talking fading days away

after i released close and noticed such a positive response that i was not expecting at all, i felt inspired to continue making music under the name sadness. i made close july 2014, and august 2014 i moved houses. this new house opened something good for my music because the owners left their drum set there so obviously i was going to use it all the time. as you can hear on the older sadness recordings the drums sound very crudely recorded. when i started recording music i used a rock band microphone for everything, back in 2012 that's even how i recorded guitars by putting it up against my practice amp. rock band was a video game for the wii where you sing and play songs. the microphone was a simple usb cable so i would plug it into my computer and record that way. this is how i recorded drums in my new house by hanging the cable from pipes in the basement ceiling above the drum set. it may seem like the drums on old sadness songs sounded so much better when i used midi drums, especially if you listen to the first versions of old albums before i remastered them. you may be right, ive seen people get really disappointed by the production quality on albums after close . obviously i don't care, but the reason for that is my inexperience recording drums and the limited tools i had to do so. clearly i've never cared for clean production so it never mattered to me. if i had cared about making well produced music i would have programmed the drums with midi, but the intention wasn't to make anything polished, it was to have fun playing a very enjoyable instrument. actually playing a drum set is infinitely more fun than programming midi notes. plus i love the sound of real drums, and when you add that they're recorded poorly , adding to the lofi quality of the already crude straightforward music, it was all i needed. i came up with the title fading days away because at the time it felt like all of these moments i spent alone feeling this sadness were days slipping through my hands.

allmählich verbltütend

each day, I waste away

hopelessly waiting in despair…

I want you to hold me

I want to feel the love

I want your embrace to love me like rain

tremble october rain

it hurts…

I can’t do this anymore..

this is an unusual song for sadness because the process was backwards. i normally record guitars and keys first and then add drums on everything else at the end, because the way i make songs i don't plan or write anything out before hand but rather i build a song purely from impulses and improvisation. this is why most of my songs are recorded to a grid; even though i hugely prefer music that isn't recorded with a metronome (unless it has electronic sequences) especially for black metal and punk. i wouldrecord nearly all of my music with no click but that would mean having to record drums fiest, and there's no way o could make a song that way unless i come up with the entire song first before recording, or o decided to create the song building from a drum idea. this song is one of the few instances where i recorded the drums first and then everything else on top of it. other songs have this approach (such as capturing) but with capturing i already knew how the song was going to go before recording it since i came up with the ideas on the guitar first and came up with a song structure. for allmählich i had no idea what the song was going to become when i was recording the drums, i just improvised and played some impulsive song structure, with no click of course. i don't remember if this was with the intention of having a no-metronome song, or something else. i truly don't remember. it was probably something like that, or maybe there was no real reason i just felt like recording some drums one day. but the result is that the flow feels so much more satisfying, natural tempo modulations and a song that breathes and feels alive, something that is achieved through the abandonment of the click track. with these random drums to work with i basically just recorded random guitars over them. completely unplanned nor thought out. i don't remember if i wrote the lyrics before or after the instrumental music. i know that i wrote it in one of my school notebook but i don't remember if i was at school or not when i wrote them. the title "allmählich verblütend" means something like "withering gradually". i wrote a lot of things in german when i was younger se because i used to be obsessed with germany and the german language. i can't check my computer to see what date i actually made this, but it was definitely in october of 2014 or maybe late september. this entire album was basically made during that autumn, which will explain a lot of autumnal themes in the words and sounds

Ramas de noviembre

Branches wither like a shrilling voice in despair

The cold November nights

Distant sounds from cold winds

They echo so beautifully within my heart….... I cry...

Nightfall holds my crying soul through wanderings

Emptiness and sadness

Loneliness

Alone, like November branches…

“I will always wait for you…

I cut like branches

for you….

In a November perfection… Kiss me…."

