I came up with this song to work on recording rhythm guitar in two channels. Until this song I've only really done that in the Supreme General Mark theme. I originally wanted to put solos throughout this tune, but I couldn't come up with any lead that I thought sounded good enough. Therefore, I've opted to let the rhythm speak for itself in this one.

Oceans Die/Oceans Rise

Lifeblood: the things in life that keep us going. The central track to a larger concept that I've had floating around the old noggin basically since I started writing music.

Probably my favourite track I've recorded to date, despite there being several mistakes in the recording. This was the first song I recorded on my new laptop, so unfortunately I lost the master mix when I fried it's hard drive.

Lifeblood

Another song that I lost the master mix to. Recorded in a small, dirty, over-priced apartment that was way too hot in the summer of 2021.

Summer Solo

Really putting the "demo" in "demo" with this one. What was originally supposed to be 3 minutes of slow soloing over a simple chord change wound up bloating into this as I came up with new ideas and spliced them in. I had trouble keeping a constant tempo in this one, which makes the title "Timetrap" - which is just a combo of two words that I thought sounded cool together - particularly fitting.

Timetrap

Basically two songs that flow into each other. We begin with some soft ambient, then slowly melt into an arpeggio-focused instrumental guitar track.

Midday Twilight

I've been listening to a lot of Latin rock and flamenco pop lately and I wanted to try and mash that influence together with my personal instrumental guitar sound. 

This is a re-upload of the track because I felt the lead at the beginning sounded way too buzzy, so I re-recorded it.

Flamenco from Hell

A brief sonic journey through the history of the cosmos, represented entirely through instrumentation.

Stage 1: Infinite Instant - The impossible moment. In an instant, infinity.

Stage 2: New Gravity - Confused building blocks begin to coalesce and take shape. Quarks, neutrons, and atoms. Eventually, galaxies.

Stage 3: Perpetual Transformation - The age of death and rebirth. This will last for trillions of years.

Stage 4: Narrowly, Us - Somehow, in a vast unknown, we flicker.

Stage 5: Last Lights - Twilight of the cosmos. The last stars fade.

Stage 6: X-Ray Dance - Only black holes remain. They dance with one another until the end.

Stage 7: You, Me, and the End of Everything - Infinity comes to a close. We look back fondly.

Album art stars from ESA/Hubble: https://esahubble.org/images/heic1502a/
Human silhouettes adapted from Pioneer plaque, artwork prepared by Linda Salzman Sagan.


You, Me, and the End of Everything

First song I've posted to Soundcloud with vocals. Lyrics follow:

Summer's changing now
So different every year
Life, they say, is sweet
In the middle of nowhere

Sunlight, evening bright
In Arctic circle air
Sinking down again
Like no-one even cares

An Arctic evening glows
"Eureka!" Say the glad
As Arctic evenings go
This one's not so bad

Midnight in the sun
The sea's a shade of steel
Adapt and overcome
Each seasonal ordeal

With winter at our heels
Something's bound to change
Between tomorrow and today
They'll never be the same

An Arctic evening glows
"Eureka!" Say the glad
As Arctic evenings go
This one's not so bad

And the coldest river knows
Our tendency to do
Everything we said
That we would never do

Track Photo Credits:
By Joseph Dewey Soper - Canadian Museum of History, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=76362757

Eureka

Original song demos by a self-taught musician and cartoonist. Everything written and recorded entirely by Thomas Basler.