Thanky. Mondo deserves a fair share of the cred too.

Trouble Salad: The Red Candle Fiasco

Mondo, you have a gift. This album is seriously fantastic. You have such a distinct sound and you make it work so flawlessly. I've always enjoyed your Trouble Salad work. And this compliments your already existing work. I don't know exactly where this falls in terms of my favorite albums of yours but this is up there. I love the mixture of electronics and the additional dialogue on a lot of the tracks. It adds to the overall feel of the album.

I can tell just by how the album sounds that this is a labor of love. You stated that in the showcase and it really shows. Nice job Mondo. Every track is it's own beast in the best way possible.

This was a good listen. This'll be a regular for me.

well it was certainly the most laborious Trouble Salad album and perhaps most of anything I've done. Going deeper into IDM oriented music, I've found it's highly enjoyable to produce with a vast window for whackiness and creativity but at the same time warrants some of the most painstaking and meticulous editing I've ever even attempted. So it's a highly complex ordeal to put this kinda thing together while also incorporating the accessibility and catchiness of various forms of dance music.

this is perhaps the most successful and as of now most thoughtful blend of all these things I've been trying to do and I wonder if I can go deeper, cuz imo it's the zenith of my musical "career"

You and I have been going through the same thing. The music I've been making recently is some of my all time favorite work. And I'll hopefully continue that. Especially with xms releasing soon.

So I totally get it. This is definitely in my top 3 albums of yours and with a few more listens I'm sure that'll only get better.

Genuinely a solid record tho. You should be proud of it.

what are your favorite tracks

I'll get back to you on that once I've familiarized myself with the album but I do like a lot of them so far.

Well I haven't listened to a full album of yours since you only just made them available anywhere, but I suppose I've heard some music from you that I thought was kinda cool before so yeah.

Immediately chiptune which is cool. I think your slightly less than bombastic drums work better in this than other things I've heard cuz it's more genuine sounding in the 8 bit OST atmosphere. I dig chiptune so it's appealing so far.

The chipwaves are catchy and interestingly seamless and morphy, and the basslines while simple add more depth which I always felt like was lacking in your stuff. It's not immense but faithfully consistent. I'm not sure if it was intentional, but when stuff quiets down there's a sort of retro sounding crackle which I appreciate. I'm also into the especially fuzzy bits.

I apologize for not exactly having a lot to say and get deep into, but that's just more of a case of it being quite singular and consistent. It stays true to what it is even if I might like to hear some expansion.

But it sounds real catchy and fun just like chiptune ought to.

^^^Cool review! short or not, I'll take it!

I think some of the lo-fi qualities of the sound comes from it being written in the ancient program I used (Reality Adlib Tracker), and part of it from it having been exported through DosBox a very long time ago, on a computer where I remember having some sound issues. One of the songs has clashing between tracks, even, where some of the channels dip in and out in volume during some extra busy sections. I fixed this in a version I put on a later album, but I want to keep the tracks on this album like they were when I first assembled the album.
Last, but not least, I didn't know what the hell I was doing with Audacity back then, so all the tracks are in 128kbps...

I think one thing that my more chip tune like music has that sets it apart, is how low and rumbly the bass is. You just don't see that in similar music. At least I never saw that, and I've downloaded hundreds of tracks from The Mod Archive.

My review is coming, but I've been swamped with work and christmas stuff recently, so I'll try to get to that and other loose ends when things quiet down a bit after the first few christmas days.

my album got you like

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/LastingSop...rd-max-1mb.gif

Haven't listened yet. I got back from Copenhagen an hour ago and haven't had much time to play around on the internet for a week. I'm gonna get around to it now that I have the time.