Ferrochrome

Ferrochrome is a compilation of late-2022 and 2023 material that was first assembled on cassette in 2023. It was not really made with a public release in mind. The cassette was given the title Ferrochrome, and the digital release only came later, after I found the tape again in 2025.

Even though it is a compilation album, it still feels like a real album to me because the tracks come from the same phase and share a clear sound world. That 2022-2023 phase of the project is very audible here. The mix is often dry and direct, without much focus on width, polish, or masking what is underneath. I do not hear that as a flaw. It gives the album a specific sound, with much more emphasis on rhythm, texture, and melodic or harmonic information than on a large production style.

The experimental side of the album also comes from that period. A lot of the work was about learning synthesis, sound design, melody, and harmony by trying things directly rather than by following outside documentation. I have mostly learned through experimentation, and on this album that is still very exposed. I did not always know exactly what I was doing. Here that works in the music's favor.

The digital release is based on the cassette because many of the final digital masters were gone. At first I considered releasing only the tracks I could still find as files, but that would have removed about half the album. A mixed version, with some tracks from digital files and some tracks from tape, also did not work. The difference between the sources was too obvious, so the tape became the source for the whole release.

That decision changed the album in a way that helped it. A lot of the music is built from dry saw, sine, and square waves. The cassette adds saturation, movement, wow, flutter, and a kind of body that the digital files did not have in the same way. The tape also makes the record feel less fixed. It turns those dry waveforms into something more unstable and alive.

The album exists partly because of a very chaotic way of working. At the time I would export WAV files with random names, leave them on my desktop, record things to cassette, and later delete or lose files while cleaning things up. Several tracks, including Ferrochrome, eyes closed forever, DSC_787 (feels like yesterday), and death take my hand, only survived properly on the master cassette.

The original cassette was recorded on an Akai GX-M10. The deck I used then needed some warm-up time, otherwise the left channel would not behave properly. I did not let it warm up, so the first tracks on the tape were recorded in a slightly odd way. The digital version is also not exactly the same as the original cassette. Two tracks were removed: a duplicated copy of Abstraction redux, probably recorded twice by accident, and another track that did not fit the album and used copyrighted samples from a thrift-store LP experiment. Apart from some volume correction and a few practical repairs, I kept the transfer close to the tape.

Some tracks still have very specific traces of how they were made. INTRO is missing its beginning because I started recording too late, and it has heavy wow that bends the synths in a way I still like. Stimulant psychosis was on a bad section of the tape and needed more repair than I would normally want to do. It is also one of the rare tracks in the project that sits close to house. Neurogenesis and august schleicher both connect back to early guitar writing and 7/8, even though they appear here as dry electronic pieces. The title track is in 31-EDO. The sirens in the track are real. The monthly air raid test went off while I was working, so I recorded it on my phone.

I cannot really choose one or two central tracks from the album. Different pieces show different sides of it. acid burn is probably in 7-EDO, and the tape compression helped the drums. DSC_787 (feels like yesterday) is one of the softer moments on the album, built from acoustic and electric guitar rather than the dry synth language that defines a lot of the release. in the loops uses an extreme delay with near-infinite feedback. eyes closed forever is a live recording based around a very fast arpeggiator, sine wave, delay, and a few layers underneath. OUTRO began as a piano composition, mostly in 11/8, but became dry sine and saw instrumentation on the album. After that, death take my hand works almost like a backwards pass through the record.

The cover was made with camera feedback. Alternative artwork studies are available in the Extra content section.

Text written in May 2026.