eneagore

[eneagore]

My Uncomfortable Thoughts on Spotify & More...

You can retrieve the news here: Financial Times News

A Heavy Heart & Spotify's Latest Mess

Okay, I'm not really sure how to process this news. Since this space is also a diary for me, a safe haven for me and for everyone who reads my posts, where I've found warmth and acceptance, it feels right to share what's on my mind.

I'll be straight up: I never wanted to talk about politics in my spaces. But so often, as it happens every single day, everything in the world affects us. And if it messes with how I express myself as an artist, it's only right to speak up, even if it's in a neutral tone. We all agree: war sucks. And this news is the shameful proof that they're using regular people as human garbage to play their power games. I don't even care who's right or wrong. It just sucks, plain and simple.

Spotify: The Final Straw?

That said. The investments by Spotify's founder are a verified fact; I double-checked the news to make sure it was true. My reaction? Spotify is already a dumpster fire for independent artists, but this is the final blow for anyone who has even a shred of ethics concerning human lives.

That it's a mess is common knowledge: between botted playlists, contracts with labels that are practically labor exploitation, delayed payments or worse, no payments at all. Plus, it's now a closed system based on followers and listen counts. So, even if you make amazing music but only get 3 listens a month, sorry, but people won't care about you because you're a nobody. It's a predatory policy against emerging and independent artists, or those who aren't "economically valued" (if you'll allow me the euphemism), and therefore can't afford profitable Meta ad campaigns to get noticed.

That's why, even though I still put stuff on Spotify for the few people who listen, I've pretty much given up caring. Part of that is the total lack of interaction, which has always been my priority: being part of a community.

My Next Move & The Crushing Reality

Now, this news. My reaction, for my own sanity, has been this: I'm ditching my distributor. I'll just keep making music here on Tumblr and on SoundCloud. It won't change anything, I'm just one person, and I won't make a difference, but at least I'll know I'm not part of this abhorrent story.

And then, in the music Discord servers I follow (because interaction there? Don't even get me started, it only exists for ulterior motives), there's the polite falseness of artists who claimed to be upset. But when someone said, "Let's do something, delete our Spotify profiles," they backed out, saying, "nothing will change; the only thing we can do is isolate ourselves, go to the mountains, and live as hermits." After hearing those statements, I'm more convinced than ever that humanity has lost its value, and turbocapitalism has swallowed us all whole.

[eneagore]

Prelude to Pillow Lineage

🎧 Every follow helps me keep creating! If you'd like to support what I do, please consider following along. → soundcloud.com/enea-gore✨🖤🎶

My memories are distant, and I don't recall a single face of my mother, but many, none resembling mine. This flesh feels as though it doesn't belong to me, yet one thing I'm certain of: my childhood was spent in solitude, often chaotic, but I remember it with a sweet fondness, just like this track with its dreamy, lounge-infused echoes.

Welcome to Bianco's childhood.

Notes on Pillow Lineage's Prelude: A Journey from Childhood to Destiny

I've decided to offer a prelude to Bianco's story, starting with his childhood—his early sorrows, but also his carefree moments, much like this piece that opens the horizon to what will become Bianco's odyssey. I know I was supposed to start this project after July 7th, after the Darkness in Fog EP concludes. However, I believe a standalone single is needed to introduce his relationship with his mother, highlighting Bianco's birth as an extension of his mother's flesh. The pain only a woman experiences is also Bianco's pain—a boundless human geometry. In the Italian South, a child often lacks an independent identity or a well-defined character; they become an extension of their parents, a possession of that flesh because they were born from the mother's own body. If she creates us, she can also destroy us. This is the parental backdrop of Southern Italy, and Bianco seems to embody it deeply in his childhood.

[eneagore]

Tape Recorder Adventures: New Ambient Track Sneak Peek!

Currently cooking up an ambient tune for a fresh project, and honestly, the temptation to share a preview is REAL. Does it give off good vibes, or should I toss it? Let me know if you'd be down to hear the full track! Been having a blast lately, ditching the DAW and just messing around with tape recorders again.

[eneagore]

This post about the music world—which I’ve been a part of for a while—hit me deeply. The author made me reflect not only on the topic, but on myself.

Before I ventured into music, I was immersed in the world of writing, with all the controversies and tangled relationships between writers and the publishing industry—something I won’t get into now, but let’s just say it was toxic enough that I had to step away in order to protect that art form, which lives so deeply rooted in me.

One of the main reasons I walked away was competition. There are ethical and empathetic consequences to it: competition often leads to dehumanizing those we see as rivals. We start diminishing their worth to the point that it justifies dishonest behavior and breeds all kinds of conflict.

