inspiration/references

a breakthrough album for me, i think i first listened to it around 2017-2018, in late high school. specifically "The Moon" was something that shifted my entire perspective on how music could be done. the minute long intro of this song is a guitar riff that is absolutely never referenced in any other part of the song, in fact it's immediately taken over by a crashing drum and synth that is of a different tempo entirely. the instruments are all slightly out of time, not even played perfectly, and the vocals are nearly unhearable. but if you decide to google the lyrics (because i don't know how the hell else you would decipher them), they're some of the most moving and personal (yet broadly inviting) lyrics ever. descriptions of nostalgic scenes from home, dreams that are shared across two people, regret, interesting symbolism with the moon, it's all there. the shockingly abrupt ending of the song too, revealing that the guitars from the intro were playing all along, just drowned out by all the other chaos, it's unapologetically messy and imperfect, but that legitimately is what makes it perfect.

before listening to this album, my process of creating music was super sterile. i had to come up with a definitive bpm, had to make everything locked on the track, every drum beat and chord had to be perfectly on time, every take had to be absoutely perfect. but after listening, it gave me the "courage" to record music with no set tempo at all, keep in all the little mistakes, let audio tracks go longer than they're supposd to, keep in the sound of compressed static from a guitar pickup – all the little imperfections weren't mistakes to be corrected, but elements that added to the story of the song. the album "memoirs", and specfically the song "driving in a town alone" was the first stuff i made really trying to implement the techniques i first heard in this album, and although i look back on "memoirs" as an almost unlistenable amateur project, i see the first implementations of things i'm continuing to do and refine to this day.

if it weren't for this album, i might still be making electronic lofi beats (and maybe i would've found more success doing that...) however, my love for creating songs that convey personal stories that are heard not just in the lyrical content, but in the audio too, can be traced back to my first time listening to this album. this album, and really Phil Elverum's entire discograpgy, made me start to consider how the music i create could be more than cool sounding melodies; music could be audible representations of the world i see and the experiences i feel, and it can be the most fundamental way to connect my life with someone else's beyond just words.

copy a lot of what i said about The Glow Pt. 2 and add it here. the most important thing about this album though was how simple it is. it's literally just some acoustic guitar and Phil Elverum's singing. it's so stripped back that the only thing you can turn your attention to is the melody and the lyrics. this isn't entirely good, however, as some songs are admittedly a bit boring because of it. but the songs that are good are elevated even higher. "Wooly Mammoth's Mighty Absence" is still what i consider to be one of Phil Elverum's perfect songs. it's got an extremely tight melody, a really good song structure, and lyrics that create and end an entire world in the span of a little over 3 minutes. hundreds of listens in and i'm still finding nice lyrical moments and new bits of meaning to squeeze from it. i aboslutely love the song, and while not every song is perfect, as an overall package it's an incredibly unique experience that is the definition of "less is more".

this album is a literal journal of songs Phil Elverum wrote during his time in Norway, "sitting on a rock and doing nothing... alone for so long". i think this album contributed heavily to my more journalistic/introspective approach to song writing and song structure, stripping back the highly produced and intricate DAW projects into just me and a guitar. some of my favorite songs were ones i made standing in my bathroom late at night so that nobody could hear me play, setting my phone on the countertop in front of me, strumming chords and writing whatever came to my mind. every time when i was playing in the bathroom, this album would be in the back of my mind as the thing i was trying to capture, the vibe i was trying to channel to create something great. if not for the album, i probably would've never tried to approach song writing from the most minimal approach possible, capturing the pure essence of what i'm trying to convey.

<ROUGH DRAFT, NEED TO THINK ABOUT THIS MORE :-) just semi-coherant ramblings for now>

copy a lot of what i said about The Glow Pt. 2 and add it here. however, the most important thing i took away from Microphones in 2020 was how connected the artist and the music they created could be.

the entire album/song is a chronology of Phil Elverum's life over the years, in hopes of discovering what it all means, what his The Microphones/Mount Eerie divide means, and the impacts of pivotal yet seemingly insignificant moments had on his life. the music video for this album pretty much shows it all too, being a slideshow of hundreds of photos taken throughout his life, all appearing in tandem with lyrics that reference those very moments. i remember watching the music video the night it premiered, being blown away at how long it must've taken to compile all those photos, how the hell he could make two chords go on for 44 minutes and still be interesting, how goddamn great the album cover was, but most importantly it connected all of Phil Elverum's discography for me.

