Tag Archives: electronica

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

Music update

I’m nearly finished with another TheForgotton song called Ganymede that’s based on a 12-tone matrix. There’s just a touch of spit and polish left as well as some sort of artwork I’d like to have before I release it. The possibility of a cohesive album has crossed my mind but there is still a lot more songwriting needed to be done.

I ended up staying up late last night working on a drone that ended up coming close to an album’s worth in one track! This song has lead me in a whole other direction than I’m used to, mainly that of dark ambient. I’m considering releasing some of this new stuff under the name Caustic Reverie. I also need to keep an eye out for a site that will host a 70 + minute song.

Under the Sun/Moon

I was working on the drum levels on my latest song when I realized that it was basically a completely different animal when I muted all the percussion. I’ve since split the song into two realizations: Sub Phoebus and Sub Luna.

Sub Phoebus is closest to the mixdown from the 14th with a working title of Panamaxing, though with more varied percussion and a touch more atmosphere. Sub Luna is an exercise in applied Frippertronics. There is more of an emphasis on space and texture and I’ve changed around the instrumentation. Both songs start and end basically the same but there is a drastic change in mood between them. I’ll post the final tracks when I’m happy with both mixes.