025.5 - The Deep Dive - w u s o 命 - Hold it Together - Notes and Interview

 

 

Notes

Haunting Memories - The track slowly fades in and washes over you with a low tone, any sense that there is nature as an influence on this album is quickly washed out the window.  This is absolutely an urban setting for this release.  The deep tone and the synths over it all embrace the sense that this is something artificial, something man made.  Samples of a woman speaking (in japanese?) sprinkle the background as the track slowly begins to take shape.  It's obvious that despite the 4 minute run time in the track it is in no hurry to get anywhere.  ‘
In fact this is one of the themes of the album, this album embraces mood and atmosphere over any sort of instant gratification.  We are meant to wait for the payoff, and we are meant to immerse ourselves in this world that Hold it Together brings for us to observe.  This right here is one of the reasons why I love this album so very much.  It takes time to bloom, it takes its time to show the listener what it's true colors are.  The whole time giving us glimpses of what is beneath the surface but never truly revealing itself except for the briefest of moments.  But maybe that is the true essence of this album? Maybe we are never meant to fully grasp the entirety of what was going on in wuso’s head, maybe we are just meant to be taken along for the ride?
All these thoughts and musings are just from the first minute of music.  The song, despite being an average length, really acts as if it's a 10 minute long song by the way that it goes about the album’s introduction.  These slow tones, the pulse of a distant bass drum.  That pulse is something that deserves special mention.  It's a running theme throughout the entire album and it reminds me of a heartbeat.  Something that I have been meaning to ask wuso about is this idea that the album contains a pulse, a pulse to something deeper than just an individual track or even the entire album.  I wonder if he’s tapping into the pulse of a city at night.  The darkness and atmosphere that permeates this album is one of an urban setting at night, and along with it this sense of the life of that urban setting can be found within the percussion on more than just a few tracks.  If it's intentional it's a very cool addition, if it's not then it's a very interesting observation.  
At this point we still haven't even gotten to the meat of the song.  The first two minutes are all about atmosphere and scene setting.  Like all of wuso’s music this is extremely visual music, the further the track evolves the clearer the mental image becomes.
It’s not until nearly two minutes in until the track shows any sort of sense of melody or lead instrument.  There are a myriad of background synths and sound effects that slowly build along with that pulsing bass drum but all of that is just setting the stage.  At 1:49 into the song the percussion begins to evolve beyond the bass drum and there are slight hints that there are other instruments that are going to be added into the mix, though they are buried deep in the mix.  If I wasn’t wearing headphones I never would have heard them.  
Then just as the track begins to swell, elements are stripped away one by one until 2:45 when it's just the bass drum reminding us of the song and the album's core pulse.  The woman’s voice from earlier in the song reprises her role before the song really begins to start in earnest.  The final minute of the song not only brings back the elements that were building prior to the breakdown, but they bring them back with a much greater sense of urgency along with some subtle melodies that string everything together.  
The urgency is really driven home by some of the new synths used here.  Deep brass tones that are massive in scale play over all of the other synths that have been played to this point.  This tone by itself adds a massive layer of depth to the sound, unlike anything we have heard to this point in the music.  The percussion becomes much less subdued and starts to pick up its pace.  All while still maintaining the core that was established in the first 2:45 of the song.  It brings everything together wonderfully and allows this part of the song to have a sense of finality to it.  This is how you introduce an album, this song contains almost all of the elements that the following 7 tracks have and it gives the listener a good sense of what this album is all about.  This is peak cinematic dreampunk.

