composition style change during this album if at all?

I was less worried about details, massive emotional melodies and the typical Remember tropes on this album than my others. 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.

There is this recurring theme of a dubstep wobble in much of the album.  I took this as a representation of the fear that seems to permeate this album.  Did you intend to use this as a narrative tool? Why did you decide to use such an unconventional tool (for dreampunk)?

My background is in brostep/EDM, that’s how I got into electronic production, so my heart will always have a soft spot for those sounds. I also am a huge drum and bass/jungle head, so that definitely resonates in the sound design. Narrative wise, it wasn’t used for that reason to be quite honest, and overall I would say that this album as a whole is fairly narrative-less. It’s more of a collection of thoughts and feelings.

What, if any, artists influenced you while writing this album?

Definitely very much inspired by all the recent output of Critical Music, a drum and bass from London. They are known for the coldness of the music they put out, and I think that carries through on these tracks for sure. I’ve just been more inspired by genre as a whole rather than particular artists generally.

You’ve stated that this album was written in just two weeks?  How did you manage to complete it so quickly?  Was composing this album any easier or more difficult than your other Remember albums?

Nicol asked me to be the headliner for the Livewire Gala, and I had an hour to fill. I didn’t want to play any old music, but I didn’t have much new music to play either. So I challenged myself to finish an entire in two weeks. I honestly have no idea how I managed to actually do it however, I surprised myself. Especially since the album previously took me 2 years to finish. It was a lot easier, as I was purposely trying not to push a narrative or put too much time into details.

You have stated in the past that you no longer use samples (I think), preferring to use your own.  How do you go about creating your own samples if they are used at all?

When it comes to synth sounds, bass sounds, pads etc I would say 99% of the sounds are made from scratch. I love designing sounds as much as I do writing music. Drums tend to be a different story. I generally hate making my own drum via synthesis, so I used a lot of samples for drums. Either recorded myself or sourced elsewhere. I do however try to make the samples a little more me, and I won’t tend to make them raw.

I remember you saying that Disconnecting From the Ways of Distraction caused you a lot of mental anguish with how to finish it.  Why was this song so hard to finish?

As I mention in better detail in an answer below, I was in a very tough and bad state during the making of this album. This song was made at the worst of it all.

Do you see this album as the future of Remember’s sound? If not, where do you see your music evolving?

I am very happy with this album, and I do love the sound and the vibe of it. Whether I will return to this or not, I honestly have no idea. In 2021 I’d like to try something new with Remember, a sound that I touched upon in 2019 with a few tracks, but we will leave that for 2021.

There is a huge narrative going on in this album.  In as much detail as you want to go, can you describe what is happening? (if you prefer for this to remain private please do not feel obligated to answer this question)

About mid-way through 2020, during peak COVID-19 lockdown, I had a very severe mental breakdown, probably the worst of my life. My depression had reached an all time high on top of this, and everything got very existential for a while. I wasn’t making music, I wasn’t going outside very much, it just got very dark. This album was made during the last quarter of that month's long breakdown. 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. I still wanted to make something futuristic and spacious, that can fit nicely in the dreampunk scene, but with a unique edge.

Do you see yourself focusing more on your self titled work or Remember in your upcoming musical endeavours?

Remember definitely. For 2 years, between 2017 and 2019 I wanted nothing to do with Remember as a creative output. That has completely changed. It’s my primary focus now.

What equipment was used to create this album?

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.

Is there anything further you would like to say about this album or your other musical endeavours?

Thank you to everyone who gave me such a positive response to this album. It was such a  huge departure from anything else I have done, and I thought I might have pushed a lot of people away with it, but it seems to have done the opposite.