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[petriform]

doing a silly DJ set for my birthday last month was fun and I wanna do it again! so i'm gonna do another one tomorrow night 😎

same time as this post, tomorrow! at twitch.tv/petriform

[petriform]

thank you Pacific Noise Works for a brilliant, unforgettable night! love you Seattle!!

[petriform]

my chiptune album "Veneer" turns 10 years old today

this was a big one for me! i'd started performing Petriform shows a little under a year earlier, and had figured out the direction i wanted to take my music at that time - the intersection of drum & bass and chiptune, which i'd taken to calling "hybrid chip" or "chip hybrid" or something similar - not that it mattered. what sealed the deal was that not only was it what i had the most fun producing and performing, it seemed like what the audiences i was playing to responded to the most (at the time, i'd been performing songs from "Relentless Eventful" and some early "chip hybrid" odds and ends from my first explorations of FamiTracker). so i was on the come-up, and had a clear vision toward something that seemed like it was going to come together really well.

and it did! "Veneer" is by most metrics (nebulously) my second-most successful album. by a very thin margin, it's the #1 most-downloaded item on my bandcamp. its release kicked off what would be my most active year of live performances, and took me to places i cherish to this day (my first 8bitsf and 8bitLA shows were both "Veneer" era).

so how do i feel about it now? you know that splatoon concept art, the "inkling development process?" with "Veneer" i feel like i was the second squid from the left. maaaaybe the one in the middle. i was throwing a lot of stuff at the wall, and what stuck was yet to be fully-refined. my vocoder, previously debuting on "Brown Plaid" less than two months earlier (yes, i released two full-length albums nearly back-to-back and very suddenly had Nothing™ cooking) made its chiptune debut here on the very first track ("Intercontinental Drift") and then... did not appear musically on the entire rest of the album. 👍 "Intercontinental Drift" has some fun polyrhythmic stuff at the end, which i hadn't done much of before, and that solo sounds close to something i'd bust out today, just with less interesting instruments and programming. on the rest of the album, there's pianos, amen breaks, supersaws, you name it. a (very) loose thematic concept and leitmotif bookends all but the first few tracks, trying to convey the imagery of the album art - the core of a planet surfaced with the faux wood veneer(!) of retro electronics.

so what from this album has endured? "Vanilla Extract" and "Coastal" lasted several more years than the rest of the album among my live setlists, and even those got phased out eventually (though "Vanilla Extract" remains my third-most performed song, despite not being in almost five years! i'm playing in seattle tomorrow; i should fix that...). "Coastal" in particular was such a signature song for me that it got a reprise, a new arrangement, and was the soft concept of "Dither Beach" six years later. all but two songs from the album ended up getting performed at some point, though by the end of 2015 they'd been phased out in favor of newer material (namely the stuff that would form my self-titled album and "Don't Worry, You're Great!"). on the one-year anniversary of the album's release, i played a six-song set with only one of those songs being from "Veneer." the "Veneer" era was 2014 - 2015, and that was it!

every album i've done since "Veneer" has been better than "Veneer", but it still has a particular charm, i think. it's the last release of mine that really committed to the whole "chip hybrid" thing; that went away around the same time most of the album did - late 2015. it's the first release that coincided with my growth as a live performer. it's "Veneer!"

listen to / download "Veneer" on bandcamp here

[petriform]

just a week away!! seattle let's go!!!

seattle!! see you soon!!

(poster art by Dovahcaine)

beyond excited to share that i'll be performing in seattle at Pacific Noise Works's HEAT.wav at Substation on friday, february 2, alongside Faux Macro, WOEBGONE, and Danbala's Horse, w/ visuals by Glitch_Wolfe!

this is my first show in the PNW in almost 5 years, so i'm elated to be back and hope y'all in the area can come through! it's my first show in seattle, specifically, for that matter... so you know i'm gonna bring my very best!

see you there! 🎵✨

fb event | tickets

[petriform]

seattle!! see you soon!!

(poster art by Dovahcaine)

beyond excited to share that i'll be performing in seattle at Pacific Noise Works's HEAT.wav at Substation on friday, february 2, alongside Faux Macro, WOEBGONE, and Danbala's Horse, w/ visuals by Glitch_Wolfe!

this is my first show in the PNW in almost 5 years, so i'm elated to be back and hope y'all in the area can come through! it's my first show in seattle, specifically, for that matter... so you know i'm gonna bring my very best!

see you there! 🎵✨

fb event | tickets

[petriform]

running water (take care) / sink

celebrating 10 years of "brown plaid" with refreshed / alternate takes on two of that album's signature songs

(a retrospective post on that album is to follow soon!)

free / name your price on bandcamp

[petriform]

"florence" was released two years ago today!