Those conflicts can turn into a kind of internal warfare, where competitive ties morph into latent or outright toxic behaviors—sabotage, condescension, people who assume the right to critique others’ art in a way that’s underhanded, masked as “professional opinion.”

I still remember a now-defunct writing forum that was once filled with writers and creative writing groups. It was toxic as hell. People would jump at any chance to humiliate someone else’s work, to discourage someone—anyone—from submitting their manuscript to a publisher. One less person to compete with.

I honestly don’t know what goes on in other people’s heads. But I often feel a visceral, almost nauseating rejection toward what the internet—and social interaction in general—has become. It scares me. It scares me because becoming someone, making it, has become so central that the human part of it all is shoved into a dark corner.

Competition, in the end, is a double-edged sword. Yes, it can fuel growth and excellence—but if not tempered by cooperation, empathy, and authenticity, it corrodes mental health, poisons relationships, and creates toxic, unsustainable social environments.

It reminds me of a book I read at twenty: No Contest: The Case Against Competition by Alfie Kohn. One quote stuck with me:

"The easiest way to understand why competition generally doesn't promote excellence is to realize that doing well and beating others are two different things."

And that’s the point. Competition shifts the focus away from learning and intrinsic growth (doing well), toward the urge to dominate (beating others). It doesn’t just kill creativity and quality—it breeds anxiety and frustration, because the value of what you create is always chained to comparison.

So please— be artists, not producers.

I'm competitive by nature.

Besides my love for making music, the thing that has pushed me forward in this journey is wanting to be as good as, if not better than the people doing it for a living. The people occupying the space that I want to occupy.

I tell myself that I have to be as good as they are or better. There's no 'almost' or 'pretty close'. It's 'equal to' or 'greater than' if I'm going to chase this dream down. If I'm not going to strive for that, I need to give up now. That's how I see this.

For most people, this would suck the fun out of the whole thing. You know, comparison being the thief of joy and all that. However, it makes it more fun for me. Every time I see improvement, it adds more fuel to the fire. I see the gap between myself and those ahead of me closing every day. I love it.

Can't stop, won't stop.

[eneagore]

DAW Woes: Time for a Change?

Alright, I'm just plain exhausted with this whole situation, I admit it. When it comes to making music, my priority is basically to relax, and lately, that's just not happening. Especially when I'm working on a pretty complex and long track.

The issue is simple: FL STUDIO is giving me huge problems! I mean, seriously, how is it possible that with a DELL XPS 9640, this DAW demands so many system resources? As you can see, in idle mode, doing absolutely nothing, the DAW takes up almost 20 GB of RAM! Not to mention, as soon as I hit play on a track, my CPU spikes to 99%!

I'm attached to this DAW, but as soon as I try anything even slightly complex, here come the freezes, crashes, unplayable drum audio, and to top it all off, various slowdowns. Don't even get me started on when I use my electric guitar with its effects, pedals, and amp: game over!

I've tried various solutions: fiddling with options, changing audio drivers (from ASIO, etc. but nothing!). I'm tired. Today, I lost so many hours of work on a track because FL Studio messed up all the Arturia plugins I used, and I had to rebuild everything.

I have a feeling it's time to change DAWs or even the entire ecosystem. Switching DAWs would mean a major workflow change, and it would be a disaster at first. I was thinking of redirecting my creative process towards MAC and Logic Pro, but even then, never having used either a Mac or Logic Pro, it would literally be twice the effort: both to get comfortable in the new ecosystem and to get the hang of Logic Pro and make a new way of working my own.

I do all this for passion, to have fun, but if the result is feeling burdened because the tech support I use gives me problems, it essentially becomes frustrating.

[eneagore]

Diving Deep: Sirens Beneath Black Waves

🎧 Every follow helps me keep creating! If you'd like to support what I do, please consider following along. → soundcloud.com/enea-gore ✨🖤🎶

Here we are. This is the second-to-last track from my first conceptual EP, "Darkness in Fog", dropping on July 7th.

Truth be told, I admit I scrapped a lot of tracks I'd composed because they just felt inadequate – I wouldn't say immature, just that the mood wasn't quite right. I don't know, maybe I'll put them in a drawer and try to rework them for something else (or maybe not?).

Anyway, "Sirens Beneath Black Waves" was born almost as a joke. It was one of my very first compositions, a bit raw, a bit dissonant in its notes, but I decided to love it anyway and include it in my EP. Don't you think "Sirens Beneath Black Waves" would be suitable for a video game? Because, intentionally, the "Darkness in Fog" project was precisely about producing music for video games.

