This album is the fourth in a growing collection, following UPPERCASE, lowercase, and Title Case. However, you may notice that snake_case contains more melodic parts compared to its predecessors. It is no longer just ambient but electronic, in parts even emulating the sound of Imperfektionist, my other musical main project. Further inspiration was drawn from Eedl, Trentemøller, Vorkuta by Gulaggh/Stalaggh, Snake Jazz (Rick and Morty S4E5), Richard Chartier, Dead Can Dance, and Boards of Bavaria.
As overwhelming proof that there is still good in this world, let us talk about Xfer Records, the developer of Serum 2. I used it for about 93% of this album, just like I used Serum for the last three albums. What they did was release version 2 for free for everyone who already used Serum. In this economy, that was very noble, judging by the likes of Adobe and Steinberg who squeeze the living juice out us for negligible improvements, AI schlock, and easing of FOMO.
Serum 2 is far from that, introducing a whole bouquet of new features. Most notable are granular synths, which I had wanted to look into for a while, but I could not decide on a plugin to buy. Good thing I waited. Same thing for convolution reverbs; the new spectral sounds are also useful, having much potential to be messed around with. Even though I only use a single OSC most of the time (for more flexibility during mixing), you can now use three, along with sub and noise channels, and two filters.
This may sound confusing if you are just getting started with music production. But I assure you, never have I seen a more intuitive user interface than Serum, with Serum 2 only building on that. If anything, I am learning electronic music production through Serum.
Xfer even managed to make improvements that I wanted to contact them about anyway, like the possibility to hook up the smooth value of an LFO with another LFO. Secondly, the smoothed curve is now plotted in the background. This time, I would tell Xfer about my complaints in time, if I had any. Perhaps one single crash during the week I took to produce snake_case, which may have been caused by Cubase, given that it crashed as well. Admittedly, I run Serum 2 on a highest-end PC of 2023, which is still high-end, but the performance was never an issue with up to nine instances running simultaneously in ultra quality.
I am still having fun dragging and dropping LFOs onto all kinds of knobs and sliders to find out whether they connect. This enables me to do little work with MIDI and DAW, which I only use as a power source and for volume automation. You may be surprised to hear that about 90% of my samples originate from a single line in MIDI, allowing Serum to fire at will. Consequently, I made heavy use of the features Random (Curved) and Random (Flat) while designing my LFOs, saving much time on creating interesting curves manually. One curve may contain up to 32 vertices/splines, which is more than anybody ever needs.
Except for a few reverbs, of which I need a great variety, all the effects happen within Serum (in spite of how critical I used to be when it came to built-in FX, taking away man-hours from the developer but typically ending up half-cooked). Among the Serum FX that I used are compressor, distortion, delay, convolution reverb, reverb, EQ, and usually in that order. So far, I have not made much use of phaser, flanger, chorus, and other modulation FX. They never quite sounded right for my samples, but I would not go as far as claiming that they are bad.
Xfer did an incredible job from front (GUI) to back (I would kill for a look inside). I may even go as far and say that Serum is the main reason why I am able to make electronic music right now, with a 925 job and two small kids in the house. Did I mention that all of Serum 1 is included in version 2, and the old version is still fully usable?
All in all, the soundscapes on snake_case are dominated by granular synths and convolution reverbs, which lend the album an eerie vibe. This is intended, as the music is indeed about snakes. Aside from being instrumental, snake_case tells the story of a serpentine alien life form that wields advanced electromagnetic powers. You may come up with a silly name in the comments; but know that they also get high on their own blood. Through a scanning electron telescope, space-born snake scientists discover Earth. Made paranoid by secret agents and his colleagues, their chief researcher eventually becomes insane and sells Earth to their government. I assume you got ears, so find out for yourself what happens next. Spoiler alert: it does not end like Rick and Morty S4E5, nor does it end well for humanity.
Track List
01 ⋅ showcasing ⋅ 5:00
02 ⋅ non_essential ⋅ 4:00
03 ⋅ art_skills ⋅ 5:00 *
04 ⋅ kind_of ⋅ 6:00
05 ⋅ encourages_2 ⋅ 5:00 *
06 ⋅ contemplate ⋅ 4:00
07 ⋅ another ⋅ 5:00 *
08 ⋅ super_trivial ⋅ 6:00 *
09 ⋅ existance ⋅ 5:00
* If you are like me and always have too little time, these are the more complex tracks you should definitely check out.
This post would not be complete without two honorable mentions:
- Firstly, tech wizard Lars-Ole Kremer “maxed and mistered” the entire album—in record time and for a generous discount that only best friends and customers № 1 receive.
- Secondly, the photo I used for the album artwork was taken by my sister Marlene (aka NannoCloud) in a cave on Mallorca. Little post-processing was necessary to give it the same plant-like vibe all recent NanoTheory albums share.
Huge thanks to both! 🩶
Lastly, it became tradition to give the 45 audio tracks silly names, not only to make Ole happy but also to post them here: au_backe, barely_ozric, blow_my_whizzle, cavity_fire, circadas, clapping_shadows, clean_cheek, convosation, cop_porn, dat_cheek, drink_my_drizzle, eat_my_shizzle, everse_gurka, flight_recorders, flur_tom, glass_lock, gravel_steps, hustle_snake, inter_reference, jitter_pad, kicks_n_pangs, lazer_byrd, lick_my_pizzle, lithium_anvil, love_my_jizzle, möven_phick, möven_phuck, nintendogan_hi, nintendogan_lo, nintendogan_mi, nintendogan_od, nintendogan_ot, no_snake_jazz, oldschool_fire, orward_gurka, saiten_schnaider, shake_my_pearls, sopa_ihop, star_dance, stomp_box, timborine, transformicon, uggla, umpa_pad, wake_board.
⚠️ You may listen to the album once it is uploaded to Bandcamp. Until then, you may contact me privately to receive a premix.
Like all my experimental albums, you can find Title Case on Bandcamp.
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