Subtle Optimism - And it's here that we begin to see why this album is an album.  Each song fades into the next containing themes from the previous song and building off of those to create an entirely new composition.  The shift from track 1 to track 2 here is harkened by a tone that sounds like a distorted siren driving past us on a busy street.  
What is really well done about this transition is that at first it seems entirely out of place but as Subtle Optimism progresses that pattern of notes that a siren would have is woven into the synths that are used.  I didn’t catch it the first few times I listened to the song, thinking it was just put there as a way to transition from the dark tones to the slightly optimistic tone of the second track.  However when I listen to this over headphones I begin to see the logic that wuso was getting at by including that tone.  It acts like a clean break while still linking the two tracks together.
I don’t think I can state clearly enough how different the tone in the first two tracks are here.  While they both start off in a similar way: that being slowly swelling synth pads with minimal melodies and sound effects over them.  The feel of the two tracks is entirely different.  The first track has a dark and brooding atmosphere.  The second track contains elements of hope, it's written in a major key and the choice of synths makes it have a much lighter tone overall, it doesn't weigh on me like the first track does.  
Along with the lighter mood there is a sense of movement with this track, like we are going somewhere on a journey.  This is really accentuated by the percussion used, being a very light and slowed down version of a breakbeat.  It’s well done and fits the music nearly perfectly.  Ontop the drums is an ever growing melody that weaves in different synths at different points making it like we are moving past objects.  
The whole dynamic of this song is about the antithesis of the first, being in tone, movement, and setting.  Where the first track is dark, stagnant and brooding, we get something that is light hearted, moving and touches on hope.  It's an excellent dynamic that helps fully define what the whole album is about.  The atmosphere seen here wont be fully revisited again until Ride Home much later on in the album.  If this is truly an album about the pulse of the city, this is someone watching in wonderment as they travel through the night lights.  

Graceful Descent into Madness - As the hope from the Subtle Optimism is transitioned into a EKG sounding pulse the album again shifts in tone.  The gradual shift from the hope and simple beauty from the previous track is morphed to something a bit darker and something with a bit more of a direction.  
While the sense of movement is kept from Subtle Optimism on the third track, the nature of the journey has taken a huge shift here.  Over the first two minutes the song slowly changes in tone from one of hope to one of purpose.  We now know where we are going and it's not necessarily a good place.  
Track three returns us to the pulse sound that was held by the percussion in track 1, though this time it is not driven by a bass drum.  It is held by a synth that pulses in and out as it drives the song forward.  It begins as a permutation of the synths that begin the song and then slowly morphs into a full fledged beating pulse by a minute in.  This nearly serves as the role of percussion in the song as it controls the meter.  Everything else around it is in flux, yet the pulse remains.  It is held by many different synths as the song engages in its metamorphosis in the first two minutes, but its still there.
Right at two minutes is where the song really starts to bloom.  THe pulse is now firmly established and there is a simple melody held by one to two synths over top.  Its almost a breakdown in the way that it is handled.  Its one of my favorite parts of the album because it truly feels like a moment of clarity.  Everything before this point was in flux and in chaos and everything after this point has a strong singular direction.  Going off the songs title maybe this is where the character is accepting of the direction that they are on and decides to embrace it head on.  Regardless of the narrative here, the musical implications here are very strong.  Easily one of the better songs on the album and it just keep driving home the point why this is one of my favorite Dreampunk albums.

Suppression - Here is the one song that I don’t understand.  It's such a huge contrast to everything that comes before and after it that it stands out like a sore thumb… at least the first minute or so.  All of the subtlety and all of the nuance from the previous tracks are gone, and in its place we have an in your face rave inspired piece.
After a very short intro the song bursts into a huge four on the floor bass drum pattern around 140-150 bpm.  Everything before this has been very subdued, maybe 120 bpm at the very most, often much less.  The first few times I heard this I thought that I had accidentally switched albums, but that’s not the case at all.  This is here with a strong reason and I don’t know exactly why.  
There are several other parts of this song that really fascinate me.  Everything besides the drumbeat is still in line with the rest of the album.  Massive synth pads? Yup.  Mechanical and obscure sounds in the background? Check. Lots of detail in the sound design? Very much so.  It all is still unmistakably wuso but the percussion and tempo are well outside of the norms established at this point in the album, or really at any other point for the wuso project.  
After about 1:30 of the song progressing in the rave/house tempo the song begins to decay.  Everything slows down and the sounds become more distorted and drawn out and glitchy.  Things really begin to fall apart.  The song is only 2:25 long but in those two minutes it really packs a lot in.  So many questions and the song itself dosen’t provide answers.  What it does do is provide the listener with a fascinating transition from Graceful Descent.. To Deep Breath.  

