Permanent (2023)

Permanent was made in 2023 and released later in 2025. Like a lot of the music I made around 2022 and 2023, it was not originally made for release. It was just work I was making for myself. Still, this one does not feel like a loose archive or compilation to me. The tracks were made close enough together that they still hold as one album.

It is a cold record. Mechanical, nervous, restless. There are warmer passages, and a few moments could almost sit near Ferrochrome, but the center is different. Ferrochrome is much more melodic and harmonic, and even when it gets rough it still feels warm. Permanent is more about texture, noise, metallic edges, digital artifacts, and cold sounds being treated as the material of the composition itself.

A lot of the sound comes from things that would normally be avoided: aliasing, damaged digital edges, old time-stretch behavior, strange artifacts from processing. They are not hidden here. They are part of the language of the album. At the same time, I do not hear it as harsh noise, and it is not only ambient. There is still rhythm, groove, movement, and structure, but the music often gets there through digital texture instead of warmth or polish.

Hell on earth, Loosing grip, forever?, and Permanent are probably the clearest points on the album. Hell on earth has the warmer side of the record. Loosing grip, forever? is closer to the nervous, unstable side. The title is spelled wrong, but that is how it was written on the back of the original cassette, so I kept it. The title track closes the album without rhythm, as a longer dark ambient piece, more like a mass of sound and unrest than a normal final track.

The cassette was originally called ...And I Am (AIA), but the tracklist was already the same. For the 2025 release I renamed it after the final track. Permanent just fit the record better. The title is mostly about how it sounds and looks, not a fixed meaning.

This is a cassette-sourced release because some of the original digital files were missing, and the tape master was the most complete version. Part of me thinks the album would probably have worked better digitally, because so much of it depends on sharp digital detail. But the cassette version also gives it something useful. The warmth of the tape sits against the cold digital material in a way that would not have happened in a fully digital release.

Twist, Align, Twist, Turn ends with an early version of OUTRO from Ferrochrome. For the release version, I only made practical sequence and gain adjustments where needed. No noise reduction or EQ cleanup was applied.

Text written in May 2026.