SBWY album update #2 (Patreon)

of course i go dark and forget to update LOL. pardon my silence, i really do apologise. 

but with that out of the way, we are at the end of our yorushika album journey! i learnt so many things here, and there are so many things i'd do differently, but let's talk about it one line item at a time.

✿┆moving the release date

As with all projects, there are always some unexpected roadblocks. My original release schedule had a 1 week buffer for anything wrong or unexpected that happened. We used that buffer for the re-recordings I mentioned a while back. However, things ended up moving slower than anticipated on the audio engineering front. 

The original arrangement was always going to be that Palm mixed the singles released on YT and Dictate mixed the rest of the tracks on the album (4 extra tracks). But I could only get Dictate to start working on the mixes during the week I was working on Hitchcock because that was when the rest of the instrumentals were done. On top of that, Palm, Dictate, our instrumentalist Ikanaide, and I are all in different timezones, and up during wildly different hours of the day, and my home situation currently doesn't allow me to be at my computer past 2am (which is when most of them are awake!). 

All this and more caused polishing the audio to be a slower process than I hoped it would be. So, I decided last minute it would be better to delay it than deliver the music equivalent of Cyberpunk 2077. 

tl;dr - timezones suck + things out of all of our control made audio mixing slower than I anticipated. 

✿┆nuking "spring thief"

Unfortunately, since "Spring Thief"'s instrumental wasn't one I commissioned, we weren't able to obtain the instrument stems, and so we couldn't bring the quality of the song up to par with the rest of the album. I know this is a disappointment to many of you, and I sincerely apologise, but sometimes things work out this way and it's just out of my control. Still, for a first album, 11 tracks + a bandcamp exclusive bonus track (which probably will be a thank you + just talking) is pretty pog, ain't it?

✿┆album art reveal

The album art is pog and it's here! Weskie knocked it so far out of the park, I think it counts as 3 home runs... 

I chose to go with a summer theme, someone in the comments of my delay announcement on youtube said it reminded them of first train and kafka (another n-buna song i released in 2017) and, well, they aren't wrong! I've always had the concepts of hills, flowers, a blue sky, a white sundress, and the cursive font in my mind. The original album typography looked super whack until I asked a graphic designer friend of mine (@axel_marudesu, who did my stream background!) for a second opinion. Now it looks so professional, I could almost cry...

✿┆we were under budget!!!! :D

As you know, the album was funded by generous donations from you all here at Patreon and donothon money I raised on my birthday. I originally budgeted $2600 for the 6 new tracks in the album, but raised $3000 in total to reach the merch stretch goal, then I charged you on Patreon once for all these free previews for everyone. 

Which means....

I'll be able to make even more merch than I originally planned!!!!!!! :D

I'm really excited for this, and I may even be able to make a vinyl or a rubber strap that's exclusive to album sales. Which may be soon! I'll let you guys know beforehand and give you a discount on merch, obviously. 

✿┆release concert + afterparty

I'll have a celebratory concert + after party talk with my album collaborators about working on the album, the meaning of a lot of the songs, and all that on the saturday after the album is released! I hope you guys join, I'll update you guys close to the date but we did it!! We really did it AAAAA 

And that's it from me for now! Sorry for the extremely long update, like I said, working on the album has taught me SO MUCH, most of which someone like me can only learn from experience. Thank you guys for the support so far, I'll be updating previous uploads here with little blurbs about each one in the coming days, and uploading the whole album here in the next few hours! 

This was rachie, over and out.