Ramas de noviembre is literally inspired by “november branches” which is what ramas de noviembre means. During this time I was living in northern illinois which has an absolutely beautiful landscape, and particularly upon the autumnfall all the trees look feel very inspiring. Especially if you find magic in things that seem very gloomy and melancholy, such as cold seasons, dead vegetation, solitude, black and white photography of lonely things and lonely spaces. I had always been interested in these sort of aesthetics, but also on a personal level, since the lonely feeling resonated with me literally. Like I mentioned above this album was recorded in october, so I wasn’t literally in november being inspired by actual november, but as autumn has well settled by late september where I was living, I could easily feel a direct connection to november subjects. When I wrote the lyrics I was literally imagining the dead branches on a tree in november, and some grey space like the path youd walk under them. If I wasn’t making music, I spent nearly all of my time for many many years wandering around outside and getting lost in different towns I didn’t know where i was, in the forest, or just in the middle of nowhere. I remember ramas de noviembre reminded me of that melancholy wanderlust. When I listen to the songs now the most remarkable memory is this tinge of autumnal essence that’s brewing in the sounds, even when at the time of making ramas de noviembre I imagined a bleak grey atmosphere autumn always burns a certain flame that only belongs to autumn itself. This is what inspired me to upload the whole album to youtube. There are so many more colors and feelings that go into these songs than just “ok, black and white picture of a forest path” and “i am depressed”. Within everything theres a multitude of colors and thoughts and dreams and sensations that are as sporadic as my disorganization and as particular and exclusive to these specific moments as possible. I can recall the month of october 2014 as an entirely unique experience, where every day was a new story in my head and in my heart. In some indirect way my entire personality was in a fraction expressed trough what I happened to be making at the time. Ramas de noviembre is one of the very few songs of mine in the entire history of all my music where the guitars were recorded on the same guitar I’ve used since I was 11. I literally never use any other guitar because I dont own any other guitars and I’m so comfortable and attached to this one that it’s unnecessary and I’m not interested in even considering expanding my “guitar horizons”. Also if you ask me I think the guitar is a very boring instrument that doesn’t deserve so much attention to “options” and “ooo what if I used a different guitar for the tone!” I’m ugely underwhelmed by guitars, and they really only interest me for what the have to offer in black metal and punk, for which I have all the variety I need in my use of reverb and other effects/manipulation tactics to create interesting textures. I simply just don’t care about having more guitars plus they take up space. Any time I play a different guitar my hands don’t even feel comfortable. But for ramas de noviembre I remember picking up a nother guitar that happened to be in my house (i think it belonged to my brother or something). A very badly cared for instrument that was probably missing strings, sounded pretty poor, the strings were old and it was one of those straticaster guitars or whatever. I thought it would be interesting to record with this guitar, maybe I dind’t even think about it, i don’t remember. Most likely I found myself playing around with this instrument that I happened to find when I was in the basement and then I recorded a song with it, it wasnt a conscious decision going into ramas de noviembre that I would purposefully choose a different guitar.just like allmaehlich, none of this song was written or planned out except for the lyrics, the guitars were impulsive and made up on the spot. This song (and every other one unless specified otherwise) was recorded with the click track, so drums came last. And very lastly of course were the vocals, which just like the rest of this album I recorded in my basement , sitting on the floor either hanging the microphone from pipes in the ceiling or setting it on my washing machine, I do remember that when I recorded the vocals for allmaehlich I was sitting in front of my washer and dryer because that’s where I placed the microphone. On the original CD version of fading days away there’s a long bass outro to the song, and this is where I was screaming those final words in parenthesis. I was fascinated by hidden tracks and little easter eggs in albums that you could only find listening to the physical version , because this bass outro wasnt on the digital release, and I didnt include it in the remaster or the video I uploaded to youtube. You will actually notice that the outro to allhmaehlic is different on the youtube upload than the very first original release, and thats because on the remaster I decided to use the “hidden” outro, which you would have only heard on the CD version. I can’t check exactly what day I recorded this since my computer is at home, but this had to have been sometime in october before the 18th because thats when I released the album. Maybe even september, I don’t know