The aquatic atmosphere, strongly inspired by Homer's Odyssey, reminded me of my university readings and influenced my work on the track. The fact that Odysseus and his sailors were lured by these mythological sea creatures is a metaphor I appreciate with all my being: humanity is constantly drawn by sins, by not only carnal desire, but above all by what they don't possess, and they shipwreck, even losing their lives if necessary, just to obtain it.

In the track, there are sections where shrill voices and out-of-tune pads meet, and in unison, they recall those creatures: far from ethereal and dreamy, they're unpleasant and malevolent.

And that's what I want to convey to the listener. All this unpleasantness of the sailors' desired sin is clearly recognizable in these sounds, right up to the fall, halfway through the track, where only Odysseus was able to resist – a forced resistance, of course, if you know the story, but he would have a very different fate with Circe.

*** A Side Note ***

I feel like "Darkness in Fog" has been a burden for me. As with every project I have in mind, I started with an idea, and I wasn't able to bring it to fruition and develop it completely. My attention crises, procrastinating and delaying what I should have done, ultimately transformed "Darkness in Fog" into something it wasn't supposed to be: inconsistent and immature.

Seeing all I've done has led to nothing within me: once again, I don't feel good enough, besides feeling empty, kind of how it was when I used to write and live for literature. This feeling of "not enough" certainly doesn't depend on feedback, positive or negative, from some hypothetical audience. Writing, like music, is so intrinsically a part of me that the creative process becomes exhausting, like a psychological boulder, a physical suffering, which causes me pain.

I stopped writing in 2019 because the pain had become excessive. I hope music doesn't kill me.

*** An Extremely Side Note ***

After the release of "Darkness in Fog" on July 7th, with the final track dropping, I'll be dedicating myself completely to a new conceptual album. The idea behind "Pillow Lineage" is to make it coexist with an old novel of mine, which I consider my magnum opus, and thus develop the music around the story of that novel. I still don't know if I'll be able to do it all by myself. Once again, I'm alone: with the music, with re-adapting the novel into poetry and making it enjoyable alongside listening to "Pillow Lineage", as well as with the graphics.

I'd like to manage to collaborate and build friendships in the music field during all this, to create projects together. That would also alleviate the weight of my main work on "Pillow Lineage" because I'd be able to dedicate myself to something other than just my own singular thing. This form of possession is oppressing me, and I need to breathe.

[eneagore]

Now its morning.

Now I play. I play in the dark. Even morning has its own darkness. Perhaps in these notes I have lived. I have lived depths of black dismay. My virginity is gone. Melody is my sex. It lives on all that is sacred. Fires. Fires lit in the heavy air. I play during the conflagration. I burn with the paper. Scorching myself, I engrave. I engrave absolute truths. I am a ribbon. I have no progress. Only attenuations. I am my past.

Welcome to my nakedness.

[eneagore]

New gear, new nightmares: my wild ride with the Op-1 Field

Alright, so. I made a pretty risky investment and bought this shit. You guys know damn well how much I love to include everyone in my creative process, and this is definitely part of it.

I started wondering how the fuck it was possible to build sounds from scratch and have the fastest possible workflow for creating at least musical drafts to then transfer to my DAW and work on seriously. I thought the OP-1 Field was just that, something to help you sample, synthesize, move notes into the air, and capture them. Well, it does way more than that.

Let's start with the fact that it's not a simple little gadget: I HAD TO READ 150 PAGES OF THE MANUAL IN ONE DAY. And the reading was so deep that I think I had nightmares for days afterward about that fucking manual.

Anyway, once I'd read it, properly educated myself, I started playing with it, and the result is this:

The manipulation of this little gem is something unnatural and fucking fantastic. You're quick, fast, you can layer a single sound on a single track, and absurd shit comes out. Disturbing, don't you think? It sounds like a creaking chair with a background of almost industrial noises; I feel like I'm on a ghost ship where everything is rumbling and distorting. And to think I started with the sound of a crow!

When I got it, I thought I'd use it as a portable DAW. But honestly, the workflow for using it like that is really annoying for how I'm used to working. I'm not really talking about the tape mode, which reminds me so much of those fucking cassettes where you used to record your favorite little songs over and over. Instead, I find the included sound library pretty limited, meaning you'd have to sample musical instruments to use inside it just to make a decent composition. Honestly? Not worth the shit. For that, the usual setup like a laptop and a MIDI keyboard is genuinely faster.

