{"id":85,"date":"2025-07-04T21:55:30","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T21:55:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/darrenizzard.com\/?p=85"},"modified":"2025-07-04T21:55:30","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T21:55:30","slug":"whats-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/darrenizzard.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/04\/whats-coming\/","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s Coming?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>There have been unavoidable delays with Alex&#8217;s artwork, although it&#8217;s coming along well now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With that in mind, I&#8217;ll go through the tracks on the new album. You&#8217;ll have to imagine the sounds until it&#8217;s released.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Crystallised Coffee\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Alex likes this one. My notes say &#8220;mysterious, glistening&#8221; but really I have this image in my head of a crystal somehow containing a complete cup of coffee. I&#8217;m not a big coffee drinker, but if I was, it would be freshly mined out of caves.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Tinted Windows\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>&#8220;Dark and reflective&#8221; say the notes. I sometimes listen to music while travelling and as I watch the scenery pass by I think of it as a live music video. It always works. But what if the windows were, well, tinted? They&#8217;d be dark and reflective I suppose.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Neon Vesper\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>I used the word &#8220;neon&#8221; but still failed to be synthwave. As for the &#8220;vesper,&#8221; that&#8217;s just the old term for evening. So, we have new and old, of course, but with colourful lights breaking through as the sun fades.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Dancing Sparks\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The image is of something industrial going on, but with an odd reminiscence of that version of Wizardry I did for C64Audio many years ago. Heavy machinery and magic all happening at the same time. The 6:8 time gives it a free-form whirling feel as the track progresses.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Impersonating an Estate Agent\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The first track with lyrics. I just had this line pop into my head: &#8220;Impersonating an estate agent, come see the basement.&#8221; It sounded both absurd yet creepy, and had to become a full song. I know nothing about real estate, of course, a fact well-illustrated here.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A Day of Surprises\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Upbeat with woodblocks in the rhythm and some busy chords going on. And a synth that goes &#8220;wow!&#8221; every so often. That&#8217;s the surprise. Don&#8217;t tell anyone.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The Sign Said This Way\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>That beep in the background is from an experimental synth I was coding, a very simple sound but it was nice to find a use for it. The track is quite relaxed, with the guitar finding its own way forward among some meandering keyboards.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Thirty Years of Now\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>A re-imagined and considerably extended version of one of my old Amiga tracks. Always fun revisiting one of those and trying to write new material to blend in with what I wrote all those years back. I wrote a bit about the title in the previous post.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>But His Face Had Changed\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>A melancholy start gains power and an unsettling feel via an organ-like lead and some choral pads. While working on the cover, Alex suggested the &#8220;he&#8221; referred to in the title might be the false estate agent as his true intentions become clear. Quite possibly!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Stirring Sugar\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Lighter with a shuffle, but still some reflective chords. A lot of my tracks have a retro-gaming feel, but the tune of this one particularly reminds me of my old Amiga modules. Mind you, I wish I&#8217;d had strings and brass like this back then.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>It&#8217;s a Mistake, Brian\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>I chanced upon an old newspaper article about a man doing the right thing in handing a wallet into the police, which was returned to its rightful owner. Good man. But this isn&#8217;t about him. This is about a guy who hands everything he sees into the police, regardless of whether it&#8217;s lost or not.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Helicopter Man\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Done originally for a certain streamer who shall remain nameless. I&#8217;d made little bonus tracks for his rave streams, and this was one I contributed for New Year 2025. The story is based on an incident his wife revealed from when they were dating. Some people just can&#8217;t resist the spotlight.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The Bell Forge\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>I wish there were a deeper reason for this title, but it has bells in it. I mean, some of the others have bells too, but I can&#8217;t call them <em>all<\/em> &#8220;The Bell Forge.&#8221; It conjures up the image for me of exploring a large, abandoned hall. With bells.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The Realm of the Board\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The original idea was a song about an old decaying wooden board, but somehow I couldn&#8217;t make the lyrics come together. I considered a few different approaches to this &#8220;board&#8221; idea, even checking a thesaurus, and ended up throwing them all in. That&#8217;s this song. It&#8217;s as many things associated with boards as I could make rhyme. The funny thing is, it almost makes sense.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>There we have it. 14 tracks, just over an hour. Coming soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There have been unavoidable delays with Alex&#8217;s artwork, although it&#8217;s coming along well now. With that in mind, I&#8217;ll go through the tracks on the new album. You&#8217;ll have to imagine the sounds until it&#8217;s released. There we have it. 14 tracks, just over an hour. Coming soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[19,21],"class_list":["post-85","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","tag-music","tag-titles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/darrenizzard.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/darrenizzard.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/darrenizzard.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darrenizzard.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darrenizzard.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/darrenizzard.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86,"href":"https:\/\/darrenizzard.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions\/86"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/darrenizzard.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darrenizzard.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darrenizzard.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}