Metropolis Records re-release of the first Ego Likeness full length from 2001 ‘Dragonfly’”.
Yo, people who are just starting down this “electronic music path.”
You’re gonna play your shit for people and they will nitpick bullshit production stuff. Like…”oh, well your snare sucks or if you cut X frequency on this fuckin thing than I will like it more until I figure out another thing to take personally and bitch about.”
Don’t fuckin worry about that shit.
Like.
AT ALL.
Learn to write songs that matter to you.
That’s the only important thing.
Because if they matter to you, you will be satisfied and keep going.
I’m not saying they have to make you happy. There are always going to be things you want to make better. But if they don’t resonate with you, they sure as shit won’t resonate with an audience.
And your audience is there.
It may not be huge. Who the fuck knows?
But it is there.
I mean, shit, 311 still has a fan base, right?
Don’t worry if your gear isn’t the best. Hell, we wrote our demos on a four track, our first full length was run through a 16 channel boss mixer to a stereo pair and recorded over. It wasn’t until our second record that we were able to sync our gear with our computer.
Our computer was one of the original pentium one laptops. I used a sound blaster usb Soundcard with $60 hacked drivers that I got from some dude in Germany, that allowed me to get my latency down to a reasonable size.
We recorded vocals in our kitchen and most of the strings were from a Casio keyboard with speakers in it.
By contrast now, I have a shit ton of gear and still write almost everything on my laptop.
Point being that these days you are far more likely to have someone come at you about some sort of bullshit production thing than you are about song writing.
But here’s the kicker.
That demo? And that first record?
They are still in print (along with the rest of our catalog) from our record label Metropolis records. And I don’t mean still as in they have always been. I mean still as they were rereleased as special sets.
Meaning they think they can make money on them. Because they will sell, because we have an audience, because we wrote good songs.
Am I a better songwriter now?
Probably.
But I learned to be one because of all of the material I wrote back then. And even now when I go back to, it still functions. It sounds the way it was supposed to sound.
So, just remember the following three words when that comes up ,”fuck that guy.”
Say it with me ,”fuck that guy.”
No, I’m not saying ignore a legit critique and advice. But seriously, fuck that guy on the industrial darkwave bullshit wave forum that’s bitching about your frequencies.
Steven Archer is a Stoneburner, one half of Ego Likeness, a visual artist, and has several published works. For more information try: