My debut album: 'Swans of History' by Alzoron

Utkarsh

Utkarsh

Ministry of guitar
Joined
Apr 13, 2017
Messages
541
Location
Singapore
Hi all
I usually post about my guitars but this is a touch different. After close to twenty years of being a bedroom and occasional bar musician, I have finally made started making public my alarming large stack of unpublished original music.

Hoarding songs is not something I’ve actively tried to do. Some people bake. Some run marathons. I can’t help but sit and come up with music and lyrics when I’m sitting with my guitar, often while doing something else like watching a TV show.

This is a start. My musical project's name is 'Alzoron' (the name is another story) and the album is called 'Swans of History'. In a nutshell, the album is my response to the transformation in our lives, priorities and perceptions over the last twenty years of the post internet and social media age. With song titles like 'Dopamine Monkey' and 'Fattened cows of Prosperity', I guess you can see where this is going.

Sonically, my favourite bands are Pink Floyd, Opeth, Simon & Garfunkel, with a soft spot for gothic, darker metal like Nightwish, Dimmu Borgir and Cradle. So this is not a metal or particularly heavy album, but it is dark

Guitars wise, it primary features three of my favourites. My beloved 'DGT of Doom' with Bare Knuckle Aftermaths (that's guitar's story is lying somewhere on this forum), and two of my extended range Ishibashi Tokyo triplets, my #1, the Private Stock 7 String Floyd and my #2 the Private Stock 8 String. This video goes through three of the songs and the guitars


The songs featured are

Track 7: “Call of the Night” a rather techno, industrial feeling track with a vocal tete e tete between good and evil

Track 3: “Buddha Nietzsche” a sonic debate between consumption and detachment

Track 10: “in the land of God” an optimistic W H Davies inspired tranquil piece to round off the darker subject matter of the album

Here's a Spotify link to the album
https://open.spotify.com/album/4adwP05H4BHdM1P3Nkev1g...

Lyric video of the first single

Here is some art, both the Album cover and some individual song art

ALBUM COVER
aeWP1MM.jpg


BUDDHA NIETZCHE
gIfUTHY.jpg


CALL OF THE NIGHT
bW5cb6Y.jpg


DOPAMINE MONKEY
gWW63mm.jpg


FATTENED COWS OF PROSPERITY
e7V71a7.jpg
 
Moondog Wily said:
AWESOME Utkarsh! I very much look forward to checking it out!! Great artwork as well, I too have been using Midjourney as it cuts my album/song art development time by about 90%!!! I will type back once I have listened and congratulations on taking this step ;~))
Click to expand...
Thank you. Yes Midjourney is a game changer. I wasn’t sure what to feel about it as a ‘real’ artist (given I sketch and paint) but overall it’s been a great tool so far. Thank you for taking the time to listen. Would love any thoughts
 
László said:
I think you did a great job on 'Fattened Cows'...it's cool, and somewhat dystopian. Everything you played and sang fits the concept.

I'll check out the other stuff on Spotify. Nice work!
Click to expand...
Thank you. Appreciate you taking the time to both listen and read the lyrics. Would love any thoughts once you take a listen in Spotify
 
AceRimmer said:
Absolutely awesome.
Loved Fattened Cows!
Have to listen to the whole album when I figure out best way to stream it to my main rig rather than on my phone.

Great work and very inspiring.
Click to expand...
Thank you. Yes I think speakers may do more justice though I have a long way to go as a producer, mixer and master'er (if that is a word)
 
Alnus Rubra said:
Always fun seeing what beautiful instruments you’ve bagged and I enjoy your presentation style too.
Click to expand...
Thank you. Yes, I was very lucky to bag some of those instruments and I really have my Japan assignment to thank. I was supposed to go to Geneva but the company's plans for me changed last moment. How life works sometimes
 
"Dopamine Monkeys" was one of my favs. I really like the synth parts in "The Time Is Nigh". Who did the vocals for "In The Land Of God"?

Good job on the lyric vid for "Fattened Cows"! What did you use to animate the static image, Premiere? I know there is a lot of stuff to do this with these days, just curious.

FYI, on the youtube link for "Fattened Cows", your Spotify link is truncated. Don't know if that was a mistake or if youtube did that to keep people from leaving their site.

"In Temptation" did not play for me the first few times but eventually it did play for me.

Good job and congrats on getting it out the door, I know how good that feels!
 
Thanks all for your kind words. Just two more pieces on Fattened Cows of Prosperity.

Lyrical and Concept inspiration:
The lyric ‘Fattened Cows of Prosperity’ came from a moment I had to catch myself one day, almost throwing away some rice that had come unexpectedly with my meal, because “I wanted to avoid carbs”, since I had a body fat percentage target. It struck me that this was a new level of taking things for granted, as well vanity and self obsession, and being completely out of touch with the sanctity and difficulty of meeting basic needs. Something which was a struggle for the majority of human history and even a majority of people in the world today.


The images ran hither thither through my mind. Food waste in all you can eat buffets from over-eager experience seekers deliberately overstuffing so they can try everything. Over-buying of stuff we don’t need because we ‘deserve’ it because we work so hard and disposing off it carelessly later. An obsession with ourselves, our image, our priorities with imagined slights not realising we really stand on the shoulders of civilisation past and prevent which gives us so much.The song practically wrote itself.

