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NiElsir - Contraflow Continuum

“Anight” was one of the first songs I wrote for Contraflow Continuum, back in October 2021. Not long before I had come back to my flat after spending 6 weeks back in my home town visiting my family for the first time in close to 2 years. It was really great, but I had subtle constant stress that I wasn’t working on any music during that time and mentally - that was a challenge. When I got back to “daily life” I tried to force myself to complete music as fast as I could (something which I am not good at) and I struggled. Starting endless demos - trying to keep a particular feel and sound and feeling like every day was another 16bar loop. I was staying up later and later at night trying to make progress, cycling more and more every day to keep myself sane, and just hoping for something to fall together. Eventually I “gave up” and settled on working on a demo that was, at the time, called “house feel”. 

I knew it was a little bit different than my other work, using more acoustic sounds and a big portamento chord sound I made with a Prophet 5 emulation but I just wanted to finish something. I finished it over the next couple of weeks I called the final revision of the project “Anight” as I made much of the song at night time and I moved on. This song helped me get back to finishing music and I quickly moved on to work on some other songs for the album. 

A few months later, I had a lot more music completed for the album, and all that time I avoided this song, feeling as though I did not connect with it and due to that, I avoided listening to it all that time. 

Eventually, in early 2022 I sent the unreleased songs to Stratford Ct. and to my partner and asked what they liked and what single I might release...to my surprise ”Anight” was their answer. So I listened again that day having not heard it in a while, I had butterflies in my stomach and by the last section I had tears in my eyes, and I felt as though that last 1 minute might be my favorite part of any song I had written to date, it was definitely the first to bring a tear to my eye.
 
I hope you enjoy and thanks so much for listening. 
NiElsir. 

Written, produced, mixed, and mastered by NiElsir.
Artwork by Andrew Walker "designsince86"

Spotify

Anight

Aeon

Holding On

Still Fading

Timeless

Mercurial

Akrasia had a hard start in life, It took me a lot of time to start to connect with this track when I was making it, a lot of trial and error and a lot of time spent playing the OB-6 by Dave Smith Instruments over the basic Pad sounds to try to make its subtle melodies carry themselves in a way that was not too overpowering but at the same time, not too apologetic either. After this stage, some additional sounds fell into place and the structure of the song started flowing together. 

I never realised that this song was about 2 times the length of the majority of my recent music until I first exported it to listen to an early structure. I was a bit worried that the 6+ minutes was too long and that it would result in a boring outcome but somehow I felt that the song kind of moves through some phases, almost blending one song to another, to another, and back again. After some poor attempts to shorten the song, I decided to keep the original length and hope for the best. 

I named it Akrasia (the state of mind in which someone acts against their better judgment through weakness of will), based on the feelings I experienced after trying so many ideas and not arriving at one I liked. The motivation to continue working and finishing the song was hard to gather some days but thankfully a few lucky ideas here and there helped pull it together. 

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it