(and if youuuuu can believe it, it's a bandcamp friday once again!)

some cool "florence" things have happened in the year since i originally posted this:

the time and place were finally right for me to do a "florence"-heavy live set back in october, playing "administer and know peace," "no rx," "morale vampire," and "made" live for the first time. now, "vector control," "say,"* "underwrite," and "scanners" are the only ones i haven't played. (i'm still looking for an opportunity to perform the album in its entirety!)

also, at that show, i debuted "florence" special edition CDs! they include the "f-stop" companion EP too! for the time being, they'll only be generally available at live shows because ecommerce is a fucking pain not something i want to stop self-sabotaging dedicate a lot of time to at the moment. these are my first CDs since "nothing is for sure" in 2018, for what it's worth!**

anyway, "florence" remains my most-recent full-length chiptune album to date. it's going to stay that way for a while - the next album has been underway for some time, but it's a long way off, and it won't sound like "florence." like i said in the original post, it'll be a long time before i specifically follow this one up. that's why i keep plugging it two years later and counting - i know it's special, i know it will stay special, and i know that, like many things of mine, i vastly underpromoted it at the time. so, during a time in my life where i have less time to create and more time to reflect on what i could have done differently, hopefully you'll forgive me for going back to the proverbial "florence" well until i finally feel like i've done right by the "me" who spent seven years seeing it through.

"florence" is still free / name your price on bandcamp.

* "say" was the first song i wrote for the album and 2014 me would be aghast that it'd be one to go unplayed! it was supposed to be The™ song! ** yes, this leaves "dither beach" and my self-titled album CDless. maybe one day... maybe

[petriform]

been playing lots of Super MaЯio RPG lately

[petriform]

your Audio Doodles tag gave me as much dopamine as putting on an old hoodie and finding $20 in the pocket

thank you! glad to hear it! this prompted me to go through that tag because i'm pretty sure i haven't been using it consistently. and seeing as the last such tagged post was… six years ago… yeesh! i gotta go back and tag some more stuff!

at least some of that stuff went places! that "synthwave loop?" that got finished! it went onto an album of mine last year! (P.S. y'all who commented on the funny pendulum popcorn post wanting more, this album contains pretty much the only drum & bass i've released in the past decade, so that's the closest i can offer at the moment!)

[petriform]

🎵🔊

i can't take a walk to clear my head introspectively anymore. i take a walk and any room for introspection is swiftly and forcibly infilled by Shit Like This, like a Peeps™ marshmallow in the world's smallest microwave

[petriform]

thank you los angeles!! was good to be back! 💚

[petriform]

I'm playing An Evening of Experimental Game Music at Suspirium Space in Los Angeles this Friday, 10/20!

My experiment? Well... I think Florence enjoyers will be happier than usual with the setlist 🎵👀

[petriform]

wrote another tune for another Button Masher-hosted compo... Game Boy this time!

theme was "puzzle game theme!"

was crunched for time on this one and wanted to do more, but getting the exercise in is always worth it!! 💪

[petriform]

wrote a comfy coffee shop SNES chiptune for a compo hosted by Button Masher! ☕

being as attached to FamiTracker as i am, this happens to be my first ever SNES tune, as well as my first using Furnace. there's a first time for everything, i suppose! still getting used to it!

[petriform]

seems as good a time for a silly little cover of this as any 👽✨

y'all know any popular songs about uhhhhhh room temp superconductors by any chance

i don't actually feel any particular way about the "news" i just needed an excuse 🥺

[petriform]

my new EP, "...especially any of this," is now available on bandcamp!

thank you all listening party attendees 💜

the bandcamp description goes into more detail, but to get right to the point: these are songs that were left on the cutting room floor of the "nothing is for sure" sessions and revisited for the five-year anniversary of that album. i wrote a lot of stuff for that album that didn't make it; more than i have for any album before or since! i think i did that material justice - you be the judge!

download free / pay what you want - enjoy!

(and if you happen to be attending MAGWest in a couple of weeks... swing by to see me! i'll be playing some of these new songs for sure!)

[petriform]

sorry for the short notice (forgot to post...) but the youtube one is starting Imminently™