I was sitting with my 8 string (not the one used on the track but the 2016 August Guitar of the month), the 'Holcomb' 8 in Frostbite Glow, which I affectionately call 'Night King'. I began riffing on it in the mood of the words that had come to my mind, and all it really needed was two chords, albeit 7 string chords. The music wrote itself in two minutes frankly.

Night King
llxFqiP.jpg


For the recording, I ended up using the other 8 String , 'Ragnarok', because while the Alpha-Omegas of the Holcomb are good, they don't have the Snarl of the Ragnarok. It could also be the Ziricote Neck on 'Ragnarok' which in my experience (for rosewood necks in general) gives more of the pick sound coming through, which is tremendous for certain palm muting applications ( I have the same experience on my 594 Trem Piezo with kingwood neck , and my 513 rosewoods).

Ragnarok
zG6Za1J.jpg


And that Ziricote neck
q57bqli.jpg



Here's the Playthrough of the song with the Guitar
 
Moondog Wily said:
"Dopamine Monkeys" was one of my favs. I really like the synth parts in "The Time Is Nigh". Who did the vocals for "In The Land Of God"?

Good job on the lyric vid for "Fattened Cows"! What did you use to animate the static image, Premiere? I know there is a lot of stuff to do this with these days, just curious.

FYI, on the youtube link for "Fattened Cows", your Spotify link is truncated. Don't know if that was a mistake or if youtube did that to keep people from leaving their site.

"In Temptation" did not play for me the first few times but eventually it did play for me.

Good job and congrats on getting it out the door, I know how good that feels!
Click to expand...
Thank you. Yes, Dopamine Monkey is an unusual one. the term has been in my head for a while. And one day I ran across an old wah part i had recorded on iphone that sounded like a monkey (as wahs sometimes do). The rest was just putting the two together.

The spotify link is truncated as my musical project 'Alzoron's youtube channel is new. I have verified my identity and they should allow links shortly.

Yes, it does feel good to get it out of the door. Have sitting and second guessing since I was in University. One will never really be good enough so decided to just bite the bullet
 
Moondog Wily said:
"Dopamine Monkeys" was one of my favs. I really like the synth parts in "The Time Is Nigh". Who did the vocals for "In The Land Of God"?

Good job on the lyric vid for "Fattened Cows"! What did you use to animate the static image, Premiere? I know there is a lot of stuff to do this with these days, just curious.

FYI, on the youtube link for "Fattened Cows", your Spotify link is truncated. Don't know if that was a mistake or if youtube did that to keep people from leaving their site.

"In Temptation" did not play for me the first few times but eventually it did play for me.

Good job and congrats on getting it out the door, I know how good that feels!
Click to expand...
For the animation, I generated the image from Midjourney, and then used the image as base for a video in Kaiber AI. Kaiber AI is what was used for Linkin Park's new long lost single's music video
 
Utkarsh said:
Hi all
I usually post about my guitars but this is a touch different. After close to twenty years of being a bedroom and occasional bar musician, I have finally made started making public my alarming large stack of unpublished original music.

Hoarding songs is not something I’ve actively tried to do. Some people bake. Some run marathons. I can’t help but sit and come up with music and lyrics when I’m sitting with my guitar, often while doing something else like watching a TV show.

This is a start. My musical project's name is 'Alzoron' (the name is another story) and the album is called 'Swans of History'. In a nutshell, the album is my response to the transformation in our lives, priorities and perceptions over the last twenty years of the post internet and social media age. With song titles like 'Dopamine Monkey' and 'Fattened cows of Prosperity', I guess you can see where this is going.

Sonically, my favourite bands are Pink Floyd, Opeth, Simon & Garfunkel, with a soft spot for gothic, darker metal like Nightwish, Dimmu Borgir and Cradle. So this is not a metal or particularly heavy album, but it is dark

Guitars wise, it primary features three of my favourites. My beloved 'DGT of Doom' with Bare Knuckle Aftermaths (that's guitar's story is lying somewhere on this forum), and two of my extended range Ishibashi Tokyo triplets, my #1, the Private Stock 7 String Floyd and my #2 the Private Stock 8 String. This video goes through three of the songs and the guitars


The songs featured are

Track 7: “Call of the Night” a rather techno, industrial feeling track with a vocal tete e tete between good and evil

Track 3: “Buddha Nietzsche” a sonic debate between consumption and detachment

Track 10: “in the land of God” an optimistic W H Davies inspired tranquil piece to round off the darker subject matter of the album

Here's a Spotify link to the album
https://open.spotify.com/album/4adwP05H4BHdM1P3Nkev1g...

Lyric video of the first single

Here is some art, both the Album cover and some individual song art

ALBUM COVER
aeWP1MM.jpg


BUDDHA NIETZCHE
gIfUTHY.jpg


CALL OF THE NIGHT
bW5cb6Y.jpg


DOPAMINE MONKEY
gWW63mm.jpg


FATTENED COWS OF PROSPERITY
e7V71a7.jpg
Click to expand...
Btw
I shared this on the Roon music forum as well.
It's got some kind words already.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top