Deep

Hi everyone,

After a very busy few weeks, I've finally finished the concept album I was working on and I'm happy to show it to you all — you've seen the first track from it, Nereus, in another thread, but I'm giving it to you all together now rather than making a thread for each track and hogging up the forums. I'll copy the description from the album page:

Deep is a concept album exploring the strange, dark, mythical, and mysterious environments in the depths of the ocean. It is a journey through fresh musical landscapes, processing techniques, synthesis methods, and sound manipulation ideas that stretched my imagination in new and exciting directions.

The music is ambient, cinematic, and colourful with rich soundscapes and evocative instrumental elements, best approached with patience and a mind open to imagery.

I hope that you enjoy it!

For a production journal and more information about the project, visit http://deep.mathazzar.com

With that being said, here's a link to the music:

Deep

If you're feeling supportive, you're welcome to actually purchase the album and get to hear it in all its lossless audio glory. Otherwise you can still stream the whole thing for free, so enjoy and feel free to leave me your thoughts; I love reading them! :happy:

From the tracks I've heard so far, this album's amazing.

He didn't mention it, but he's actually auto-tuned whales! The effect is most interesting

I'll leave some more in-depth comments soon, Marius. Congrats on finishing it!

-John

Hey M! I'm commenting as I finish listening to individual pieces.

I liked Leviathan, especially the end of it, you really made it sound like an angry menacing giant.

Neptune's Wrath is also superb, I loved the percussion, and the string motif altho' simple, it worked very well. I didn't like the very artificial sounding choir in the end. Was that a choir from a keyboard or something?

Yeey, cheesy Zimmerish synths in the Bioluminescence! :D And a square lead! I absolutely love this one. It's really kind of strange, happy yet sort of corrupted and evil. Really freakish feeling it gives out.

I guess the rapture is where the autotuned whales are? Nothing much to say about this one except it's a nice atmospheric piece.

Sadly, Atmospheres was a bit too long to hold my attention well so I can't really comment on this one, except that like the one before, it really is a nice atmospheric piece, it would fit well in a Prince of Persia sort of a game.

So thats it, my favorite ones are: Bioluminescence, Nereus and Neptune's Wrath. Good job on finishing the album, it must have took a long time.

Hehe, this is amazing. Seriously, it's perfect!! :D

I haven't the time to currently listen to everything, but I promise I will very soon. Have you considered submitting this to the BBC or something for a sea related programme...stuff like Leviathan are pristine. I can just imagine it humming in the background. The sound effects in Leviathan were really cool, how did you get that effect??

The only complaint I have is not seeing a release to Neptune's Wrath. This by far grabbed my attention - some signs of traditional Marius percussion fever (and the piano reminded me of Slumdog Millionaire's ambience by A. Rahman for some obscure reason :D ) I think this could have been more appropriately titled as a march, since it hasn't quite crescendoed into a rousing bellow of fury yet.

Cracking stuff M, and like usual, I envy you ;)

These are really amazing, I can really visualize Leviathan it's almost as if your starring the creature dead on or something. The other points in some of them give you that feel of being under water. With Rapture I feel coming out of the water the sun shining into the ocean as you're watching sea life swimming by you. Heh I'd get more into detail or could go on and on, but these are some seriously nice pieces. The sound really carries over and as said before if you got the mind you can really feel that you're in these places.

I like Leviathan,rapture and Neptune's Wrath best though. Neptunes oddly gives you that feel of a waging battle or something heh I dunno, nice work overall though. You should really contact someone about this, it'd make good movie or vid material.

Hi guys!

Sorry for taking a while to get to your comments, it's been tough to keep up with things since the release...also troubleshooting the issue with the Whalesong track, which SoundCloud decided not to encode. I'm re-uploading it as we speak so if you tried listening before and it didn't let you then give it another whirl in an hour or so and see what happens.

ANYWAY

John: Looking forward to them extended comments!

Phant: The choir on the end of Neptune's Wrath was actually a slightly twisted children choir from Omnisphere...wasn't really meant to sound realistic, just creepy, but I take your point. Glad you enjoyed Bioluminescence. I feel I don't need to bother saying so but I had a lot of fun putting that together with all the bouncy synths and slightly psychotic feel of it. The auto-tuned whales are actually in the missing "Whalesong" track which I'm working on re-uploading as we speak, so stay tuned for that cause it's worth a listen if only to hear the effect.

I do know what you mean about the two very long atmospheric tracks. Those ones aren't really meant to be listened to actively so much as absorbed as a background element while you think or relax or do something. Thank you for listening through and leaving your thoughts — I think I'm going to be trying more of these little projects in between my work gigs...

Cheese: I'm happy you found it so compelling! I haven't done anything in the way of submitting it to anything yet but I've got some music festivals and things in mind and as soon as I sort out this issue with the missing Whalesong track I'll be adding it to my website as another portfolio item...hopefully it'll attract some fresh folks. The roars in Leviathan are a combination of existing recordings of sea lions, plus some abuse of a cello, synth rumbles, and other odds and ends for flavouring....fun to craft.