Deep Breath - This song is named very appropriately.  It feels like we are taking a deep breath from everything that happened in Suppression.  So much so that this song feels like a direct continuation of the previous track.  
The huge synth pads that drove track 4 forward are carried over directly into Deep Breath, linking the two songs in a way that has not been done to this point in the album.  The decay that started with the previous track finishes here, everything is stripped back and we are only left with one or two note synth pads before everything is gone at 1:14 into the song.
After the final elements of Suppression have been stripped away the song changes gears.  We are no longer held to the confines of the path that was started with Graceful Descent into Madness, we are instead on a new path.  One that has been guided by the past tracks, but it is out to find its own direction.  Whereas before we were tearing things down, from this point onward in the song we are now building.
This track really demonstrates to me why I’m drawn to this style of dreampunk.  Wuso has created a slow and powerful swell of instrumentals that builds upon everything that has happened to this point in the album.  It draws in many of the elements from previous songs: we have a pulsing background, we have that huge synth sound that is reminiscent of horns that is at the end of track 1.  We have a huge sense of urgency that we saw in track 3.  All of this is brought out further by the female vocalist chanting on top.  Everything just works here.  This feels like the end of the first arc of the album as there is no transition into the next side.  Perfect place to flip the tape, or if this was on vinyl perfect end to side A.

Ride Home - This is the first time in the album since track 1 where we start a song with no connection to the previous track.  At first I wasn't sure I liked this or not.  I wanted everything to blend in together and be one cohesive unit.  But the placement of this song is just about at the right place.  It doesn't need to be connected to another song, it can start a second arc of tracks and still maintain the cohesive flow of the album.  
Out of all the tracks on this album this one reminds me the most of Subtle Optimism.  There is a bit of hope here, in a way that we really haven't seen since that second track.  The song’s pace is unhurried but not in a lazy way, much more like its someone taking a moment to just enjoy where they are at and enjoy it.  
Additionally the choice of synths here is very different from much of the rest of the album.  There is a warmth to them that is really not present anywhere else, even in track 2.  I want to say that this borders on synthwave the way that the song is structured.  The samples allude to someone lighting up a cigarette and driving a hot rod car down the streets at night in the rain.  All these things are highly reminiscent of synthwave.  
That said this song is not synthwave.  It's far too abstract in its execution to be included in that genre.  Things are too hazy and there is not enough of a driving beat to be considered synthwave.  What is really cool though is the way some of these synths are manipulated through effects to give the same feeling as if a car was revving its engine.  I like that a lot.  
The song really takes a strong turn into dreampunk after the 2:54 mark adding in layers upon layers of additional effects that obscure the melody and add a level of dreamyness to the atmosphere.  Additionally there are samples of rain, and rain makes things more dreampunk automatically.  I say that tongue in cheek, in this case it really does help the atmosphere.  In addition that pulse that permeates the album takes on a different form here.  The synths phase in and out at the same pace that has been in several other tracks, once again reminding me of a heartbeat… and again I can’t help but think that this is the pulse of the city we are in.
Regardless of whatever genre you want to throw this into it is a very chill tune and one that has a strong groove to it.  It's a great way to break up the album while still maintaining the overall feel.  I don’t think that this would be nearly as strong of an inclusion if Subtle Optimism hadn’t foreshadowed this previously.  Really well done.  

Retire De L'Enfer (withdraw from hell) - Again the track is not connected to Ride Home.  There is a clean break between the two.  The way that this one starts out is also very different in feel and tone to track 6.  This one feels like its going to be a harrowing journey.  Monotone synths are played ontop of different sound effects: someone pouring a drink into a glass, keys rattling, someone working on a computer.  All done in ways that signal annoyance and urgency, someone is possibly in trouble and trying to find out more information.
There is this sense of building dread and urgency through all these things and it keeps building until about 1:13 into the song.  This is where things take a subtle but very distinct shift.  The monotone that was played at the beginning of the song shifts slightly to incorporate another synth. The tone instantly changes from one of annoyance and urgency to one where clarity starts to form.  
The synths that begin to work their way in have an angelic tone to them.  Over the course of the next few minutes these tones override anything that was established at the beginning of the song.  The song’s title translates to withdraw from hell, and I really think that the musical narrative here echos that.  We have this sense at the beginning that things are not in a good place and are not where the character wants it to be.  
Slowly but surely these feelings are replaced with beautiful synths that carry us out of this place of conflict and confusion and into a place of light and direction.  This is likely the most focused song on the album and for that I truly love it.  
Extremely visual in its sound design, melodies and structure.  The whole thing just brings you to a better place by the end.  Extremely well done.

