...At The Threshold

Branches strike you and roots hook your feet. The sunlight dies and the sounds grow dismal. The forest grows denser and darker. An abysmal ocean of trees. An uncanny trench of one's angst. You enter the labyrinth fueled by morbid curiosity but are engulfed by the ever-shifting trails.

Ever since I began my journey of creating the best music I possibly can some four years ago, I've been fascinated with the way in which some musicians are capable of exploring philosophical concepts in great depth or telling a story in merely forty-five minutes to an hour of music. Ranging from Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon to Iron Maiden's Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son, concept albums have been some of he most revolutionary albums in music history and have inspired musicians around the world to strive to create works of music of a colossal scale with depth and meaning.

EPs (short for Extended Play as they are longer than a single but shorter than a full length album), on the other hand, have had connotations of being rough works or rough drafts of what will later become a full length album. A simpler, easier to make, and more amateur version of an album that any 12 year old with a guitar and a laptop can make in his bedroom.

Lacking enough confidence in my own music to be able to ever put together an album or EP, not for fear of criticism or mockery but for the feeling that I am not doing the music the justice it deserves with my novice recording, mixing and mastering skills, I've always been a passive spectator to my favorite musicians creating fantastic works of music and art. However, some three months or so ago, I began the early stages of pre-production of a combination of the two: a Concept EP.

At this point you must be thinking "What on Earth was he on about at the beginning?" That paragraph with which I began this article is the concept of my EP. Kind of. It all began with an article I found online which asked the question: "What if the oceans where replaced with forests?" This gave birth to a myriad of questions. What would the trees look like the deeper you went on? What would the animals look like in the deeper part? Would there be any sunlight?

By taking inspiration from several different styles of music, composing and recording everything in my bedroom on my laptop, I am creating an EP that will take on this concept and explore it in its full depth and hopefully change people's perception of what an EP is and to prove that it is more than just an amateur album.

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