awaiting

timeline: 2019

After having released my first album, I went on to release the second. This time round I wanted to experiment more with singing and vocals as a whole. In all honesty, at this point in time I was very unsure about singing in my music. I would always grimace hearing my own voice recorded and my confidence wasn’t there.

I still went for it and gave it a shot with what I had. Granted my singing wasn’t as good back then, but I like to keep the tracks around to show how I’ve grown and changed over time, and the instrumentals still hold a lot of sentimental value to me.

Everywhere I Go was the first song I wrote, which was initially going to be called 4 am. I started it in September 2018. I was in a rough patch mentally and had lost my trust and faith in a person I held close. For me, this is where putting my emotions into music began, as cliché as that concept may seem. Insignificant was the next to follow, and as the title suggests, it was about the constant feeling of insignificance that plagued me at the time.

The year 2018 was one of my best, I met my internet friends, I was in good shape, surrounded by loving friends, and was happy and healthy. As the year tapered off and September came around, I became more restricted and felt obligated to help others before helping myself, and slowly fell into a dark rut. I felt trapped with people who would make it an expectation for me to give them all my time. I couldn’t exist without being questioned left, right and centre and as time progressed, I became more and more isolated from my friends and people I wanted to be around, and the people dragging me down pulled me further. I couldn’t spend time with my friends, I had to be there for these people and take on their problems alongside mine and was guilt-tripped if I didn’t.

Despite the dark origins of this album, there were nice elements to it. 2019 was when I started to meet more of my close friends.

I was sent a message on Soundcloud from a user named “John91” (shoutout to you, you legend). He and a bunch of his friends had started a collective called “Neovima” and said he found my profile and thought I’d fit in. To be completely honest, I thought it was a spam message, but I joined the server anyway. Little did I know I would end up meeting one of my current best friends, Alex (who goes by neume and also makes music).

Alex and I bonded over a debate over whether durian (the world’s smelliest fruit in my opinion) was good or not, with them being insistent that it tasted good. Eventually, they joined my Revenant and Friends Discord server, and they designed the Awaiting cover.

A person in my server who was called “virtual riot preset” at the time also became one of my favourite people to this day. Their name is Javier and we met through my friend Drakonic (who came from Finity and has helped a LOT with my composition). We played on a Minecraft server that my friends and I ran and continued on to make shitposts and memes. I can confidently say that Javier is one of the funniest people to exist and they too make music under Dirty-WARE.

Around this time I became closer with other friends such as dntlkdwn, Suka, Impostor, chillyjuicebox, Flixamon, Vard, Domas and Illford. (I’m going with their aliases just in case they’re not comfy with their actual names up and sorry if I haven’t written your name on here, there’s a lot of you and I love you all).

With Awaiting, we released remixes that other producers made and streamed our thoughts on Twitch. It was after this my friend Alex suggested that we start a label to which I said “hell no, med school is gonna take up all my time”.

Two weeks later I went back on that and decided we were going to start a label and I asked Alex to come up with a name and logo for our new label. They came up with the name “Parable” and we instantly fell in love with it.

We had the Parable Discord server set up and the pages ready to go, but then I met another one of my favourite people. They made music under the alias “sleeptalker” and are called Averie, and are one of my best friends to date. They bring new and incredibly smart ideas to the table, and are unbelievably funny, sweet, open-minded and considerate, along with the others mentioned as well. We bonded over our shared love for songs with fat chordstacks and pretty soundscapes and shared an ambition along with the other staff to showcase music from all areas of the scene and build a friendly and warm home. Along with the other staff, Averie has always been by my side, encouraging me to push myself with my music and experiment, and I cannot thank them enough for being in my life.

We migrated all the users from our respective servers to Parable and since then we began, releasing music from the initial staff to kickstart what Parable is today.

I cannot articulate how proud I am of all the staff who have contributed to the growth and development of Parable Collective. To be able to have started a haven for people of all backgrounds (not just music) and to have them form memories with each other is a privilege.

One of my favourite tracks on Awaiting is Everywhere I Go, as I feel it encompasses the struggles I went through at the time and the relief I feel looking back on them and no longer suffering them. Hold On To Me is another favourite as it was more playful in nature and catchy.

tracklist

1. Revenant
2. Everywhere I Go
3. Happy Accidents
4. Crystal Rain
5. Hold On To Me
6. Take My Hand
7. Insignificant
8. Neurosis
9. Adventure
10. With You
11. Everywhere I Go [VIP]