So how will I use it then? Sketching ideas when I'm out and about will be cool, so that's one idea. But it won't be my main use. The idea is to start with a noise, layer it with the tape recorder, and then include those sounds in a larger project that I'll develop later.

The OP-1 Field was a risky purchase, true, but I needed to create my own sounds, which will definitely characterize my next work, Pillow Lineage. I think this will be the most intimate project I've ever done, as I'll try to combine it with a novel I wrote years ago that's been gathering fucking dust in a drawer.

If you also have an OP-1 Field and have any suggestions, ideas, tricks, anything at all that could be useful for the creative process, it'll all be pure gold and greatly appreciated. Thanks <3

[eneagore]

Darkness in Fog: A Song Born from Spiritual Awakening

🎧 Every follow helps me keep creating! If you'd like to support what I do, please consider following along. → soundcloud.com/enea-gore✨🖤🎶

When I decided to write and compose this piece, I was in a deep spiritual crisis.

I was desperately trying to awaken from years of lethargy. This state of torpor was mainly due to my abandonment of writing and literature: I read unwillingly, and I'd lost my ability to reflect. I was living in a state of stasis and apathy, which often manifested as an inability to fill the blank page.

The drones you hear at the beginning of the track represent that dull, intense noise that imprisoned me for so long. I had no desire to engage in anything, no creativity for literary writing, much less for music.

While this piece might seem relaxing—and it is, melodically speaking—my creative process is primarily guided by my emotional states.

I rarely categorize a track or an album's songs into a specific genre. This flexibility might be seen as a limitation in today's music industry. However, storytelling and music remain my means of expression, regardless of market rules.

When I decided to write and compose this piece, I was in a deep spiritual crisis.

I was desperately trying to awaken from years of lethargy. This state of torpor was mainly due to my abandonment of writing and literature: I read unwillingly, and I'd lost my ability to reflect. I was living in a state of stasis and apathy, which often manifested as an inability to fill the blank page.

The drones you hear at the beginning of the track represent that dull, intense noise that imprisoned me for so long. I had no desire to engage in anything, no creativity for literary writing, much less for music.

While this piece might seem relaxing—and it is, melodically speaking—my creative process is primarily guided by my emotional states.

I rarely categorize a track or an album's songs into a specific genre. This flexibility might be seen as a limitation in today's music industry. However, storytelling and music remain my means of expression, regardless of market rules.

As the track progresses, soft pads gently emerge, accompanied by a brass that follows the low frequencies.

This aspect reminds me of an old poem of mine:

Even our souls, / can stitch poems, / there, where there are no prophets, / as a burden, / we will carry the earth, / closed in a funny vessel, / as words, / will be our tired cries, / submissive, / behind this door, / we will find no men, / here we laugh, / and with joy I wither, / uprooted from verses, / to skip the meager words, / among the crowd, / to sing madness, / the uselessness of our abyss.

This poem emphasizes how even the abyss can be useless if the meager melodies are intoned by an inexplicable madness present in every human being. The piece concludes on this note of uselessness with the gradual outpouring of typical mellotron drones.

[eneagore]

My first steps in the digital realm: The Genesis of Pyknoparakmachia

🎧 Every follow helps me keep creating! If you'd like to support what I do, please consider following along. → soundcloud.com/enea-gore✨🖤🎶

Last February, I finally dove into the world of digital audio workstations and chose FL Studio. The intuitive piano roll was the primary draw for me. I'd attempted to navigate Ableton with some seemingly straightforward guides, but I found myself quite discouraged once I was actually facing the software. I do plan to revisit it, though, as its potential seems undeniable.

So, FL Studio, with its immediacy, became my saving grace as a complete beginner. I was aware, however, that it's often associated more with beat-making than with the ambient or experimental music that truly resonates with my creative core. Nevertheless, armed with patience, I began to compose.

My first attempt was somewhat of a failure, but like all failures, it deserved analysis and release. Even after various tweaks and modifications, I rearranged it to include in my upcoming EP, "Darkness in fog". But I'll delve into that specific track later, as its release isn't far off!

Today, however, I want to talk about the birth of "Pyknoparakmachia".

I gave this name to the piece because I feel a dwindling authority over myself and my affections, a slow decline where stagnation governs my emotions. It's strange how this then reflects in the track itself, which opens with sinister, remixed vocals originating from my own voice – a kind of unsettling vocal play that mirrors the repressed sexuality I've been experiencing in recent years within a dysfunctional relationship. A relationship that's hard to let go of due to an emotional dependency I carry. It's no coincidence that the central vocal part emulates an orgasmic vocalization, almost like a zombie, something decaying but relentlessly moving forward.

