Released: 5th August 2013 on Bandcamp and Google Play.

Bandcamp: http://marukai.bandcamp.com/track/skyrunner

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/music/album/marukai_Skyrunner?id=Batgro7rqqwhjbwwl7zfmz7eysq&hl=en

Bedroom produced, composed, mixed and mastered by Shane Mulcahy.

-MUSIC- 
I intended to keep this for my eventual EP but decided against it in the end. It just didn't seem to fit the EP. 
This is the first time I've, well, to the best of my current ability, tried to mix and master properly. 
I hope you enjoy it, and thank you so much for taking the time to listen!

-ARTWORK- 
Artwork is a personal Photoshop effort consisting of two photographs: one of the sky on a flight to London, and the other is of some blinding sunlight on a scorching hot Portuguese afternoon.

Skyrunner

Created with FL Studio 9 XXL Producer Edition. Very basic, not very exciting, but hopefully relaxing in some way! It took me roughly six hours to make. I don't know much about mastering, but I hope it'll sound easy on the ears.
Artwork by my camera, capturing a scene out in my yard, and adjusted by my Photoshop to create a more late-evening effect.


Going Somewhere

Released: 5th May 2014

Also available for free at...
Bandcamp: marukai.bandcamp.com/track/white-place
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/music/album/marukai_White_place?id=Blw4dubsptsx5lxpcslefp6xsgm

Bedroom produced, composed, mixed and mastered by Shane Mulcahy.

-MUSIC- 
Last year I watched Twin Peaks along with the movie for the first time. I was - and still am - utterly fascinated with the series and its mysteries. It's not the only source of inspiration here, but I have to cite it as the main source.

This should have been out in January. I had planned it to be a little something on the side while I continued working on my EP - but I paid far too much attention to it, taking until late April to complete!

I hope you enjoy and, if you are a fan, thanks for your patience with my sporadic efforts!

-ARTWORK- 
I've never attempted something retro/80s looking, but that's what I've tried to do here. It's simple, but I suppose you can get away with simple when it comes to this kind of art!

White place

Created with FL Studio 10 Producer Edition. Again, this took me about six hours, over the course of two evenings. Another soft piece with a couple of glitch segments which I tried dabbling in. Hope you enjoy!

Artwork by my camera, capturing an early morning scene from my work balcony overlooking Cork City.

Used a plugin: dblue_Glitch_v1305 - A very good tool for glitch editing. (Source: http://illformed.org/plugins/glitch/)

Reverie

Created with FL Studio 10 Producer Edition.

This took me the best part of two and a half days. I started using the pre-loaded FL Studio VSTs for the first time, really great fun to work with. I hadn't used any in my first two songs, but now, I understand them a little better! It was only after cataloguing the sounds I wanted to use that I realised how festive everything was starting to sound. I decided to let be what it was becoming. I'll call it a tribute to my favourite season. I hope you enjoy.

Artwork by my camera (with some Photoshop tweaking), capturing a view from my window of last winter, and some of the snow it brought.

Whimsical Winter

Created with FL Studio 10 Producer Edition.

It's about time I uploaded something new! And I don't plan on it taking another year before I put another piece up!

Inspiration for this simple little piece came to me when I was messing about looking for some nice piano sounds. I primarily used the wonderful PURITY when putting this together. Not sure if I succeeded, but I aimed to make this my most relaxing piece!

Artwork by my camera, capturing a view of the sea from the Algarve.

I can't put an exact time frame on how long my projects take me nowadays. I may start a couple at a time, but usually end up moving on to another on a whim!

Hope you enjoy, and thank you for listening! :)

Adrift

Created with FL Studio 10 Producer Edition.

I started this piece last October, but that's not to say there's seven months worth of intensive work here! At the time, this was something I was excited about finishing as it was my longest song yet - but I soon pushed my laptop's RAM too far, and I couldn't even test small portions of what I was creating for it. Had to wait a few months to upgrade to a new PC.

I started other projects for the time being but, when I came back to finish this, I was kind of unhappy. I felt I improved myself within those other projects during the time I was away from this particular piece. I didn't want to scrap this as I put a lot of time into it, but I feel I did hurry in finishing it.
When I finally listened to the finished product I was a little happier with it. It does sound a little rough around the edges, though.

Anyway... (I do go on, don't I?)

Music from the Ridger Racer and OutRun videogame series' was the inspiration for this. I wanted to make something pleasantly upbeat, something that could be cruised to - not blood pumping dance music. Though the music doesn't really sound similar to the music of those games, I tried my best to match some of the mood. 

Kudos to you if you last the whole eight and a half minutes! Hope you enjoy what you hear of it. :) Apologies if it sounds a little low; this was the hardest mastering I've done yet, and I'm really not very good at that!

Artwork by the in-game photo editor of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, capturing me driving by my lonesome in a DBS Volante on Grand Ocean Road 4.

A Drive from Sunlight to Moonlight...

Created with FL Studio 10 Producer Edition.

I began this back in February, but once again that's not to say I was at this project day in day out. It was actually pretty much finished by the end of March. However, transferring this particular project over to my new system wreaked havoc with VSTs, especially ones used in the latter half of the song. I was fine tuning for ages trying to get various sounds back to the way they were, but ended up scrapping the latter half of the project - probably a good thing since I preferred the outcome.

For a long time I had wanted to create something which could give me the feeling of journeying through space, or at least just appreciating it in an open field at night. Hope it gives you the same feeling! I got the idea for the title from the similarly named collectibles in the Super Mario Galaxy series.

Artwork is of a page from Rosalina's Storybook, captured from Super Mario Galaxy. Thought it suited the song, and I just really like that picture (I don't own any rights to it!).

Starbits

Created with FL Studio 10 Producer Edition.

I can't even remember when I started this piece, just know it was sometime last year. Didn't really do a whole lot with it up until recently, though.

The opening melody gave me the feeeling of being in a forest, and I really wanted to build on that. However, that's when it became difficult!
For a song like this I needed to become a little more adventurous and work with synths that were mostly different to what I like using. Not all ideas came to me as easy as they could or worked as good as I thought... 

I feel this is my most 'organic' (if you can label music that!) piece so far. Tried to convey a feeling of peacefulness without being too bland or too upbeat.

Roughly translated, the title means 'Forest of Peace'.

Artwork by my camera, capturing some nature nearby Emo Court in County Laois, Ireland.

Thanks for listening. :)

Heiwa no Mori

For Jack. May you play and rest in peace.

Artwork by my sister, Hayley (http://twitter.com/HayleyMulch), who kindly allowed me to use this original piece as the cover art for this song.

Travelling to a New World

Hello there and, even if you're just browsing through my song titles, thanks for stopping by! Any slight interest in anything I upload here is genuinely appreciated. :)

Since August 2013, I've been releasing music under 'marukai'. My real name doesn't really roll off the tongue!

-RELEASE SCHEDULE-

5th August 2013
SINGLE // Skyrunner

5th May 2014
SINGLE // White place

Christmas 2014
EP // NIGHT EP
-Tracklist-
01. Attract mode
02. Escape into the Night
03. Aimless
04. Starlit Boulevard
05. Chinatown
06. Endless Expressway
???

marukai

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