Low Entropy's Producer Diary: Eleven Uprisings and a digital Revolution

Low Entropy's Producer Diary: Eleven Uprisings and a digital Revolution

2014 was the year everything changed for me - again. Also in terms of music and producing. It was the year I really "broke through", or rather, I broke out of the "underground cage", if you will. My music was no longer just listened to by hardened speedcore and breakcore freaks, or hardened social science students (hello South London scene!)... well, not that there would be anything wrong with that demographic. But now, Techno DJs played my stuff too, my tunes got played at the big rave festivals, ah well. I also wrote some e-books about Hardcore and Techno that became quite popular. It was a sweet year and time.

Before that, I was on a grim, dark, gloomy and doomy path. In a most literal sense, as I was producing Doomcore and Dark Hardcore. Very brooding, and also very minimalistic. My Doomcore tracks usually had just 4-5 tracks, sometimes even just 3 tracks. Or 2. Or sometimes even just one! These were filled with doomed synths and drums, that looped on and on and on...

Either way, as I told you, 2014 was more optimistic again, and also the time my tracks expanded again. I did lots of very experimental stuff, and really went into overload with production. I dropped the Hardcore, well, not really, but my tracks were not as Hardcore anymore, more like... regular Techno or electronic music. Still not as corny, though!

But... as the year went on... as summer passed by... as the cold crept back in... the doom returned, and the hardcore bass, and the need plus the desire to do some ecstasy filled rave dance dark hardcore tunes... again. "ecstasy", as in dancing oneself into ecstasy. not by using substances, of course.

Thus I returned to my "uprising" concept of tracks. I did a series of tracks called Urban Uprising, then Second and Third Uprising, at a much earlier date. I think I wrote some producer diary (diaries) about these already.
So, now I returned, and I had the eighth uprising, ninth, ten, eleven, and even a final uprising.
As for the framework, read the other diary (diaries). But let's just say that at the root there is Techno, but also in a hardcore treatment, and with a lot of ideas taken from... acid.

I really went into overload with the new uprising tracks... I think eleventh uprising had 22 tracks or channels running at the same time. Maybe it was 27.
The thing is, I always hated "producer flex" tracks like this. I felt that producers just filled their tracks with... multi tracks, in order to show off, or because they thought this was professional. And often the tracks actually sounded crowded because of this, or were getting nowhere.

In order to mitigate this problem, Eleven Uprising has a lot of multi tracked sequences... *but* the channels and tracks were grouped and linked with each other.
For example, there is only one, looped chord progression, or "melody", running throughout the entire track. But there are plenty of other melodies that come and go, or pile on top of each other. Yet each of them is a derivate, transformation, or metamorphosis of the underlying melody. Even the FX, the acidline, and maybe, in an extended sense, the drum and percussion, are tied to, and go back to, this one, main melody.
So, when a wild arpeggio comes in, it is exactly the same chord progression, in disguise. Or when rave bleeps come in, they at least stay in harmony with the chords.

This way, I think, everything still sounds... somewhat "clean" despite the overly tracked and multi channel... thing!
In fact, listening back, maybe I should have used some elements that clashed with this harmony... in order to make it sound less tidy!

Either way, the tracks went onto a CD release, released by Viral Conspiracy Records.
This was only the second time I had a CD release, as compared to the vinyl releases I did before.
But this one felt more like a "whole", as the tracks are linked by the themes I mentioned above. While the first album (Hardcore by Design) was more like... a compiled release of different tracks I did.


I was very happy about this release, and thought "wow, my second CD, now I really made it". I thought it would make quite the impact.
But, in the time and years that followed, it felt as I was getting a quite ... meagre response to the album. Ah well, stuff like that could happen, right?

But then, even much later, and many years later, I learned that the release really had reached lots and lots of people, and that DJs played the tunes at big parties, and everything was quite... "popular". I just did not know it, because, yeah, sometimes the "feedback" does not arrive, in this digital age.

Maybe something that newer producers should keep in mind, that your tunes might actually reach a lot of people, and you just do not notice or realise it.

Oh, I said the doom crept back in, right? So, this track has almost "smiley rave" style pads, heavenly choirs, a party or festival mood. But there are also the hardcore drums, and the caustic acid, and lots of distortion and screeches towards the end.

Eleventh Uprising https://viralconspiracyrecords.bandcamp.com/track/eleventh-uprising
Revolution https://viralconspiracyrecords.bandcamp.com/album/low-entropy-revolution
Urban Uprising https://doomcorerecords.bandcamp.com/album/reminiscence-urban-uprising-emerald-planet