First 2023 Blog Entry

 Hello everyone!

Welcome to my first blog entry for 2023.  I have a few things to talk about, so I'll just get straight into it.

Within the past week, I made an announcement on my n-Somnia page on Facebook.  This announcement gave an idea of what to expect from the n-Somnia project in the future.  The amount of info I shared on FB was limited, because I wanted to save it for this blog entry, but what I did share shows that I've got a lot of things lined up.  Here's what's going on:

The short version - n-Somnia has got 10 (yes, 10!) releases planned in the near future.  They are in the form of 4 EP's, 1 compilation and 5 albums!  Now that you know the short version, let's get into the more detailed one.

For a while now, I've already had the 4 EP's and 1 compilation planned ahead.  As for the 5 albums, that was a decision made only recently.  To get a better idea of how the future of n-Somnia will be played out, I will explain this in their planned order of appearance.

First of all, the next n-Somnia release will be an EP.  This one's going to stand out the most out of all n-Somnia releases, past and present.  Mainly in visual form, but for a short time it will also stand out more when it comes to the audio as well.  What I mean by this is that the genre is going to be very different to anything I've done as n-Somnia before.  But what I mean by "for a short time" is that I have plans on doing something similar after this release.  It won't be as unique once the second recording of this kind makes an appearance.  However, it will still be unique in visual form.  How?  It's all in the names of the songs and the EP itself.  The titles are all going to be in a foreign language!  Don't worry though, fellow English-speakers.  There will be translations available for the titles.  Also, they will still be instrumentals, so you won't need to worry about needing to learn a new language to understand it.  This EP having a different language in the titles is kind of a way of trying to reel in an audience from another culture.  I don't know how successful it could be, but we'll see.

The second release - and the 2 to follow - will also be in EP form.  It may not sound that special, but here's the deal.  Each of the next 3 EP's will be a different genre to each other.  The first of the 3 will be in a similar style to artists like Enigma, Clannad, Enya, etc.  It'll be mostly digital, but a lot softer than most of the releases I've made before.  Don't worry, there will be some beats.  Just expect more keyboards than usual.  The second of the 3 is where I bring the beats back, but even more so.  With this EP, I will be diving deeper into the techno, trance and drum 'n' bass genres.  Most of my past releases were inspired by the likes of 80's industrial, new wave and synthpop, but this time I will be getting more into the 90's and 2000's electronic scene.  In saying that, you may remember me creating a track in 2003 called "Trancelation", which was never properly finished.  That song will be completed and feature on this EP.  It's time to do it some justice.  As for the last EP, this is where things get very interesting.  This is the EP that makes the non-English one less unique, as it will have a similar genre style...but even more so.  The first EP will be using more instruments.  This one, however, will also be doing that, but it'll be a little heavier...  That's all I will be saying about it for now.

Then there's the compilation album.  The plan is for it to be a direct sequel to my previous one, "Singularity".  It's already got a title - "Duality".  This compilation will cover the current chapter of n-Somnia's story, starting from the release of "Red Alert 20" in 2019 and ending with the last of the 4 EP's.  The compilation will also have its own exclusive song featured along side of these promo tracks.

So, by now you're probably wondering about the 5 albums, and why they won't be acknowledged on "Duality".  There's a very good reason for this, and here it is...  I'm going back to my roots.  Not just as n-Somnia, but as a musician overall.  Allow me to explain.

I want to give a bit of an overview of my origin story.  Not necessarily what I listened to as a child and as a teen, but more of the result that came from listening to these songs in the first place.  We should all know by now what got me interested in playing music in my early years, but a very small percentage of you will know how it all began.  Very few people got to see my early work back then, but there was really only a small handful that got to look deeper into this.  One person in particular had better access to my early works than everyone else, and that person just happens to be my former Kingrow & Ducksel Comedy partner, Forbes King.  In the early years of my music career, Forbes was there to witness it all.  The first writings from my hand onto paper, Forbes saw it.  In fact, he contributed towards my material quite significantly.  With that being said, you could say we were kind of involved in a music project as a duo, less than a decade before Kingrow even existed...  But this project would be short-lived.  It was only about 6 months later when Forbes and I stopped writing music together (temporarily, of course).  I would continue to do so, of course.  But then along came an opportunity to form a band that would eventually call themselves Supertrip, and what I was already doing up to that point would be put aside for a while.  Forbes and I would briefly get back into it in 2001, contributing towards it off and on up until about 2006.  By this time we saw more potential in what we were doing as Kingrow, so much of what we'd written on paper was put away once again.

So, what happens now?  It all comes down to those 5 albums I mentioned.  I am happy to announce that in the near future, I will finally be unveiling 5 albums worth of songs that were written between 1995 and 2006!  This ambitious project, most commonly known as Swede, would eventually lead to a huge backlog of song titles and fictional album tracklists.  To give you an idea of how big that backlog is, I figured out (in 1997 anyway) that I had created close to 600 titles alone!  Not many of which had any lyrics, mind you, but that's still a lot of names, at least.  As of 2006, there is easily the equivalent of roughly 60 albums worth of tracklists.  You're probably thinking by now, "How are you going to release that many albums worth of material when you're in your early 40's already?"  It's simple - I won't be.

Even though I generated that many song titles in my lifetime, I won't actually be using them all.  As time goes by, you start to look back at some of the things you've said or done and begin to question your mental stability.  "What was I thinking?" and all that jazz.  Swede had its fair share of cringe material, which is why a huge chunk of it will be discarded.  When I say that, I don't mean it won't be used at all.  It just won't be used by me.  In due time, all of my rejected material (all being titles) will be made publicly available for anyone to freely swoop in and take what they want for themselves.  I don't mind.

But with the material I will be using though, it's been crunched down to 5 albums worth.  The best of the best, if you will.  Here's a brief overview of what's to be expected of these albums:

#1 - This one will be based on an album concept that I wanted to do from Day 1.  Most of the titles from that concept will be used, plus a few from its fictional follow-up to fill any gaps left from rejected titles.  This album should be an interpretation of the kind of style that got me started as a musician.  I plan to do my best to recreate the sound of Jared from late 1995.

#2 - Named after a fictional "series" of albums, this one will be a collection of ballads I wrote in late 1995 and the first half of 1996.  Each song has been hand-picked from various fictional albums from that era.

#3 - This album will feature songs that were NOT ballads, but came from the same era as the chosen songs on the previous album.

#4 - The songs picked for this one originated from late 1996 to the time I joined Supertrip in 1997.  An era that Forbes and I call "The Dark Ages", this will also be the title of the album.

#5 - To bring this series of albums to an end, I will be featuring tracks written between 1998 and 2006.  It could've been 2001-06, but I remembered a few songs I wrote in 1998 while I was with Supertrip, but were never used by the band.  So I will be bringing these tracks into the list as well.

And there you have it.  Looks like I will be busy for several years yet.  n-Somnia is definitely going places, and it will be heavily experimental as well, considering the list of genres I have set aside for these releases.

I will end the blog here as I've gone on for a while already.  There are other ideas that I've come up with since my final 2022 blog, but they're worthy of their own entry.  So until then, stay safe and may your kitchen be blessed with a tray of fresh eggs very soon (if you know, you know).