Ghosts in the City - The final song, and what a beast.  Again there is no transition from the previous song, and at this point it feels like there are two very distinct halves to this album.  The first section contains five songs that blend together to form one massive act.  The last three are all distinct from one another.  It's very curious and I will have to ask wuso about it.  
What is it that makes a song feel like an end of the album track? What is it about some songs that have much more of a sense of finality to them than others?  I don’t know if I know the answer to these questions but whatever the answer is, Ghosts in the City as those elements.  
The song contains so many elements of the previous songs and sounds explored throughout the album.  It weaves them all in but it doesn't copy them outright.  It morphs them into their own creation and brings them to life in a way that is a fitting tribute to everything that came before it without outright copying it.
Ontop everything else there is a subtle orchestral element to this, there are strings here and there as well as single notes played on a piano that will accentuate the melodies played by the synths.  Again bringing everything together from before but adding an additional layer.  
If there was one song that this one resembles its the opening track but not in an obvious way.  The song starts off with drums and a huge sense of direction.  As the song progresses these elements are slowly played with and even torn away towards the middle of the song.  This leads to a resemblance to the first track in that it does the opposite.  Instead of building and building the song starts off massive and then slowly gets taken down to its basic elements till only a pulse of electricity remains at the end.  Expert job on the composition and easily one of the best tracks on the album as well as one of wuso’s best all around.

Overall - Man this thing is a beast.  I don’t know where to start and where to end with this thing.  It feels like the soundtrack to a dream that never quite finished materializing, yet is fully realized at the same time.  There is this duality to it where it feels defined yet abstract at the same time.  We are witnessing events but each event can be really interpreted in a near infinite manner of ways.  
I feel like the album is guiding the listener through a city that we may never have been to and showing us through various means what the life - the pulse- of the city is.  It's expertly crafted and one of my all time favorite dreampunk albums.  

Interview

In Haunting Memories I note that the percussion feels like it has a pulse to it, much like a heartbeat.  I mentioned in my notes that this reminded me of the pulse of the city at night.  With this percussion and other pulsing moments throughout the album, what were you trying to communicate if anything deeper than just a cool drumbeat or effect? If so, what was it?

Answer: It’s been a long time now that I’ve worked on this but if I remember correctly I was inspired by some soundtrack work from some films, to do that heartbeat kind of percussion. And because of how I work on tracks there was that little high synth that communicates really well with, and along with the hats and glitchy percussion overall the kick worked really well with it. A lot of the time I try to come up with grooves that are fitting the track at the time and piece them out for a nice progression. Plus you can catch a slight delay so it has a nice rhythm to it.

Just a few years prior to this you were producing music in a very different style.  You have alluded to the transition from that style to your current one sporadically in the past: mentioning 2814 in  your Dreampunk video as well as mentioning Michael McCann’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution as a huge influence as well.  Hold it Together is really where I feel where you truly found your sound.  Can you go over the history of your musical progression from those house/dance singles to the style you settled in on here, highlighting important watershed moments that would lead you to find your sound?  