Cold autumn aria

these clouds and their rain, crying for a cold embrace of falling tears, breathe every word of my mourning as I gaze to a distance…. calling me…

I burn endlessly for the stars of my lucid

the gates of my euphoric dreaming fragments

and I, liberada, will forever flow

rain falls within the painful clouds painfully mourning in dark grey spirit, ablazing within early autumn wind I burn and I burn and I burn and I burn… I live from her autumn aria mystery, burning and bleeding in the essence, embody me

“Aria” when I would use it refers to air. So the crisp air of autumn time. Autumn was truly absolutely beautiful in northern illinois and it’s something I couldn’t explain to someone unless theyve experienced it themselves, even then I don’t know if my personal feelings can be that easily related to. The 4 seasons have always been hugely inspirational to me, so much so that I could dedicate countless songs and creations to something as simple as autumn, or spring, without needing any backstory or other idea, just the simple essence of autumn and the way it saturates the moments in my year. I don’t remember exactl when I made this but it was probably late september or early october because it was definitely autumn at this point. The lyrics were written in my notebook when I was in math class and I was looking out the window and feeling veyr inspired by the autumn clouds and autumn “aria”.

Something hurts

I walk along the edge of a highway close to everything passing and I know, that at any moment, I could die.

The rain will take me in a loving embrace

And the cold would kiss me

Rain, love me.. Because somewhere, I want to be a beautiful memory…..

..and I swear that I’ll never forget how it felt to be loved

to be kissed…

Something hurts

so much…

and I don’t want to be alone…

This song was definitely from sometime before october 11, most likely in october, but possibly late september. I remember walking home from my therapy session and it was lightly raining, chilly autumn day, and it occurred to me, that I wanted to make a song, about this way I feel, with a specific sound, and it would be called “something hurts”. The title is inspired by a song by the band Warning. When I wrote the lyrics I was walking outside in the rain about the outline of the local forest literally right next to a highway, and i was literally walking a thin line between being alive and being hit by a car. The words are crying about something I always cry about, which is wanting to be loved.

“From nostalgia… fell away…”

I feel like it’s hard to describe the sentiments behind this song, because as particular as they are to me, they are very particular to the weather and the season at the time. Not only is there a very specific autumnal essence impregnating the songs but also a very specific 2014 essence. The most I can accuratelly describe with words is feeling nostalgic melancholy, wishful thinking and sad lonelyness on autumn evening. When I was in school I would never participate in class and would often escape to the library to play computer games online. There was one in particular that I played one day that had an absolutely beautiful piano melody. I was obsessed with it. I even played it at home just to hear those four notes that would make me cry. I dont remember what the game was called, but I sort of remember that the little piano melody was A - A B A Ab. in fsharp minor because that’s the key the music was in. this hugely inspired from nostalgia fell away, but I made my song in b minor, but at some points in the song you can hear that same little melody as D - D E D C#, and this comes straight from that music I heard inthe game. There might have been more things in that music that inspired the song but none that I can remember, it’s likely that the rest of the song I made was original ideas. At this time I still had my viola before I broke it.

La poca esperanza

It seems like I didnt write any lyrics for this. I was just screaming and crying and saying “please don’t ever let go”. La poca esperanza means “the little remaining hope”. If you have a keen ear you might hear that the guitar in the intro isn’t the same guitar I always use. In august 2014 I recorded the clean guitar that you hear in the beginning and I just happened to use my brothers guitar. This was a meaningless decision, it just happened to be there and I decided to play it. This was even before moving into the new house, so the earliest sounds you hear from the album are on this song in august 2014. I think the entire song was recorded with that guitar now that I think about it. Yes indeed I am correct. The whole guitar track was recorded with my brother’s guitar and not mine. I probably didn’t even imagine it beiing a sadness song when I was first recording the guitar. This song is about the slightest hope that I always have, naively, that some day things will get better eventually