Behind these vocalizations, there's a resonant nature, a strange vitality that follows the flow and yet coexists with my intimate struggles. Nature, however, is cruel, unjust, and in our time, it's brutalized by technology, ultimately silenced by white noise.

I intentionally included this silencing of nature while the vocals persist because my personal battles, whether won or lost, have often taken place in my bedroom, facing a TV screen displaying nothing but static – a blue light reflecting the pain within.

Then comes the darkness.

You detach, you begin to wander through gentle memories. And this gentleness unfolds in the harmonic and melodic sections of the piece. "Chill vibes," some might call it. But the only "chill" aspect is the detachment from reality. The track unexpectedly takes a peaceful turn. The drums used (which I realize aren't great, I'm not skilled with them!) lead into chords played on a delicate, unforced piano. A real dimension, then? Not exactly, as this melodic chain, being my attempt at alienation, takes on a rather rarefied, dreamy sonic pattern that suspends the listener. Behind it, my voice returns, this time less layered, light, and remixed to be soft yet low. Precisely because in the alienation from pain, the real part is always there, it returns, and it's impossible to completely detach from it.

The foreshadowing of the painful reality's return is given by the melody now supported by an electric guitar, played terribly badly! and mixed even worse, but necessary to make it seem connected to both the estrangement and reality. It's accompanied by a rhythm guitar, which I didn't even know I was capable of playing.

Then everything shatters. The poetics of paradise abruptly return to reality, and the motif of unease is reignited by the white noise of the TV.

Writing the poetics of this piece was quite difficult for me. The difficulties are primarily emotional. But what I've promised myself to do is precisely this: to give those who read and listen to me a reason to do so. And often, those who make music don't. Everything is treated with too much superficiality, and I don't want to do that. In my own small way, every track I release will receive this treatment. I want to make you feel who I am through this, this music, this (perhaps trashy) stuff that I'm capable of creating.

[eneagore]

Trading Social Media Anxiety for a Slow Musical Fade: Welcome to My Corner

Right, so listen to this. I'm 33, and out of nowhere, this obsession with making music has taken hold. Seriously, where the heck did that come from? Could it be because my writing career went down the drain before it even started… novels in a drawer old enough to vote? But anyway, is anyone else out there who, at a decidedly 'later' stage, just decided to jump into a whole new creative world? Tell me I'm not alone in this madness!

Combining writing and music is very complicated for me. I'm a terrible singer (yes, I'm in tune but I don't have a great voice that makes people shout 'wow! this guy's got something!'), and still a novice when it comes to music theory. I've been taking guitar lessons for over a year, with poor results. I told myself it was a good instrument to start with. Sure, if you're under 8 years old it's a good way to learn music. But not when you're over 30. You'll probably always suck.

But then what can someone like me possibly expect from this art? Nothing, absolutely nothing. Just like with writing, I also felt the call of music, I had the desire to challenge myself to prove that I'm not a complete failure and that I can actually do something.

The downside of this whole story isn't so much the clash with musical composition, with its rules, with production, and learning how to use a DAW. Rather, it's what comes after.

Now, even as a writer, I knew that there are rules to face nowadays. Isn't publishing art enough to define yourself as an artist? In the chaotic accumulation of data that is the internet, I don't think so, you need to stand out. You have to promote the artist! Here are the rules that everyone promotes: create social media accounts like Instagram and TikTok, show your face, and promote your art – whether it's your writing or your music. You absolutely have to be unique, lively, distinctive. Me, who am none of these things and not even an actor, it would have gone badly in any case.

This is where the problem arises, I believe, and hope, shared by many: either you have money to promote yourself or you remain dirt poor and unknown to everyone. And so I said to myself: okay, let's open a blog. I'm not good at showing my face. I know a little about writing, but I'm slow, lazy, and I don't have the creative ideas of a Tiktoker or Instagrammer, and so I don't know how to promote myself, that's it. Am I my art? Could letting what I do speak for itself be an idea? Let it be so then. After thirty, I'm tired of playing the game, the conflicts with others and with myself that would have arisen on those social media platforms would have led me to a nervous breakdown. Better the decline, better the decline in music, let it be gradual, let it be unknown to most, let it be just mine or shared by others.

So here's my Tumblr blog. An intimate space to immerse myself in an alternative community. Where even if you do little, that little belongs to you and you give it to others who might also give you a lot in their own small way.

I will feed my blog my creative process. How one of my tracks is born, how ideas and sounds originate within me and flow elsewhere, just as I can also use this blog as a personal space to recount my inner vicissitudes.