When I originally got into producing music I found myself in a tight spot. I didn’t want to learn the approach to making a lot of the hard electro styles that were popular at the time with the likes of Far Too Loud, Nero, Tristam, and all these other guys that were making themselves known off of the explosion of dubstep/electro. It was just too much of a pain in the ass for me and I was a bit stubborn, plus while I liked the music, from a production standpoint it didn’t really resonate with me. When I delved deeper into trance music however I was hooked onto it for a long period of time, and that was generally where I learned the ropes as far as the fundamentals of production. Since trance music has a lot of moving pieces at once you really gotta learn how to properly mix as well as perfect your structure and song writing. However as I’m sure metalheads can relate to, there are a lot of subgenres within electronic music, and a lot of them have very rigid definitions and guidelines. It was this rigidity that I got really annoyed with, while yes I could do the same style trance tune, I felt that I was missing out on so much of what music had to offer. When I first listened to the likes of 2814, and really delved into albums and soundtracks like Deus Ex: Human Revolution I felt like I was doing my ability and myself a disservice by constraining myself so much. I remember when the WosX documentary on Vaporwave came out I was listening to it in a stairwell on my residence after I got super depressed and stressed and it was really powerful for me, I listened to the entirety of BOAND in that stairwell, immediately went back upstairs and started tinkering with ideas of my first record. Even though that record was bad, it was such a cathartic release for me to not have to do what I had been doing for years before that and have complete freedom.

Hold it Together feels like it is meant to be consumed in one sitting.  Every track fades into the next and there are consistent themes found throughout.  The pulse  mentioned earlier, the subtle tones of most of the album where the listener is just drawn in (with one major exception).  I’m assuming that this was all intentional.  Can you go into some of the thinking on why you structured the album in the manner that you did and what you intended the listener to get out of it?

Whenever I go into an album I try to think of an underlying narrative for the entirety of the record. This is no different here, sure there were some tracks that were made at different times, but overall I kind of go with my gut as far as how I want the album structured. I used the technique of having pieces of tracks go into the other just as a means of not only creating a streamlined album, but also cause I think it creates new ideas when I’m forced to use a particular synth as a starting point, and then continue to build upon that but in a different way then the previous track. Think the perfect example of this is from Subtle Optimism to Graceful Descent Into Madness, you have two tracks that have such different moods and themes, one is much more lighthearted with the hope of a future, and the other feels much more tragic and slow. All of which have the same underlying synth. Though there are times when I feel that the track itself is so complete that it should end on its own, otherwise I feel like it’s a disrespect to that track to force it to continue to the next when it shouldn’t.


The one notable exception that I mentioned in the previous question comes at the beginning of Suppression.  This has a very different tone than all of the album, containing a massive four on the floor beat and distorted synths that are pushed right in your face.  Why the difference here?  Also is there any meaning as to why the song decays and slows down at the end?

This track was supposed to represent the “Madness” stage of the album, as noted by the title of the track Suppression, it’s supposed to be an oppressive force that’s just forcing you down and constantly beating down on you. I guess that noise or something more industrial could have been a better bet here, but I wanted something abrasive and a way to represent that the protagonist is fighting with himself. That fight was more symbolized by the soaring synths coming in with the four to the floor. Finally when things reach a bit of a standstill everything slows down, the fight is over and you can finally take a deep breath (hah).

You’ve been one of the strongest proponents of Dreampunk in the past couple of years.  You created an informative video so people can understand the basis of what dreampunk is as a musical genre.  You brought the Dreampunk reddit from obscurity to a place with now over 1000 members.  In your own words, what is it that makes Dreampunk such a compelling genre? Why do you think people are drawn to it?  Where do you see the genre going from where we currently are?

Ah man don’t remind me about the subreddit, that place deserves much more work on it then I can give it, but I try. I appreciate everyone who posts and makes it a community and I hope I can give much more to it. In my opinion I think what makes dreampunk so compelling is that we’re in a world where so many genres, artists, labels, treat everything with such a nihilistic approach. Everything is filled with nihilism, regurgitation, quirkyness for the sake of. It’s this weird cultural headspace that people are stuck in where you have a constant fight for clout, memes, economy, etc. I think dreampunk is one of those genres that is (despite what the sound suggests) surprisingly positive and really focuses on the individual. It’s extremely introspective and really lets you separate yourself from all the cultural noise that’s occurring in the world that no one can escape from. I think now more than ever dreampunk can be a tool for this. I feel like there aren't many genres that you can really “take seriously” anymore and dreampunk is one that you can, because it forces you to reflect on yourself, your own life situation and environment. Ride Home I think I wanted to be the perfect reflection of this. It’s one that I really wanted someone to immerse themselves into and reach pure escapism, no hard message, no political belief, just relax and take yourself away, you know?

