Category Archives: General

Nightbutter

I’ve been messing with an electronica song since May of 2025. I had gotten some new synthesizer VST plugins and was experimenting with arpeggiated, acid/303 style bass parts, as well as some cool analog synth patches for pads and leads on my Deepmind12D.

I just couldn’t make it flow. I had three or four sections that didn’t seem to relate to each other, and I was getting frustrated. I knew I had to add vocals to give myself a framework, as well as some forward momentum.

In March of this year, I went to make a new text document to throw together some song ideas. In my lyric drafting directory, I found a file I couldn’t remember anything about, called “Night Butter lyrics” and created sometime in 2019. It was a scrap of nonsense that I’d had rattling around in my noggin, “I was covering myself with butter, like a man in a dream.” I don’t know where I came up with it, probably a fever-dream after seeing the trailer for The Greasy Strangler. I think this was something I’d played with for an afternoon and then deemed too silly/stupid/gross to finish.

There were just nine lines in the original draft, but as a lark, I started chanting it in a goofy voice over some sections from my abortive acid-breaks experiment.

Oh crap, this kind of works!

I revised the lyrics, figured out a structure that worked better, and added more layers with some of my new toys, including a Roli Seaboard M and a Korg modwave Module. At first, I was using them as a placeholder, which I told myself I could rewrite into something less dumb… like how “Yesterday” allegedly evolved from Paul McCartney singing “Scrambled Eggs” . But no, I couldn’t bring myself to change the chorus to “Net Runner” and mutilate this masterpiece into some mere Cyberpunk pastiche. Viva Nightbutter.

I just can’t decide whether I want to call this genre Churnwave, Electronic Butter Music, or Phospholipid House.

Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music

No Response released

I’ve been messing around with something more synth-based lately. The song is called No Response and ended up becoming somewhat of a sci-fi/cosmic horror experiment lyrically. It was a mix of VST synths and drum programming, recorded electric bass, and some analog synths from my Deepmind 12D.

Bandcamp, Apple Music, Deezer, iHeart, Amazon.

2024 update

Sumptus Ignis released a new single near the end of last year entitled Serene that will be part of a song-cycle that might turn into its own EP or album.

I’m not sure if it was human error or a technical gremlin, but the release date was accidentally processed as if it were 1/5/24. This really screwed up my promo workflow, so no teasers, videos etc. were ready. We have several more new songs in the works but one of our members hit a snag with his recording rig so production has been on hold.

In soundtrack news, I’ve been working with music related to No More Room In Hell again. The first single is called Scavengers and will be out April 5th.

Caustic Reverie news

I have a single and an album coming out next month from my drone/experimental ambient project Caustic Reverie. On May 5th, Collapse of Rigel will be released as the vanguard.

The full album is called Transit Signals and will have three other pieces for a total running time just over 40 minutes. This stuff is a little more minimalist, with some space music undertones. I might do some visualization vids before the release, time permitting.

E-drum upgrade

I’ve been playing electronic percussion almost as long as I’ve been drumming. I bought a set of Alesis DM10 electronic drums a few years back to replace my aging Yamaha e-drums. I was sold on the fact that Alesis had “real-feel” mylar heads that were tunable. Though the new pads had much more sensitivity and some decent sounds from the stock drum brain, I didn’t like the feel of playing them. The drumheads turned out to be louder than any rubber pads and were difficult to get stick bounce from while playing.

I recently upgraded the heads to mesh with a conversion kit from 682Drums. The upgrade was pretty quick and painless. Oh what a difference! The bounce is incredibly satisfying.

Here’s a clip of me playing along to one of the new Sumptus Ignis songs in production to test them out.