Hey everyone, it’s Fabz here a.k.a Megaglitch. I’m just going to cut to the chase and tell you that it gives me enormous pleasure to announce the release of my debut LP, ‘Endless Echoes’, which I’m so excited about.
What started off as a simple lockdown project in early 2020, with no real intention, has turned into a passion and resulted in a new LP.
How it all began!
I work as a freelance designer, front-end developer, blogger, and content creator. So whilst my freelance business took a bit of a hit due to the pandemic, my passive income, blogging business continued to grow and has been running on autopilot. This gave me a lot of extra time to try out something new.
In April of 2020, I decided to reignite an old interest and passion in producing electronic music. Something I hadn’t done for over 20 years. Back in the day, I was using an old Roland VS-880ex portable recording studio and a Korg analog drum machine and keyboard.
The VS-880ex was an awesome bit of kit back in the day, and I had a lot of fun using it with the band I was recording with at the time.
Fast forward 20 years and a lot of things have changed, so I had a lot of catching up to do with regard to using a DAW, VSTs, plugins, hardware synths, etc. But it really didn’t take me long to get back into the swing of it all, and before I knew it, I was hooked again.
I’ll definitely write a post in the future about the gear that I’ve used in the past, and the gear that I use now for creating synthwave music.
My ‘work-in-progress’ home studio
I played keyboard and guitar for several local bands, some years back. But after getting married and having kids all that kind of stopped. But, I continued to play for my own pleasure.
Why release an LP now?
Honestly, I had no intention to, but I wanted to see what I could do. And whilst ‘Endless Echoes‘ was essentially a solo effort, the connections I was able to make with like-minded electronic music and synthwave artists via social media were incredible.
I received a ton of help and really good, friendly advice, which I’m extremely thankful for. The synthwave community is an exceptionally strong and supportive one.
Remember, there was no Facebook, Instagram, or even YouTube back in 2001, so the only way to get your music noticed was to get out there and do small gigs at dead-end venues, smokey pubs, and basements. Oh, and give your CDs away to all your friends and family.
So, yeah, things have changed a lot, and from a technology standpoint, now has never been a better time to start creating, in my opinion.
Also, coming from a digital marketing background with over 20 years of experience, distributing and marketing the music wasn’t going to be a challenge for me, tedious perhaps, but it’s something I’m used to doing.
I’m having a blast making new music right now, I’m just testing the waters, and if the response I get from this LP is good, then great. If it isn’t, that’s OK too. I’m quite happy, even if this is just a vanity project. It’s a hobby, nothing more at this point.
Why synthwave music?
I discovered synthwave back in 2012 when I heard songs by Kavinsky, Tesla Boy, and Powerglove for the first time. I was mesmerized and began exploring similar bands and artists in the genre.
I love synthwave, it’s grown so fast in the last few years, and it’s a genre I can relate to. A lot of the songs take me back to my childhood days playing video games on my old Sinclair ZX Spectrum with my brothers!
Our favorite movies growing up were “Flight of the Navigator”, “The Explorers”, and “Back To The Future”, of course.
I wasn’t born in the 80s, I was a kid during the 80s and so experienced an amazing decade of what is considered now as iconic. A lot of technology was new! The video games, movies, and music of that time are incomparable.
Listening to some of the earlier synthwave tunes just keeps bringing me back, and I just felt that this was the genre I should be into. And rather than follow the rest of the crowd, I didn’t want to create music that sounded like a ‘me too’ synthwave LP, but rather offer my own take on synthwave.
What next?
Well, the LP is out there now. It’s either going to be a hit or a flop, lol.
No, seriously, I enjoyed recording the songs and learning new things on the first run. Connecting with like-minded peeps has been awesome. I’ve already been in touch with a few passionate synth-wave music producers to collaborate with them in the future, so I’m very excited about that.
I’ve also invested a lot of my spare time, energy, and money into this venture so I’m in it for the long haul.
I’ll be promoting ‘Endless Echoes’ both on Bandcamp, iTunes, and Spotify until January 2022. Also, a video is in the works for the track ‘Solar Drift’ which is something to look forward to sometime in October.
The merch store is open so I’m going to get my creative hat on and come up with some new cool designs! The ‘Glitch City‘ t-shirt has proven to be a hit too.
Another idea that I had was to create some “behind the scenes” videos for my YouTube channel and Instagram of how I create my music, the hardware, the software that I use, and my songwriting process.
I want to spend some time diving into all the new stuff I’ve purchased for my home studio and then begin working on record number two around the end of Spring of 2022, all being well.
So, there are so many things I could do. I’m just writing them all down right now, and I’m open to suggestions too.