The first five tracks are linked together, giving the impression of individual movements to a larger piece.  The last three tracks however are very distinct from each other, seemingly unconnected from each other in any way.  Is there a reason you decided to make the two parts of the album in this way? If so, why?

I’ll be honest with this one in that I’m not so sure. I feel that when it came to how I normally do things, in the later half I kind of became enthralled with the tracks I was making as singular pieces. The narrative was still there, but the sounds that I was approaching in that second half became so far off what I had originally started with that I had no idea how I would bridge them together. With them ending on their own I felt that a lot of the emotions that could be developed through those tracks could be put to rest where you could fully reset for the next track.

The origins of Dreampunk are commonly accepted as being from the second wave of vaporwave.  Many people still consider Dreampunk a sub genre of Vaporwave.  What are your thoughts on this? Has Dreampunk done enough at this point to differentiate itself from Vaporwave to be considered its own genre? Why or why not?

There are many arguments as to why dreampunk has separated itself from vaporwave and honestly they’ve been around for years. I think the core part of it as well is you also have to classify what exactly vaporwave is, which many in the vaporwave community couldn’t even tell you. Dreampunk has a very central idea that has separated from the original tenets of vaporwave that it’s not even the same ballpark, with the only exception arguably being disembodiment from oneself. I don’t know what else we need to do really. We have our own sound which has developed for half a decade, we have our themes, ideas, production style that is entirely separate from vaporwave and most other genres, we have a central idea, we have our own artists who had absolutely nothing to do with vaporwave. No point in getting into it really as I think a lot of us are just happy we can be passionate about music again.

Much of Hold it Together is extremely visual in its sounds and melodies.  Did you intend for it to be this cinematic when you first went about writing the album or was this something that evolved as you were composing the songs?

I’ve always been a fan of cinematic styles when writing my music, my more recent albums go into this much more though. With Lonely Streets I wanted to try a myriad of different styles that could work together to create a narrative. The idea was the same here but with a bit of a surgical approach to the emotions in that narrative. I wanted to craft something as a whole that brought in different sounds and styles but that was also easy to immerse yourself into with the use of foley and soundtrack style structure.

Is there an overall narrative to this album? If so, what is the story being told here?

The overall idea to the record was the protagonist’s struggle with his past and his long road to recover from it. How he finds himself uncomfortable in situations and is constantly bombarded by reminders that he has to escape from. Until he finds that he isn’t the only one who has to deal with this situation and that everyone in this city has to deal with the same situation he does and that they cope in the exact same way.

What equipment was used in the creation of this album?

Besides my usual VSTs and Kontakt, the only piece of hard (semi) that I remember using for this was my Mininova. That’s also what made most of the sounds on Lonely Streets and though I don’t really use it anymore, it was fantastic when I was getting into hard synths. Though for this one I really wanted to refine my work with synths and kontakt.

Is there anything further you would like people to know about this album or any of your other musical exploits?

Every time I try and create a record I try to have a narrative that can relate to people but is also important to me, and that’s no different here. It’s hard to do this without things like vocals and just flat out telling the message but I hope I pull it off.

What does the title Hold it Together mean to you? How did you decide on that to represent the songs on this album?


Hold It Together is literally the message of the album. That despite everything that is going on in your life, whether you’re haunted by memories of a bygone time or you’re struggling with current events, you have to hold it together and keep yourself collected, because it is guaranteed that there are probably millions going through the exact same things that you are, and you can find solidarity in that.

How did you come up with the name wuso?

Honestly don’t remember too much, I remember I was looking at Uso and saw that it stood for falsehood (falsehood of life with the kanji), but I figured that it was a bit too common to google so thought why not and just added the W with it. It flowed off the tongue relatively well and had an eerie sound to it that might be cool with the music. That was basically it!