Since you mention the length of Neptune's Wrath, I had some doubts about it myself but what I wanted to portray was the inconsistency of the ocean's moods...even when it gets angry, it can build and build and build and then suddenly just die off without a real crescendo. Or it can threaten without unleashing any actual fury. It's a fickle environment and I just wanted to reflect that in a piece, and I did that basically by sabotaging the standard musical arc of that track and just cutting it short.

Jad: Welcome to YC — don't think I've said hi to you before! And thank you for your kind words, I'm feeling good that the actual concept of the album is coming across clearly to everyone. It's sometimes hard to convey things while being creative...striking a balance between familiar, stereotypical elements, and then fresh ways of portraying things. Thank you for listening!

I really appreciate your comments, folks! :happy: Now I ought to start taking ideas for what I should do the next album about...;D

BTW: I just double-checked the re-upload of Whalesong, and it's working properly so you can go and hear my AutoTuned whales if you missed them the first time around! :) It's track 5 in the set.

Heh, you and National Geographic need to talk. Maybe they have a deep sea special in the works? :) I haven't listened to all the tracks (I plan to), but I love the few I have listened to so far. My favorites are Neptune's Wrath and Bioluminescence. I will definitely be watching for your next album

hey marius , this is one of the most outstanding things ive heard here on YC . i dont have enough time now to comment . later ill comment on your work. great job!

Thank you all!

Rare Pickle: First off: excellent username. Seriously. I actually have spoken with National Geographic, but it's hard to get their attention...maybe I ought to keep trying since I agree that this album seems like it might help my case. Thanks very much for listening!

Abdullah: Looking forward to your comments! :happy:

Marius! Its finally out! How exciting :) !

Leviathan- I feel like I'm underwater, swimming with creatures from the Deep :]. Very well done. The climaxes you hit throughout are stunning. The sound manipulation is spot on. Even though its ambient, you create a an epic mood. As Phantom said, sounds like an angry menacing giant.

Bio - Man my head is really bobbing with this one. Awesome eerie feeling. You hit all the section perfectly. They flow throughout very elegantly. The motif is simply fantastic, and I like how you play off it throughout. Well done.

Rapture/Whale Song (it seems they are the same track) - Your mixing really shines in this one. What in gods name are those noises? They sound like whales, but if so, how the hell did you fit it in so well? Messed with the audio? I love the panned percussion, very water-y and gives a great backdrop for the whale sounds.

Atmospheres - This might be my favorite track of the bunch. Great, great backdrop music. Really gives great imagery. yes its long, but its an atmospheric piece, and you completely nailed it.

Neptunes Wrath - Very cool piece, though this might be my least favorite. Nice percussions, still retains that 'deep' feeling, but I feel like you could have been a little more creative with it, compared to the rest of the pieces. Though none the less, very well done.

You have come up with a creative, fluent, and professional album. The mixing is superb, your concepts and ideas are all there and executed very well.

Great job!

Jon

Thanks so much, Jon!

I agree with all your comments and apologize for the duplicate track issue — I uploaded them all to SC at once and there was a system outage in between so I had a few glitches — I've gone back and made sure that the Rapture track is now ACTUALLY the Rapture track instead of a duplicate of the Whalesong track so sorry about that confusion.

To answer your question about the sounds in Whalesong though, it IS actually a singing whale. To the raw recording I applied a pretty odd effects chain, the most prominent element of which was an AutoTune plugin. :P I'm very happy with the sound that came out...haunting and strange, but somehow also beautiful.

hi marius,

i actually don't have to say much about this, i know that your intentions were commercial(?) in this production, however you chose to be experimental(contradiction?). from what i heard of your previous tracks it sounds as if this was intended for a specific genre of ambient+sound effects and less composition of actual notes.

your production is as usual polished and clear and powerful, the track i enjoyed the most was the whalesong which i felt like you took a chance and explored something new, which came out beautiful(as in "i dream of electric sheep" great track). that's just my taste, which would love to see you really go out and try crazy stuff with this, and not just in the ambient sound effects department which is clearly another strong point with you.

I've always been a big fan of your music Marius and this album is no exception. You have a lot of great sounds and creative ideas interwoven in all of these tracks. Congratulations for finishing it.

I wanna hear, but for some reason instead of a play button I get a link to a page that says play music. However, the link does not work. I just get a 404 error message.

RRR: Read the first post — this isn't hosted on YC. ;)

J: I hear you, man, and that was a constant conflict while working on it. I ended up having to play it safer than Dreams of Electric Sheep and as I was working on it, it became more of an exploration of the ambient genre which I had been studying. Crafting soundscapes is an entirely different skillset from note laying and it's one I wanted to perfect, so I guess I just took this as the opportunity. I'm pleased you enjoyed Whalesong though; that's definitely one of my favs from the album too and I had a great deal of fun with my lead "singer" :P

Paul: That's gratifying to hear. I wasn't sure how people would respond to a primarily ambient album, especially since it was a new direction from me, so it's good to hear that some are finding it positive. :happy:

My comment will sound simpleton but I love how "Smooth" you make your music to sound. All the tracks are really nice. Very relaxing and enjoyable. :)