see, Phil Elverum has songs that stretch across different albums (and even differnet monikers), all with different spins that distinguish them from the rest, and before listening to this album it kind of confused me. why did he have so many different iterations of "The Moon", and even a sequel on another album? well, it's because those songs aren't just solidified and unchanging in time, the things that influence the creation of those songs evolve over time, and so too do the songs themselves and what they mean. it sounds a bit corny, but over the years of making music myself, i can look back on songs i made and see how many of their elements still stick with me today, whether that be in certain sounds i was trying to create or moments i wanted to capture. those songs don't just live in a vacuum, they paint moments in life that i still relate with today, and thus revisiting these songs makes perfect sense under that context. (just think about The Life of Pablo, but where the iterations weren't made to fix songs but to add meaning/context to it)

i even wrote an essay in university about how this song so perfectly captures the idea of a "oneness" with everything. i focused more on a universal idea of "oneness", but i think this can be applied to Phil Elverum's discography. all of his projects are essentially just him singing about the same thing, because it's the same thing that influences the way he sees the world around him, it's the same thing that influences his desire to create, and it's the same thing that others feel and connect with when they experience his art. and i think i can see some of that same thing in the things i do and create in my own life, which makes this album even more special to me.

listening to this album made me realize how personal music could be, and how much they could mean not just to the people experiencing it, but to the person creating it. it made me appreciate a lot more about how my own experiences in life influence so heavily the things i decide to create, and how the things i create are not static and written in stone, but instead have a life of their own that can evolve with the creator. this is a project i'm constantly revisiting overtime, and constantly find new meaning from as i grow in my own life.

objectively it isn't the greatest video game of all time, nor is it the "best" zelda game (wind waker is a close tie, and breath of the wild is a modern-day banger but not really "zelda"), but it's the most influential zelda game to me.

i originally played twilight princess on the Wii, a few years after it first came out in 2006. i had to have been around around 5-8 years old, a literal mindless glob baby, but still i remember so much about this game (and somehow was able to complete it! though definitely with the help of gamefaq walkthroughs). the atmosphere and soundtrack are the #1 reasons this zelda game is my favorite, and why it still holds up to this day. the music in the twilight realm will never be topped, the deep dark synths, the weird ringing bells, the arpeggiated weird melody in the background, all of it is so goddamn good. i highly believe that's why i love a mellow and really "dark" sound in all the music i make, and i think the atmosphere of the game is something i'm continually trying to capture in every song i do. no, i'm not trying to create the twilight realm with the music i make, but i'm trying to create something that captures the same atmosphere and world that the twilight realm does. when you first enter and turn into wolf link, you feel the loneliness, emptiness, and absolute dread/loss of hope that exists in that world. and yeah, the spirit beads sucked and are a horrible gameplay mechanic, but it didn't matter cause it was accompanied by bomb music.

if i had never played this game, i don't think i'd have such a love for atmospheric/melancholic sounds in music, and i don't think i'd care that much about trying to capture memories and worlds in music.

what can i say about this game that hasn't already been said by every r/gaming moderator of all time? memes and re-releases aside, skyrim is one of the greatest games of all time, not because of pure gameplay mechanics or story, but because of the world that it creates. the score to this game is arguably the greatest score of all time, with Jeremy Soule putting every inch of himself into composing tracks that so perfectly capture the cold, archaic, but beautiful world that is Skyrim.

playing this on the PS3 back when it came out, it felt like this game was an entire universe captured in a disc. i could spend years playing this game and still discover some new sidequest or landmark. but beyond that, what made this game so special was the atmosphere (i think i'm obsessed with good atmospheres in games now that i think about it). just listen to any song from the soundtrack and tell me you can't instantly see the snowy mountains and colorful auroras of Skyrim's horizon.

this is a legendary game that i think even if i played it in my 20s would still give me the same feeling as it did when i played it in middle school. i don't think it's influenced the art i've created thus far in a huge way, but if i ever get interested in making a video game you better believe that i will be using Skyrim as my #1 inspiration.

i probably wouldn't have seriously decided to do physics in university if not for this movie.

i think the only way i could describe how this movie has influenced me is to write a ~10 page essay on it.