It has been a slow few days as of writing this, with no done drudgery on anything, (this is sure to enrage the diligent part of myself) and it's brought the same feelings of displeasure and grief it usually does. I have been inexcusably lazy beyond any helping, but I have already done a lot of work on both Tarnished and other things--will it really hurt to take a bit of a break? No, but every moment I am not working I think about work; every moment I am about to head to bed I think about what I can do tomorrow and then get mad at myself for not doing it. I have to realize you can't force a dehydrated and weathered horse to run for you without falling over at some point. To mark the start of my short first hiatus, I will instead *write about my work,* starting with 505.2. Here you will find a few fun facts and some vague backstories behind each song, segmented in case you're only interested in particular ones.
By far my most well-done track, unfortunately. It is very short and, being the intro, was the first song I made for this album. I made this before I even had the album cover done. My favorite part of this song is just how well everything went together! I used the SAM text-to-speech voice model and turned it into a ghastly little groan in the back, then my own voice, and the rest were a random assortment of samples I had downloaded. You can hear my gargly voice at the start and the end of the song. The chimes in the middle come from a broken plugin if I remember correctly, which I quickly put to use. I didn't use this plugin for the rest of the album, though I'm sure that would've affected the overall continuity of sound in the album; sometimes I feel the album deviates a little too much from the intro song, but probably not. Good song.
Every time I listen to this track I just feel extraordinarily displeased. It's an objectively alright song, but it is kind of the song that comes last in my brain, trailing behind even the transition song and Camulback. Nuclear Passion and Grope were the only songs that replaced older, worse songs that I had made for the album, for better or for worse. If I hadn't lost the old Grope song I'd probably put it in Tarnished somewhere. Oh well. Nuclear Passion is centered around a joke sample, which was a Talking Tom logokids video. Not much more to say here.
Porkrind was the second song I made for the album and was expected to be THE 505.2 song. I had thought, before making all the rest of the songs, that this would be the track everybody remembered the most. It turned out that it was not as iconic as I had thought it would be, which I am fine with. It has never been my favorite nor the favorite of anyone who has listened to the album. My favorite part of this song is the drums, but unlike the others the drums in this one are not really drums. I can't remember if I actually put a drum sample in there somewhere... regardless, the beatdrop segment that comes booming with the iconic weird chirping noises actually has mostly no percussion at all; I used a ton of nature sounds combined with the chirping sound that plays at the start of the song, and beat-ified them with my magic sound engineering fingers.
Repetitive and innocuous. I remember making this track trying to mimic some of the patented Aphex Twin sound, but I failed and just went ham. (The title is a nod to Syro's 180db_!) I really, really like this song purely for the unique sound that rising saw+sitar makes. It's soooooo good. Camulback makes for a nice filler song; I do admit it's not as good or memorable as the rest, though. Currently Camulback has the lowest amount of views on my YouTube page and the least amount of plays from my friends. That can make a strong woman cry.
This song was originally two separate songs, with the microwave sample attaching these two parts together. They were too short to use on their own, so I did some frankensteining... yet this song is still not ideal. I wish I had worked with better samples or had at least masked their low quality sound a bit. I also wish I had just scrapped the second part altogether, but it's a little too late for that I suppose. This song, alongside Porkrind, gave the album the distinctive 505.2 low droning vocals.
The start of the song was meant to be a neat little scare for less alert listeners coming from Alley Cat. Fun fact -- the start of the song is actually a heavily edited sample of watch out for my body rolls, which half of the test listeners heard. I had to tell the other half myself. This song was meant to be the sole coarse, "hardcore" song of the album before its sister song was created. My favorite part of the song is how creative the drums are. I don't even know how I did it. It was done in a haze, before it appeared fully finished on my monitor, and then I listened back and I was like "What the fuuuck? I made this?"
I love the start of this song, with the slow, piercing drums, and that distorted noise in the background... it's so foreboding and doomy, which was the exact feeling I wanted to create when I first started making it. That weird screaming noise is actually just some type of funk/orchestra hit, if I do remember. My sound engineering really bore fruits here. During the beat drop segment, I utilized panning and put two drum samples on separate ears. I think it created a sort of frantic sound, which I'm not sure if that's really done the best, but hey, people liked it. Not my prime song but it is one I am very proud of!
It's a lazy transition song to make sure the In Flesh to Benches switch isn't so jarring.
I consider this the first of the outro songs, which take a more sentimental turn. I remember there was a day when someone came up to me and told me "You know, I really liked the latter half of the album a lot more than the first half." which... I can't blame them. The second half is more personal to me, as it includes all my favorites of the album, and my more masterful works. The first half was full of a ton of failed experiments. I tried to make a song that was both jubilant and still a bit alien like all the other songs were, which I think I did well. Unfortunately, this song is sample abuse. I didn't use a single VST here.
If there was one thing -- just one thing I could change, I would change the transition between Benches and Grope. These might be antithesis songs, a good yin-yang relationship, so maybe if I had went with like a mirror dimension thing where the other half of the album was the opposite of the first half it would have been appropriate. Otherwise, I love this song. The other ones have general vibes I tried to go for; Son in Flesh being the rough sound it is, Camulback being a bit A-Twinny... this one, though, was made right after I went through a minor instance of sexual assault on the halloween of 2025. I was wearing a silly costume and walked out to a richer neighborhood where someone put their hands on me and slid them all the way down to my butt. I didn't do anything -- it was surprising, which probably made it all the more horrifying of a feeling, so I stayed put and they eventually fucked off. I remember coming home and thinking I could finally make an appropriate song about sexual assault now, and then I made this. I was not really affected by this incident as far as I can see.
I have had boyfriends who went through rape, friends who had went through rape and sexual abuse, acquaintances who, while I passed them, had talked to someone else about their experiences with rape. Ever since I got with my first boyfriend and had more friendly relations with these unfortunate folk I developed a hateful fascination towards the subject. Was there a worse experience? Why do people do this? What are the events that lead up to someone who does rape? Is it just because of how women/weak men are viewed? 505.2 was always meant to have a sexual assault song even before Grope. I've always wanted to express the horrors of it in a dignified manner.
Despite the simplicity of the song, I had run through a few sounds before I went with this one. That lonely, rising sitar-esque noise you hear symbolizes pleasure, which would probably sound nice in a normal song, but it is oh so wrong here. I like how it twists and plays over itself before devolving and wisping away. That bitcrushed sound is breathing, of course, and those little pangs you hear I had wanted to symbolize something violently ending pleasure for just a moment. Overall, not my best work, and by far not my best figurative work. I should've dedicated a whole album to sexual assault so that I could probably highlight the befores, the currents, and the afters instead of trying to meld all the current feelings into one song. I guess it was nice to experiment.
The token song of the album, so they say. It is by far the most unique in composition and vibe -- I had tried to go for a more "human" feel for this song as opposed to the weird alien feel I tried to inject into every other song. I put in vocal samples that DO say stuff, but I intentionally made them pretty hard to hear. The middle is beautiful and the song is topped off with a more generic type of Buuward beat. Not much to really say about this song actually, other than the fact that this is the fan favorite song at least now.
A song that grandly closes out the whole album with a bit of an Ugly Mane inspired flair, though I did it poorly as usual. I like the way this almost feels like the direct opposite of the first song, like a pessimistic optimistic type thing, though this song is still meant to sound off. Short, sweet and polite. What's not to love?
The samples were taken from a guy on Looperman rapping about anger. I think the part I sampled was when he said "Anger is a tool if you know how to stop!" and a bit more, but I forgot.